[mythtv-users] Upgrading old mythtv

[Stephen Worthington]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2024 18:07:15 -0400, you wrote:

>I think that I need a pointer to the lirc setup guid for the person
>who only wants to use irsend and has no intention of ever setting up a
>remote control. But that doesn't seem to the a use case that the lirc
>project ever considered because all of the configuration guids just
>show me a mile high wall of information about setting up to capture
>code from my remote control.
>
>I'll take any help I can get here, even a cluebat suggestion to google
>for: "word_1" "word_2" "word_3".
>
>I apologize for my exasperation here but this is the fourth time I've
>tried to setup lirc in an irsend / irblaster only configuration. Maybe
>this isn't as simple a configuration as I think it is?

You are so very right that there is very little documentation on how
to do it.  I was researching it a year or so ago when I thought I
would be needing it soon, but that never actually eventuated, so I
have not set it up ever with the current version of lirc, which is
quite different to the old version you may have been using at some
point.  My understanding is that you need to set up the lirc receiver
for the correct remote codes (so lirc can find the table of codes).
Then you just run irsend commands that send codes from that table.
There is also an "irsend SET_TRANSMITTERS" command to tell your IR
device which of its transmitters to send on.  IR devices usually have
two transmitter outputs in the chip, even if only one has been wired
up to an actual transmitter LED.  You can have it transmit
simultaneously on all transmitters, or just select one.

I have an mceusb type IR device, which uses the devinput kernel
driver, rather than appearing as a TTY port.  The kernel makes its
input appear on a /dev/input/event* device.  You need to use an FTDI
driver, which my current version of lirc (0.10.1 on Ubuntu 22.04)
seems to support as the "lircd -H help" command output lists "ftdi" as
a supported driver.  But you will need to find a table of codes for
your Samsung SMT-C5320 box, which I was unable to find.  There are
reports that it uses the same remote as the Scientific Atlanta box it
replaced, so that the old remotes could be used with the new box.

When you have the lirc package installed, then "man irsend" should
have some decent documentation on how to use it.  This command:

irsend LIST "" ""

should list all the remotes that currently have code tables installed.
This is what I get:

root at mypvr:~# irsend LIST "" ""

devinput
devinput-64

Those two tables are found in /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.d in the
devinput.lircd.conf file, which is used with the kernel devinput
drivers.  These config files can be downloaded from here:

https://lirc-remotes.sourceforge.net/remotes-table.html

and there are several Scientific Atlanta ones in that list.