Re: LIRC-list Digest, Vol 11, Issue 28

[Andy <and...@st...>]

Philip,

  This sounds like a good extension to LIRC.

  I would think their would be a large base of users that would like to 
inject IR signals into LIRC from software. LIRC has developed a large 
software base of apps that use it (eg. MythTV, Mplayer, xmms, etc, etc). 
It would be really great to get a way to send those apps IR signals 
using LIRC as the "compatibility interface". It would certainly increase 
the LIRC user base!

  Being able to receive IR signals from software (as opposed to a 
hardware receiver) to me  seems like a very good feature that isn't yet 
in the LIRC architecture.

  What does everybody think? ???

  How about a new driver that listens on a port with a telnet-like 
interface to receive simple commands such as "dvico_remote play_button 
repeat 0" rather than having to send the complete IR signal as per the 
UDP port.

  Example usage:  I have a MythTV box. I have a SqueezeBox 
(www.slimdevices.com) on top of the TV. The SqueezeBox already receives 
IR signals and makes available the IR remote button presses. I don't 
want an to install an IR receiver and make my clean setup look ugly. 
(Neither does my wife!) So what I need to do is to inject those 
SqueezeBox received signals into MythTV. I have a work around for 
MythTV, BUT MythTV uses xine and mplayer for playback of movies. Those 
programs only talk to LIRC or the keyboard. I need to inject IR remote 
button presses into the LIRC daemon. So a simple telnet port would 
easily allow me to transfer the received button presses into LIRC and to 
all the other software running on my TV box.

Andy.

> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:04:42 +0100
> From: "Canavan, Philip S \(UK - London\)" <pca...@de...>
> Subject: Re: Inject IR codes into LIRC? \ Can lirc read from a socket?
> To: <lir...@li...>
>   
>> Just to get my understanding correct. You are injecting IR signals into 
>> LIRC by having the LIRC daemon connect to your software via UDP as if it 
>> was connecting to another LIRC daemon. By imitating an LIRC daemon you 
>> can inject IR signals programmatically?
>>     
>   I looked at using the LIRC protocol directly into the daemon, but it would require the "remote" to be always connected. Since I want to rig up an IP-based remote with the Nokia N800 as the handset, that wasn't sensible. Rather, I get LIRC to use the UDP driver, which expects raw remote data to come in at a specific port. This permits the remote to appear and disappear without LIRC even knowing, since everything is connectionless; either a given UDP packet arrives or it doesn't.
>
>   I've been thinking of tidying the code up and going GPL on SourceForge, since there are now Java environments running on the N800, my C++ is fledgling (and I'm now too OOP to admit defeat and go back to C), and the Nokia dev environment has proved to be a pain already. What's your target; would GPL scupper you?
>