[mythtv-users] MCE/HID remote double events

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 17:17:14 -0700, you wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I'm trying to set up an MCE remote using evdev, and I'm getting double events in Mythfrontend for every key fairly consistently; maybe 80% of the time.
>
>I've set up the remote from a combination of these two wiki articles:
>
>https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/HID_Remotes
>https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User_Manual:IR_control_via_evdev
>
>evtest usually doesn't report the extra event even when Mythtv does.
>
>I've even set repeat delay and period to really high values.
>
>For example, here's an instance where pressing "down" resulted in event, but 'evtest' didn't:
>Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
>Event: time 1560729712.782138, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 800f041f
>Event: time 1560729712.782138, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 108 (KEY_DOWN), value 1
>Event: time 1560729712.782138, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
>Event: time 1560729712.888133, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 800f041f
>Event: time 1560729712.888133, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
>Event: time 1560729713.022172, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 800f041f
>Event: time 1560729713.022172, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
>Event: time 1560729713.294223, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 108 (KEY_DOWN), value 0
>Event: time 1560729713.294223, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
>
>Here's ir-keytable output:
>
>Found /sys/class/rc/rc0/ (/dev/input/event8) with:
>	Name: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (1784:0011)
>	Driver: mceusb, table: rc-rc6-mce
>	Supported protocols: rc-5 rc-5-sz jvc sony nec sanyo mce_kbd rc-6 sharp xmp
>	Enabled protocols: rc-6
>	bus: 3, vendor/product: 1784:0011, version: 0x0100
>	Repeat delay = 10000 ms, repeat period = 10000 ms
>
>FIW the remote is a Logitech harmony 650 programmed as a Windows Media Center PC.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Zach

I tried evtest on my system with my MCE remote and the above is
exactly what I get with lirc shut down.  The keystrokes look fine.

I had problems with the lirc setup in 18.04, and at times I was
getting double keystokes with lirc running.  It seems that there are
two different paths for keystrokes to get to mythfrontend, one via
lirc or the keyboard (they use the same path), and one via X.  In my
case, the path via X was sometimes providing a keystroke as well as
lirc was.  The cause was the bad way that lirc was installed by its
package - there were multiple other daemons in the lirc package other
than lircd that were all enabled and running, but they did not have
valid configuration, and one of them was sending keystrokes via X. So,
are you sure you have all the lirc daemons shut down?  The lirc
package installs these files for systemd units:

/lib/systemd/system/irexec.service
/lib/systemd/system/lircd-setup.service
/lib/systemd/system/lircd-uinput.service
/lib/systemd/system/lircd.service
/lib/systemd/system/lircd.socket
/lib/systemd/system/lircmd.service

If you are not using lirc, all of those need to be given valid
configuration, or stopped and disabled:

sudo su
systectl stop irexec
systemctl disable irexec
systectl stop lircd-setup
systemctl disable lircd-setup
systectl stop lircd-uinput
systemctl disable lircd-uinput
systectl stop lircd
systemctl disable lircd
systectl stop lircd-socket
systemctl disable lircd-socket
systectl stop lircmd
systemctl disable lircmd
exit

I think that it was either lircd-uinput or lircmd that was causing my
double keystrokes, but as it went away when I disabled all the ones I
was not using, I never confirmed the exact source of the problem.  So
if you run the above commands and your double keystroke problem goes
away, that it is likely you were suffering from the same problem.

Or you could just uninstall the lirc package completely:

sudo apt purge lirc

Is there any particular reason that you are not wanting to use lirc
with your remote?  It is more flexible and allows you to use more than
one program with the IR remote.  If you follow that wiki and map
specific keystrokes to what mythfrontend needs, unless any other
program you want to work with the remote uses exactly the same
keystokes, you will not be able have it use the remote.  I use mplayer
as an alternate video player with mythfrontend videos as I have a
number of old .wmv files that mythfrontend is unable to play.  So I
definitely need to use lirc so that both mythfrontend and mplayer work
with the remote.  I think it is very limiting to only be able to use
the remote with mythfrontend.

If the reason you want to use the wiki page's setup is that you have
been having problems getting lirc going in 18.04, then you have simply
met the problem that, as installed by the lirc package, lirc in 18.04
is badly broken.  To fix that, download and run my fix script:

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

That fixes all the problems with the package that I know about, so
that the Python config tools such as lirc-setup will work, and
disables all the extra daemons.  The underlying version of lirc itself
is fine, and is working well for me and others on this list.  And I
understand it well enough now to be able to help you get it working if
you want that.