Remote Control Problems: Speed-link SL-6399

[Ryan V. <rva...@gm...>]

Hello,

I'm having trouble getting the SL-6399 to work completely.

The SL-6399 comes with a USB Receiver. The receiver provides an HID
keyboard and an HID mouse. I'm using LIRC's 'dev/input' driver. And
I've successfully managed to get lircd to run twice and communicate
with each other so all events can be read from /dev/lircd [footnote 1].  (I've
also figured out the "can't get exclusive access to events"
problem [footnote 2]).

I'm using the the generic/devinput.conf that comes with mythbuntu (see
attached devinput.conf).

This allows most of the keys to work, sort-of. Problems:
1. The arrow buttons on the remote don't provide any events in irw
2. Many of the remote buttons act if they produced several button
presses. For example, holding down the REWIND button:

ryan@mythtv:~$ irw
000000000001001d 00 LEFTCTRL linux-input-layer
000000000001002a 00 LEFTSHIFT linux-input-layer
0000000000010030 00 B linux-input-layer

3. If I hold down a button on the remote, I only get one the irw
events once. The above example is from holding down the REWIND button
for several seconds. I only received the above entries when I released
the button.
4. If I stay using the generic devinput.conf, I will have to spend
alot of time creating a ~/.lircrc file to use the key sequences. I'd
prefer not to do that!

Due to these problems, I thought, why not try to create my own remote
configuration file using irrecord. The attached mysl6399.conf is the
result of:
   sudo irrecord --driver=dev/input
--device=/dev/input/by-id/usb-HOLTEK_YaoCoo-event-mouse mysl6399.conf
This is a partial recording of the mouse interface: using the arrow
buttons.  Due to the fact that irrecord does actually receive data for
when I press the arrow buttons, I'm confused about my problem #1.
(Based on the ChangeLog, I suspect that this is due to a change
commited 2008-03-02:  daemons/hw_devinput.c: check event.value only
for EV_KEY. But I'm not sure, b/c other events, like play and pause
come through the mouse interface[footnote 3], but still show up in irw using
devinput.conf.)

When I try irrecord on the keyboard interface (see attached
mysl6399-kbd.conf), the problem is worse.
   sudo irrecord --driver=dev/input
--device=/dev/input/by-id/usb-HOLTEK_YaoCoo-event-kbd
mysl6399-kbd.conf
I deleted the my original kbd conf file, but all of the entries for
about 40 keys were 0x0! The attached example of the irrecord shows the
REW button. This is very different that what I get when using the
devinput.conf and irw!

So, I'm not sure what to do. Am I stuck using devinput.conf?

Versions:
ryan@mythtv:~$ uname -a; lircd -v; irrecord -v
Linux mythtv 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 19:28:32 UTC 2009
x86_64 GNU/Linux
lircd 0.8.3
irrecord 0.5

I'm using Mythbuntu 8.10, fully updated.

Let me know if you need more information.

Thanks for your time!

-Ryan

p.s. I'm not on the lirc mailling list, please remember to CC me on any replies!

[1] I found the documentation for --listen and --connect was unclear.
I thought the process with --listen would get the events from the
process that --connects. However, it is the otherway around.  You
connect (by tcpip-socket or unix-socket) to the lircd process you wish
to receive events from.  Also, it would be nice to be able to specify
what interfaces to listen on.  I wish to be able to say: listen only
on localhost.

[2]  Perhaps only a mythbuntu related problem. This was because both
lircd and X were reading from the event device. I had to modify
/usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe/20thirdparty/lirc.fdi so that the
contains_ncase="YaoCoo".

[3] Buttons that come through the mouse interface: play, stop, replay,
pause, skip, back, more, arrow-left, arrow-right, arrow-up,
arrow-down, volume up, volume down, mute