[mythtv-users] Looking for clarity on MythTV, to LIRC, or not to LIRC, ir-keytable, and key mappings

[Larry K]

Up until a recent upgrade from FC12 to CentOS 6, I was using an old, trusty
PVR-250 to act as my IR receiver, even though I had long ago stopped using
the analog encoder itself.  When it because apparent that I might need to
use the new driver ir-kbd-i2c that replaced lirc_i2c, and seeing as how
this was totally breaking my HD-PVR, which got confused and thought IT was
the IR receiver I wanted to use, I ended up buying an MCE remote from
Amazon (
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ST7QPA/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details )
This was not my first mce receiver, since I had bought one years ago for
one of my frontends.  I figured this was a good way to go, and I thought
since I had configured one before, it would be simple.

Anyway, I did lots of reading on this list, and others, and I was finally
able to get the mce remote working with my backend running CentOS
2.6.32-220.  I had the advantage of knowing how lirc works from my many
Fedora adventures over the years, and I was able to find and install an mce
lircd.conf file.  I had to configure lirc to use devinput (I was expecting
mceusb, but it seems that LIRC does not support that anymore), and when I
did, irw started to recognize my commands.  Well, most everything except
the numbers 0-9 (Still working on that one.  Advice appreciated).  I also
had to fool around with /etc/sysconfig/lircd and simply load all my lircd
settings (-H, -d) in the first options parameter listed in that file.  From
there, it was easy pickins to modify my existing lircrc to define the myth
key mappings I need.

I went back and forth on whether to allow the remote to act as a keyboard,
using v4l-utils and ir-keytable. It seems like some on this list are saying
that infrared can be done completely without LIRC these days, and, in fact,
it should be done that way. But then again, I see experts like Jarod
talking about v4l-utils (ir-keytable) in conjunction with native lirc, so
it makes me wonder what really is the best path forward.  When I first
hooked up the mce IR receiver, and it automatically loaded up the
rc-rc6-mce keytable, it seemed like myth was kinda responding to my
keystrokes right away, but I had no idea how or why.  But, it was exciting.
 Progress was a good thing.  I also found that if I tried to modify my
rc-rc6-mce keytable file to create the key names I wanted to use (and see)
in irw, the changes would never stick, and no matter what I did, the name I
tried to override would always be reported by ir-keytable -t and/or irw (I
have since read that a shutdown/restart is required, but it's too late to
try that now).   Add to that the fact that I was never able to determine
how mythv was understanding the commands, or how to influence that, I ended
up uninstalling v4l-utils, and going with what I understood, which was
plain ole LIRC.

I found wiki pages all over the place, talking about this issue, but it was
hard to tell if any of them are up to date, or if they reflect the current
state if things.  For instance, some still say to point to /dev/lirc0,
while others say that you need to point to /dev/input/eventxx, which is not
static, so using the alias name under the /dev/input/by-id directory is
advised.  That's what I had to do in CentOS.  However, in FC12, as I
recall, that was not the case, using an almost identical mce IR receiver.
 I guess my point is that there is so much information out there, and some
of it perhaps misleading, or outright wrong, that the matter becomes harder
than it should be.  It also seems that every iteration of the kernel
improves functionality, and fixes problems.  That's great, but it becomes a
nightmare to figure out what material posted online is relevant, given this
constantly changing landscape.

Is there any reference or resource that exists to provide accurate,
up-to-date guidance on setting up IR in myth?  Is LIRC really on the way
out?  Some have said uninstall it and never look back.  Is v4l the best
path forward?  And if so, how the keystrokes are mapped into myth?
 xorg.conf, perhaps? Do the basic devinput names convey into myth
automatically?  Did I miss the memo on all this?

Larry

The WAF was pretty low over the last few weeks.  She remarked that the
complexity of setting all this stuff up is ridiculously high, so I guess
it's no wonder that people just buy a TiVo or settle for the crappy DVR
that showed up when they subscribed with the local service provider.
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