I recently changed my FE system from using an ATI Remote Wonder to a home-brew serial receiver and a silver Happaugue remote. Following MOST of the instructions on the wiki (I used lirc-0.8.0pre4-pvr150 - which is already in /usr/src instead of downloading anything newer or older), everything went well. I am able to use the remote almost flawlessly. It's the almost that's bugging me. I've got two questions for the group - any help would be greatly appreciated.

1) Sometimes, when re-booting, the syslog has

in it, and the remote will not work. When it does work, syslog has

in it. Ususally, another shutdown/reboot brings the remote back. Any idea how to correct this?

2) I'd like to make some changes to lircd.conf and lircrc. Is there a way to force lirc to re-load its config files without rebooting?

Thanks again for any help anyone can offer.

Allan

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Running Knoppmyth R5F27 since 09/12/07

Hardware Specs

Quick update - using lirc-0.8.0pre4-pvr150, the remote would stop working after a few hours. Rebooting would fix it - IF the lirc_serial module detected low. I downloaded lirc-0.8.0 and installed it. I had some issues with lirc-0.8.0pre4-pvr150 still running even after I installed lirc-0.8.0, which I resolved by renaming lircd & lircmd in /usr/local/sbin & linking lircd & lircmd in /usr/sbin to /usr/local/sbin. The remote seems to be working fine, the version of lircd seems to be 0.8.0, and it has been running for almost 1 full day. Also, with several re-boots, the lirc_serial module has always detected low.

Also, after some more searching of the forum (and the rest of the internet), it seems that there really is no consensus on a simple way to re-start lirc - short of rebooting, that is. Can anyone confirm that rebooting is the best, sure way to get lirc to re-read the config files?

(edited for spelling & punctuation)

Thanks -

Allan

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Running Knoppmyth R5F27 since 09/12/07

Hardware Specs

Lircd starts from an init.d script, so running

as root should restart it. You probably still need to restart the mythfrontend for the remote to work, and that's most easily accomplished by restarting X:

I'm pretty sure you can also force the lirc_serial module to assume it has an active-low (or high) receiver by supplying a module parameter (rather than leting it attempt to detect it). If you have any more trouble with that aspect, let me know and I'll show you how to pass the parameter.

Another quick update. Unfortunately, I've had to abandon the serial IR receiver and go back to an ATI Remote Wonder. The serial receiver stopped working after several hours, rebooting was the only way to bring it back. Kinda killed the WAF for a day or so.

The reason I switched form the ATI in the first place was poor remote reception - you had to hold the remote a certain way to get it to work. I've since relocated the receiver, and now my wife is very happy with the remote.

I do plan on trying to get the serial receiver working reliably - this time, on a test box. I like the IR remotes that I've got a lot better than the BIG ATI Remote Wonder...

Greg - would you mind telling me how to pass the proper module parameter to lirc_serial?

Thanks -

Allan

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Running Knoppmyth R5F27 since 09/12/07

Hardware Specs

add the line to the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/KnoppMyth
Then create the file /etc/mythtv/modules/lirc_serial with the following contents:
sense=0 means active high
sense=1 means active low
sense=-1 is the default and attempts to detect the sense.

I'm not sure how you have configured your lirc_serial module to work. You may already be passing parameters to tell it the io port and the irq, in which case, you would just need to add the sense parameter.
If you set it up the way irblaster is going to be supported out of the box, for future releases the /etc/mythtv/modules/lirc_serial file is created on the fly by /etc/init.d/irblaster and you would need to modify that script to add the sense option.

Hope this helps.

P.S. you can look in /sys/module/lirc_serial/parameters to see the available parameters and cat the files in that directory to see the current value for the parameters. It will show N for active high and Y for active low (i think).

Thanks for the quick response. Hopefully I'll have some time in the next few days to muck around with the test box.

Thanks again for the info - I'll post back when I get a chance to test thigs out.

Allan

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Running Knoppmyth R5F27 since 09/12/07

Hardware Specs