[mythtv-users] lirc question: native or irxevent?

[Nick]

On 26/03/06, Nick Rout <nick at rout.co.nz> wrote:
> I am just playing around with lirc in an effort to get rid of the "I am
> bloody sick of that keyboard lying on the floor in front of the TV"
> messages that wife-1.0 keeps spitting into /var/log/messages.
>
> My remote is working, irw pumps out the correct info etc.
>
> Docs I have read refer to the ability to run lirc in either native myth
> mode or using irxevent, eg:
>
> <quote>Once you know that your remote is working, you can either
> recompile MythTV with native lirc support by enabling it in configure or
> you need to run the irxevent program, which takes the key presses and
> sends them to MythTV. If you use native lirc support, you don't need to
> run irxevent. If you are going to use irxevent, then you need to run it
> like this:
>
>     $ irxevent &
>
> If irxevent isn't running, then MythTV will not respond to your remote control unless you're using native lirc support. </quote>
>
> (http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-8.html)
>
> However there seems little guidance on whether native or irxevent is
> preferable, and why :(
>
> So can someone enlighten me on this please? Naturally I also want to
> control stuff like xine and mplayer with the remote while playing dvds
> or xvid/divx movies. I am not sure if using native mode interferes with
> using the remote for external apps.

Hi Nick,

I'd go with native mode LIRC support, because it offers customisation
of the remote for each application that has native LIRC support.
MythTV, mplayer and Xine all have native LIRC support, so you can
craft individual remote mappings for each program. Jarod has an
example lircrc file with MythTV, mplayer and xine here:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/lircrc-haupgrey-g3.txt

Note that this is for use with a Hauppauge grey/black remote -
essentially you just need to ensure your keynames match with those
defined in your lircd.conf file. Both mplayer and xine documentation
detail which commands can be bound, and the MythTV keys.txt file
details those in MythTV.

You can also run irxevent at the same time (I think native support
takes precedence as I don't seem to have any problems doing this) have
a remote with a stealth QWERTY keyboard inside it so I can use it as a
mini-keyboard if I need to.

Nick