Hi,

I have an IR Blaster from

http://www.irblaster.info/

and I've been following the IR-BLASTER_HOWTO at

http://losdos.dyndns.org:8080/public/mythtv-info/MythTV_DISH_IR_LED_TX_via_Modified_LIRC.html

Everything has gone relatively smoothly up till now, but I'm stuck at one of the last steps. When I do



then ledxmitd.log shows this:



Which looks OK, but the LED, viewed through a digital camera, doesn't flash.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot a problem like this?

Thanks,

Jon

_________________
- -
Jon Hoyt
Eugene, OR

jon,
a couple of questions:
1) are you sure your camera detects IR? check with your TV remote.
2) are you sure you are configured on the correct serial port?
3) where did you get LIRC "0.7.2pvr150" from?

jim aka the wrooster

Yes, I checked it with the Dish remote and I can see the flash clearly.



I believe so. I only have one serial port so I followed the instructions to change the configuration to ttyS0. It didn't work at first (kept saying the device or resource was busy despite doing 'setserial ttyS0 uart none') so I changed the installation script as Lev recommended in this thread:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7372
After that the installation ran smoothly so I assume I'm configured on the correct serial port.



I'm following the tutorial at
http://losdos.dyndns.org:8080/public/mythtv-info/MythTV_DISH_IR_LED_TX_via_Modified_LIRC.html
so I downloaded lirc 0.7.2:

then ran the script which somehow renamed it to 0.7.2pvr150 (I guess).
I'm not too good at reading scripts so this could be wrong.

Thanks,

Jon

_________________
- -
Jon Hoyt
Eugene, OR

jon,
my scripts don't rename LIRC files to anything close to "*pvr150".

i have two hunches...

1) you have a pvr150 installed and somehow your change_channel script is calling LIRC code compiled specifically for the pvr150.
OR
2) you downloaded and installed the pvr150 patched version of LIRC when you built the ir blaster setup per my web page above.

i think you are one step away from getting this working. we just have to find the one step you need.

so lets back up just a bit...

what is you hardware config? have pvr150?
what knoppmyth version are you running?
does everything else in mythtv work right now?
what serial port is your blaster connected to?
post your config files that you created/modified per my setup page.

thanks

jim / wrooster

I have a pvr150 but am not using a change_channel script yet, see below.



Yes, I have a pvr150 installed. In /usr/src/ I found lirc-0.7.2pvr150.tar.bz2. Could this be something that Knoppmyth installed (I have version R5A26)? Thinking about it, I might have used this instead of downloading a new version. I'm not yet using a channel change script, though, I'm still just trying to get the IR to light using
Should I start over using a freshly downloaded lirc?
Everything else seems to work fine. I only have one serial port and that's what the blaster is connected to.



By config files are you referring to the ledxmitd.conf file? I am just using the one you used without any modifications:
http://losdos.dyndns.org:8080/public/mythtv-info/ledxmitd.conf
I have an Echostar Model 3000 (an early model) and I have yet to find any downloadable configs for that exact model. I kind of figured I'd just try to get the IR blinking first and then get it configured for my receiver.



I'm the one who should be saying thanks. Thanks for writing the How To in the first place and thanks for taking the time to help me out, especially since it's Christmas Eve.

Jon

_________________
- -
Jon Hoyt
Eugene, OR

jon,
use the lirc 0.7.2 tarball from the lirc site. in other words, use the wget line that i spec'd. make the changes you did prior to use the right serial port, and try building lirc again from scratch. the new binaries will simply overwrite the old.

jim / wrooster

Jim/Wrooster,
I also wanted to say thanks for your how-to - it's really a great piece of work and helped me a lot since I know next-to-nothing about linux and perl.

Darwin,
Did you put the ledxmitd.conf file in /etc/ and change its permissions as described in the How-To?

Lev.

_________________
Knoppmyth R5A22
Hauppauge PVR-500MCE
Nvidia FX5200
DVI to plasma
Biostar M7NCG 400
AMD XP-M 2400

You may want to have a look at my post on this subject. I use the same IR blaster and r5a26 after much fooling around I got it to work. Look for my post and follow it and see if you have better luck


Craig

PS: I had messed everything up so bad that i reinstalled then got it working the way i describe in my other post.

Hello everyone and thanks for all the help.

I started over with a fresh download of lirc. I editted the install script to use COM1. I followed all the steps to the letter, including putting the ledxmitd.conf file in /etc/ and changing its permissions. I used the JVC_RAW file from the How To. I've seen at least one post somewhere which said that file works with my receiver.

When I go to test:



Which looks good to me, but I'm still not seeing any flashes or getting a channel change on my receiver.

Any ideas on what to try next?

_________________
- -
Jon Hoyt
Eugene, OR

jon,
grab a 9V battery and a couple of paper clips.

connect pin 4 of the db9 to the (+) terminal.
connect pin 5 of the db9 to the (-) terminal.

can you see the IR LED with your camera now?

jim

jon,
also, could you post the following:

0) $ uname -a

1) your edited ledxmit make script, ie myth-ledxmit.sh

2) /etc/modutils/lirc-ledxmit

3) /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh (specifically the ledxmit tail end)

4) $ ls -sl /dev/led*

5) $ lsmod | grep ledxmit

ps
were there ANY anomolies when you installed? any error messages, things that didn't look my howto, anything at all out of the ordinary?

pps
check in your BIOS setup screen whether the serial port is enabled, and that the address and IRQ are EXACTLY as you specified in the make script.

jim

I figured it out!

It turns out that on my last time through the tutorial I forgot to uncomment the COM1 line in /etc/modutils/lirc-ledxmit. I noticed it as I was preparing a reply to Jim's message above. After fixing that and rebooting everything works like a dream!

Thanks to everyone who chimed in and especially thanks to Jim for writing the How To in the first place and for sticking with me as I plodded through this.

Gratefully,

Jon

_________________
- -
Jon Hoyt
Eugene, OR

<The A-Team> "I love it when a plan comes together" </The A-Team>

jim / wrooster

I just wanted to add that I bought a blaster from the irblaster.info people and was completely stymied when I could see no IR even though it should have been working. I use IR cameras for work, so I really should have seen it.

My camcorder screen was just blank. It works fine on other IR sources.

Strangely, when running the script that sends a 2 over and over, I didn't see IR in the camera and was about to give up. I switched the output from the sat box from the pc to the tv and there it was 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ...

I don't know if the emitter is set very low because it is meant to be stuck right next to the Rx on the set top box or what. It does change channels fine, but I can't either see it on the camera.

Now, I just can't get it to change channels from inside myth. My change_channel.sh works fine, but when I restart the backend and go into myth, it won't change the channels.

My info window comes up with no program data and the channel stays the same. Looking at dmesg, it doesn't look like the ledxmitd has started, though I double-checked the lines in the init.d/bootmisc.sh.

I can at least offer the bit about the blaster. If somebody has a tip on my problem, I'd be happy to hear it. Now, back to skimming the forums.