I have been using lirc_serial with my remote control for the past several years. I recently installed a PVR500 (replacing a PVR150 MCE) and upgraded to R5F1 at the same time. Note: neither the PVR500 nor the PVR150 have a built-in IR receiver.

Since the upgrade, any time the PVR500 is recording I cannot use my remote control. This includes "Live TV" and if a show is recording in the "background" on either PVR500 tuner. I also have 2 HD tuners and I can control either of those watching "Live TV" (if the PVR500 is not recording). As soon as the PVR500 stops recording, the remote control functionality returns to normal.

If the PVR500 is not recording (i.e. the remote control is working), I can use the irw program to monitor the IR codes from the remote control. When the PVR500 is recording, irw does not give any output. Strange.

I put the lirc_serial module into debug mode (added lirc_serial debug=1 to /etc/modprobe.d/lirc) and messages like these were logged:

I do not know what to make of these, but they appeared to be logged when the remote was working and even when it was not working. Note that I verified the lirc daemon (lircd) is running when the remote is responding and even when it is not responding.

The lirc_serial module is using IRQ 4 while the ivtv mdoule is using 22 and 23. My conclusion here is that the IRQs between lirc_serial and ivtv are not shared and are not interfering with each other.

Any other suggestions?

I had the same problem for quite some time and finally got it right a few nights ago thanks to the work of a bunch of others here in the forums. Below are my personal notes for machine building and last night I put together a box for a friend with a pvr 150, serial lirc and it works perfectly.

29. Now we are going make some changes to help lirc work better

A. Remove Serial Mouse from xorg.conf
1. nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
2. comment out serial mouse section
3. reboot


B. remove ir keyboard from loading by removing the referenced file.
1. mv /lib/modules/2.6.18-chw-13/kernel/drivers/media/video/ir-kbd-i2c.ko /lib/modules/2.6.18-chw-13/kernel/drivers/media/video/ir-kbd-i2c.ko.backup

C. stop the saa*** drivers/firmware from loading
1. nano /etc/init.d/KnoppMyth-tv
2. near the bottom comment out the line saa7134-dvb

Then reboot.

Hope these steps help you too. Thanks to these forums these steps helped me.

I finally had a chance to try your suggestions, but they did not help my situation. I am open to other ideas if there are any.

Perhaps this will help:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15381

Thank you, but no help there. That thread is addressing a USB receiver, I am using a serial receiver.

Have you seen http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15195 , specifically #7 under Known Issues, pointing to http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... vtv-0.10.0 ?

Hey. I've got the same problem. I recently upgraded my system to two PVR-150's running R5F1 and I use a homebrew IR receiver for my remote. As you mention the remote stops working whenever it's recording a show. I've investigated a bit more.

* Changing remote to using ttyS1 did not cause it to work. Yes I did change all the configuration.
* running 'cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/foo.mpg' makes the remote stop working.
* irw will print nothing while the remote is not working. Once you stop recording it starts printing things.
* scan2 does show scan codes coming from the remote while the remote is not working. This implies that the lirc driver is working properly.
* If I try to run irrecord while a recording is running and try to reconfigure my remote I get errors of "Something went wrong." every time I try to configure a button.
* This one is weird. If I reboot and I run 'cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/foo.mpg' the remote will work. However when Mythtv starts recording something or when I click 'WatchTV' and then stop recording, and then run cat /dev/video0...' then the remote stops working. Let me explain it better.
#1 Reboot
#2 Run irw in one window. Press Buttons, Buttons show up.
#3 Run 'cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/foo.mpg' irw still reacts to buttons. Stop catting.
#4 Watch TV. irw doesn't react.
#5 Stop Watching TV. irw reacts.
#6 Run 'cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/foo.mpg'. irw does NOT react to buttons.

Now I don't know how ivtv is making lircd not work. I don't know if something in ivtv is somehow modifying the serial port stream or what.
Sadly the scan2 codes don't help out that much because they vary a lot.

I'm half thinking of just going out and getting a wireless keyboard and a programmable remote.

David

Did you check that the serial port isn't sharing an interrupt with one of the PVR cards? To minimize this, go into your BIOS and disable any hardware you're not using, parallel ports, game ports, ... Anything that you don't have and aren't very likely to add, like say a floppy drive. This should minimize the contention. I won't claim that this is it, since properly written drivers should do the right interrupt chaining, but it often helps to simplify the situation...

I didn't think that it would work but I did this:

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... vtv-0.10.0

And the problem went away.

Thanks!