Mailing List Archive

On Thu, 3 Dec 2020 14:58:52 -0500, you wrote:

>I'm rebuilding my parents MythTV system, with an upgrade to Ubuntu
>20.04 and MythTV 31.
>One hiccup I've encountered is setting up their MCE remote for all the
>buttons to work with how 20.04 handles remotes through EVDEV.
>
>Using ir-keytables -t all the buttons on the remote work and register
>the appropriate EV_KEY codes. So far so good.
>
>However, in attempting to map them in MythTV frontend's 'Edit Keys'
>area I notice a lot of them are not being registered by MythTV.
>
>Is this a setup issue or is MythTV just not coded or able to recognize
>those additional keys?
>
>What's the standard path forward here? Can I still create a mythtv
>lircrc file to remap the presses for MythTV? Do I have to create a
>custom rc6_mce file? Is there some other step I need to take to get
>MythTV to recognize the buttons as names in the rc6_mce file?
>
>Thanks for the help!

If they were using lirc in the past, you may want to keep doing that.
There are two key things that lirc does that are not possible using
the keys directly mapped:

1) Use the IR remote with more than one program. For example, I use
it with MythTV, mplayer and irexec.

2) Control the autorepeat of keys. I allow autorepeat only on certain
keys such as the arrows and PgUp and PgDn. And I control the rate as
well. This makes it much harder for my mother to autorepeat the wrong
keys and cause herself problems.

If you need or want to use either of those features, you have to use
lirc. Also, if you want to be able to use more than one type of
remote on the same system, lirc is required. I have my systems set up
to be able to swap between my MCE remote and my Hauppauge remotes.

If you do want to directly map the keys and not use lirc (not
recommended), then yes, you will need to create a custom rc6_mce.toml
file. The default version of this is found in /lib/udev/rc_keymaps,
and you make a copy in /etc/rc_keymaps and edit it there. Edit the
/etc/rc_maps.cfg file to point to the new version. In the
rc6_mce.toml file, you will need to make the buttons map to normal
keyboard keystrokes, as that is what MythTV works with. So for
example, change KEY_INFO (which MythTV will not understand and will
ignore) to KEY_I so that it will match the I key on a keyboard, which
is the default used by MythTV to bring up the info screens. The valid
KEY_ values are in:

/usr/src/linux-headers-<kernel-number>/include/uapi/linux/input-event-codes.h

The keystrokes used by MythTV are in the jumppoints and keybindings
tables in the database and can be edited from:

mythfrontend > Setup > Edit Keys

But it is best to mostly leave the MythTV settings alone and change
the keystrokes in the lirc or ir-keytable settings, so that the normal
keyboard will still work with MythTV when you lose your remote or want
to do more complicated things the keyboard is better for.

Getting lirc to work in 20.04 takes a bit of effort, as there is
significant reconfiguration to be done, but once done it should not
now need to be changed again unless lirc gets another major upgrade.
There are other threads on this list with help on how to do the lirc
changes - search for "lirc-ubuntu-18.04-install.sh" and
"lirc-ubuntu-20.04-install.sh". Or ask me - I can post my current
config files as examples if you need them.
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