[mythtv-users] LIRC experience and ideas

[Robert Denier]

Typically to use LIRC you need a receiver and a compatible remote.  I bought 
packard bell receivers which come with the little packard bell remotes, that 
I wouldn't really recommend for long term use.

Here is the best plan I could come up with, so far anyway...

1) Buy a nice learning universal remote.
2) Set it to use the TIVO dvr code or something else nice, perhaps a dvd code.  
Make sure whatever you use gets responses in mode2.

At this point you will have a remote with a lot of buttons you can map, and 
likely some that don't do anything, that you want to use.  You could try to 
search for codes forever that make all the buttons you want to work, to 
actually work, but, well, I found that problematic.

Another alternative is the following.

3) Choose a secondary remote that isn't used with anything.  I used the 
packard bell one.  Take the file from your secondary remote and do something 
like
	cat secondaryRemoteLirc.conf >> /etc/lirc.conf
The goal here is to append the secondary remote codes to this file.  Now go in 
and relabel all the secondary remote codes to something else.  I suggest 
prepending something like pb_.

4) Now take the buttons that don't do anything and teach them using them 
buttons from the secondary remote.

5) Finally edit your lircrc file to make it all work.

This should allow you to use all the buttons on a learning remote you want, 
without trying to find a magical code that has all the buttons active, and 
that your receiver can see the codes from.

Good Luck.
-Robert