[mythtv-users] Mapping remote keys in Edit Keys screen

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 13:28:05 +1100, you wrote:

>I've got my remote set up using ir-keytable. When I run "ir-keytable -t" I
>can see the keys showing up as things like KEY_PREVIOUS, KEY_NEXT,
>KEY_CHANNELUP, KEY_ESC, KEY_M etc.
>
>So I thought the next simple step would be to assign these keys to the
>MythTV functions I want the to perform. For example I want KEY_NEXT to skip
>commercials.
>
>When I go into Edit Keys in the frontend and choose TV Playback >
>SKIPCOMMERCIAL I can see that it's currently mapped to "Z" and "End". So
>then I click on one of the empty buttons and I see a screen saying "Press A
>Key. Waiting for key press". What I've found is that screen only detects
>actual keboard keys, so it will detect KEY_ESC and KEY_M from my remote,
>but not things KEY_CHANNELUP, KEY_NEXT etc.
>
>Am I misunderstanding how this is supposed to work? How do I map a key
>command from ir-keytable that isn't an actual keyboard key to one of these
>functions?
>
>Regards,
>Phill

This page tells you how to do it, but it is a bit short on examples:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User_Manual:IR_control_via_evdev

Basically, you need to change the codes generated by ir-keytable so
they match what MythTV is expecting, rather than the other way around.

Personally, I prefer to use lirc.  Using lirc has the following
advantages:

1) More flexibility.
2) The ability to map keys differently for other programs (I use
mplayer as an alternative video player, for example).
3) The ability to control the autorepeating
4) The ability to run scripts from the remote.
5) The ability to use more than one (different) remote on the same
system.

I know a lot about getting lirc to work now, so if you wanted to try
using it I can help.  I wrote a script to fix the broken lirc install
on Ubuntu 18.04.  It is available from my web server:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/lirc-ubuntu-18.04-install.sh

and I have my 14.04/16.04 lirc config available for download as an
example to follow:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/mythbuntu-devinput-lirc.bz2

There are a couple of changes needed for 18.04, as some device names
have changed with the greatly updated version of lirc.