Mailing List Archive: Setting up an irblaster

Setting up an irblaster

Feb 19, 2006, 8:38 PM

Post #1 of 6 (3070 views)

Hi all,

I have an irblaster from irblaster.info. I have LIRC configured and working
for my remote, and I believe I have it correctly configured for the IR
blaster. However, I can't get any infra-red out of it :-(

I have:

root@dango:~# setserial /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4

/usr/sbin/lircd --driver=default --device=/dev/lirc1
--output=/dev/lircd1 --pidfile=/var/run/lircd1.pid

root@dango:~# less /etc/modules.conf
...
alias char-major-61-1 lirc_serial
options lirc_serial irq=4 io=0x3f8
####IR setup####
install lirc_i2c /sbin/modprobe ivtv; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install lirc_i2c
install lirc_serial setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none; /sbin/modprobe
--ignore-install lirc_serial
...

root@dango:~# less /etc/lircd.conf
...
begin remote

name Pace_RC-30
bits 16
flags SPACE_ENC|CONST_LENGTH
...

When I run changechannel.sh I get no errors, but no infra-red :(
I tried the infra-red camera trick and concluded that my camera can detect
infra-red but my irblaster isn't transmitting any. So, I don't know if the
device I was shipped was DOA, or if my serial port on my MB is broken, or if
I have something misconfigured somewhere...

Here is some log output, if it helps...

Feb 20 17:37:16 dango lircd: removed client
Feb 20 17:37:16 dango lircd: accepted new client on /dev/lircd1
Feb 20 17:37:17 dango lircd: removed client
Feb 20 17:37:17 dango lircd: accepted new client on /dev/lircd1
Feb 20 17:37:17 dango lircd: removed client
Feb 20 17:37:17 dango lircd: accepted new client on /dev/lircd1
Feb 20 17:37:18 dango lircd: removed client
Feb 20 17:37:18 dango lircd: accepted new client on /dev/lircd1
Feb 20 17:37:18 dango lircd: removed client

Any help, ideas etc. would be appreciated

Corrin

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Re: Setting up an irblaster [ In reply to ]

mythtv at oddwater

Feb 19, 2006, 11:10 PM

Post #2 of 6 (2990 views)

Permalink

Hi Corrin,

It was a bit tricky getting a single lirc instance to run two different
remotes, such as the PVR-350 for receiving and the IR Blaster for
transmitting. There was an excellent site at lircsetup.com that made it
pretty simple, but I'm sad to see it's down right now.

The first thing I should mention is that the digital camera trick didn't
work for me with the IR Blaster. I could see other IR transmitters with my
digital camera, but I'm pretty sure the IR blaster didn't show up. I can't
say for certain, because I stopped testing it before everything started
working, but I never saw the IR blaster using the camera.

Which flavour of linux are you running? In my initial testing, I was
getting log entries similar to yours. It took a while before I got
everything working properly. Unfortunately, the hard drive died in my
MythTV box so I can't see my working setup and am thus operating from memory.

- Dagan

At 05:38 p.m. 20/02/2006 +1300, Corrin Lakeland wrote:
>When I run changechannel.sh I get no errors, but no infra-red :(
>I tried the infra-red camera trick and concluded that my camera can detect
>infra-red but my irblaster isn't transmitting any. So, I don't know if the
>device I was shipped was DOA, or if my serial port on my MB is broken, or if
>I have something misconfigured somewhere...

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Re: Setting up an irblaster [ In reply to ]

lakeland at go

Feb 20, 2006, 12:53 AM

Post #3 of 6 (2956 views)

Permalink

On Monday 20 February 2006 20:10, Dagan Galarneau wrote:

> It was a bit tricky getting a single lirc instance to run two different
> remotes, such as the PVR-350 for receiving and the IR Blaster for
> transmitting.

I think my setup for that is okay, at least I followed the howto to the letter
and got all the devices created :) I checked that I could use my MCE remote
and it worked fine. I also tried killing that instance of lirc in case that
helped the serial one, but with no noticeable difference.

> There was an excellent site at lircsetup.com that made it
> pretty simple, but I'm sad to see it's down right now.

Yes, I've been trying to access it via google cache.

> The first thing I should mention is that the digital camera trick didn't
> work for me with the IR Blaster.

Oh, okay. Guess I can't even rule that out then :)

> Which flavour of linux are you running? In my initial testing, I was
> getting log entries similar to yours. It took a while before I got
> everything working properly. Unfortunately, the hard drive died in my
> MythTV box so I can't see my working setup and am thus operating from
> memory.

debian testing/unstable
custom-built kernel (2.6.15.4)
custom-built LIRC (0.8.0) installed using the 0.7.2 debian scripts

My changechannels script:

#!/bin/sh
REMOTE_NAME=Pace_RC-30
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit
sleep 0.4 # note, you may have to tweak the interdigit delay up a bit
done
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME OK

I've never previously used the serial port on this computer, I had to manually
reenable it in the bios and the kernel before I could get LIRC working. I
don't have any other serial devices for testing that the port is working, and
while I have another computer with a serial port, I've never tested that port
either...

Corrin

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Re: Setting up an irblaster [ In reply to ]

mythtv at oddwater

Feb 20, 2006, 3:37 AM

Post #4 of 6 (2953 views)

Permalink

Initially I had the PVR-350's remote successfully sending commands, and
then I added the lircd instance for the serial IR blaster. I'm not sure
how applicable this is to you, as I was using Mandriva, but when I added
the serial transmitter everything seemed to work. I didn't get much in the
way of error messages anywhere. The transmit program happily said it was
working. But nothing was happening. Like you, I struggled to find out if
it was a hardware problem with the IR Blaster, or a software issue.

In the end, I downloaded the latest snapshot version of lirc and compiled
it myself, rather than running the stock Mandriva version. Everything
magically started working pretty much instantly.

At 09:53 p.m. 20/02/2006 +1300, Corrin Lakeland wrote:
>think my setup for that is okay, at least I followed the howto to the letter
>and got all the devices created :) I checked that I could use my MCE remote
>and it worked fine. I also tried killing that instance of lirc in case that
>helped the serial one, but with no noticeable difference.

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Re: Setting up an irblaster [ In reply to ]

lakeland at go

Feb 20, 2006, 11:14 AM

Post #5 of 6 (2979 views)

Permalink

On 21/02/2006, at 12:37 AM, Dagan Galarneau wrote:

>
> In the end, I downloaded the latest snapshot version of lirc and
> compiled it myself, rather than running the stock Mandriva
> version. Everything magically started working pretty much instantly.

Okay, I'll give the latest snapshot of lirc a whirl :)

I wish lsusb worked for serial ports! :)

Corrin

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Re: Setting up an irblaster [ In reply to ]

lakeland at go

Feb 21, 2006, 3:56 PM

Post #6 of 6 (2982 views)

Permalink

On Tuesday 21 February 2006 00:37, Dagan Galarneau wrote:

>
> In the end, I downloaded the latest snapshot version of lirc and compiled
> it myself, rather than running the stock Mandriva version. Everything
> magically started working pretty much instantly.

Wow, same thing happened to me! Thanks :-)

Conclusion, run CVS rather than whatever came with your distro I guess :-)

Now on to optimising the script (using the C version) and getting the MCE
remote working at the same time :-)

Corrin

PS: For anybody looking for a brief howto, here is what I have

lakeland@dango:/usr/local/src/lirc/lirc-cvs$ cat configure.sh
#!/bin/bash

./configure \
--prefix /usr \
--with-moduledir=/lib/modules/2.6.15.4/misc \
--with-transmitter \
--with-x \
--with-driver=serial \
--with-major=61 \
--with-port=0x3f8 \
--with-irq=4 \
"$@"

lakeland@dango:~$ lircd --version
lircd 0.8.1-CVS

lakeland@dango:~$ cat changechannel.sh
#!/bin/sh
REMOTE_NAME=Pace_RC-30
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do
irsend --device=/dev/lircd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit
sleep 0.4 # note, you may have to tweak the interdigit delay up a bit
done

lakeland@dango:~$ setserial /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4

lakeland@dango:~$ lsmod | grep lirc
lirc_serial 12256 0
lirc_dev 13796 1 lirc_serial

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