Configuring a Harmony 880 remote with a devinput IR receiver.

[Bruno A. <bg...@bu...>]

Hi.

I bought this cheap no brand IR receiver + IR remote to use with my
media center PC. lsusb reports it as:

Bus 008 Device 006: ID 1d57:ad02 Xenta SE340D PC Remote Control

i was amazed that the thing worked out of the box with the include
remote control. Even without configuring Lirc. The reason is because
the receiver publishes itself as a event input device. Here is the
syslog whe the device is connected:

Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.385727] usb 8-2.2: new
low-speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.505729] usb 8-2.2: New USB
device found, idVendor=1d57, idProduct=ad02
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.505735] usb 8-2.2: New USB
device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.531314] input: HID 1d57:ad02 as
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb8/8-2/8-2.2/8-2.2:1.0/input/input17
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.531724] hid-generic
0003:1D57:AD02.0008: input,hiddev0,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard
[HID 1d57:ad02] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-2.2/input0
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.550075] input: HID 1d57:ad02 as
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb8/8-2/8-2.2/8-2.2:1.1/input/input18
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode kernel: [ 6518.550291] hid-generic
0003:1D57:AD02.0009: input,hiddev0,hidraw3: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [HID
1d57:ad02] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-2.2/input1
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode mtp-probe: checking bus 8, device 7:
"/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb8/8-2/8-2.2"
Nov  2 08:54:46 gaspode mtp-probe: bus: 8, device: 7 was not an MTP device

And the following /dev entries for it are added:

/dev/input/by-id/usb-1d57_ad02-event-kbd
/dev/input/by-id/usb-1d57_ad02-if01-event-mouse
/dev/input/by-id/usb-1d57_ad02-if01-mouse

The working config (with the included remote) looks like this:

hardware.conf:

[...]
REMOTE="Linux input layer (/dev/input/eventX)"
REMOTE_MODULES=""
REMOTE_DRIVER="devinput"
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/input/by-id/usb-1d57_ad02-event-kbd"
REMOTE_SOCKET=""
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="devinput/lircd.conf.devinput"
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""
[...]

lircd.conf:

[...]
include "/usr/share/lirc/remotes/devinput/lircd.conf.devinput"

My problem is that now I wanted to use the same IR receiver with my
Logitech Harmony 880 Remote but I can't.

First of all, I could simply record the keys from the original
controller, but the problem is that this controller has some keys that
send multiple scancodes (it is basically emulating a keyboard, so it
sends ALT+F4 for a key labeled "Close") so I was looking for a more
generic way to do that.

i tried changing lircd.conf to point to the mceusb config (without
changing hardware.conf) and then changed the Harmony controller to the
Windoes Media Center profile, but key presses are not being detected
(irw shows nothing). Trying to run irrecord just results in a message
saying that the gap was not found when trying to record the IR signals
from the harmony remote.

I think that the issue might be the fact that the Ir receiver
registers itself as a HID device (actually multiple hid devices). Does
that make any sense? Any ideas on how I could get all this to work?

Thanks in advance.

-Bruno