BATC Forum

Hello, me again.

I've dug out an old Microsoft Media Centre USB IR receiver. It identifies as a Philips eHome Infrared Transceiver, with IR keymap "rc-rc6-mce". The light on it flashes when I press buttons on a Samsung TV remote. Nothing shows up in the IR Test stuff in the menu though. I wonder if there is a way to reconfigure the Ryde receiver not to use GPIO for IR? I don't see lirc on the box so I'm assuming some kernel stuff is used instead?

This is what the kernel spits out when I plug it in:

usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0471, idProduct=0815, bcdDevice= 0.00
usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-1.1: new full-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-1.1: Product: eHome Infrared Transceiver
usb 1-1.1: Manufacturer: Philips
usb 1-1.1: SerialNumber: PH00Vga9
Registered IR keymap rc-rc6-mce
rc rc1: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (0471:0815) as /devices/platform/scb/fd500000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.1/1-1.1:1.0/rc/rc1
rc rc1: lirc_dev: driver mceusb registered at minor = 1, raw IR receiver, raw IR transmitter
input: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (0471:0815) as /devices/platform/scb/fd500000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.1/1-1.1:1.0/rc/rc1/input2
mceusb 1-1.1:1.0: long-range (0x1) receiver active
mceusb 1-1.1:1.0: Registered Philips eHome Infrared Transceiver with mce emulator interface version 1
mceusb 1-1.1:1.0: 2 tx ports (0x0 cabled) and 2 rx sensors (0x1 active)

I'm going to go digging today, but would appreciate any pointers please.

Thanks
Tom

Hi Tom,
Yes, we are using the kernel IR drivers rather than LIRC, one less dependency. It should be possible to support this properly in the future but I don't have time to look into properly before CAT20. If you are confident with python and in a hurry I can point you at roughly were you need to hack.
Tim

Yes please... just a pointer would be ace.

To get the ir test working you will probably need to use ir-keytable to enable the correct driver after connecting the usb and after every reboot, e.g. To get ryde to work with it you will probably only need to edit ~/ryde/rydeplayer/ir.py

You will at least need to add rc-rc6-mce to the valid drivers list around line 83 and modify the device name from ir_gpio_recv around line 247

Let me know if you get it working and what changes you made as it will make it easier to integrate properly later.

Tim