[mythtv-users] Trying To Get Two IR Receivers Working

[Alec Leamas]

On 15/10/15 04:44, Kirk Bocek wrote:
>
> So event9 appears to be the one. After stopping lircd:
>
> $ir-keytable -t -d /dev/input/event9
> Testing events. Please, press CTRL-C to abort.
>
> Still nothing.
>
hm... reading thread from start instead of just writing misleading 
answers. Sorry for that.

The difference between the two remotes can be seen in the dmesg output. 
The working one:

170687.026907] input: MCE IR Keyboard/Mouse (mceusb) as 
/devices/virtual/input/input13
[170687.028276] rc rc0: lirc_dev: driver ir-lirc-codec (mceusb) 
registered at minor = 0
[170687.127491] mceusb 1-2:1.0: Registered Topseed Technology Corp. 
eHome Infrared Transceiver with mce emulator interface version 1

The non-working one:

[169913.509997] input: PHILIPS MCE USB IR Receiver- Spinel plus as 
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.0/0003:0471:20CC.0003/input/input11
[169913.562365] hid-generic 0003:0471:20CC.0003: input,hiddev0,hidraw2: 
USB HID v1.00 Keyboard [PHILIPS MCE USB IR Receiver- Spinel plus] on 
usb-0000:00:14.0-2/input0

The thing here is that the kernel drivers are completely different. The 
working one has a kernel driver based on the rc framework. It exposes a 
/sys/class/rc device (here /sys/class/rc/rc0). ir-keytable requires such 
a device to work.

However, the new, non-working remote uses a hid driver. This exposes a 
/sys/class/hidraw device, and ir-keytable cannot do anything with it.

Still, the data presented on the /dev/input/eventXX interface should be 
usable, for lirc as well as other applications (one at a time). Might it 
be that you are using the wrong event device? The simple check is to 
just use cat(1) to display the data from e. g., /dev/input/event9. The 
data is unprintable, so your terminal will look weird. But you should 
definitely see if there is data or not when you press buttons on the remote.

There are some hints to find out the event device at [1]

Cheers!

--alec

[1] http://lirc.org/html/configuration-guide.html#appendix-2