Hello,

I am running R5E50 with a PVR350 using the Silver remote and the built in IR receiver that came with the PVR card. I decided that I wanted a more capable receiver and a transmitter so I built the iguanaworks.net highpower transmitter/receiver circuit. I also put in a cheap 2 port Lava serial card since I was out of serial ports.

I was reading about how to set it up and I am very confused. The LIRC website seems to describe a completely different setup procedure than is implemented in MythTV. The lirc docs don't mention the hardware.conf file or the lirc-modules-source.conf file. It also looks like the MythTV setup already has most of the driver modules compiled. I would like to know how to reconfigure lirc to use the new homebrew serial receiver/transmitter. The iguana works site says to make sure that when configuring LIRC to select:

1. Home-brew (16x50 UART compatible serial port)
2. COM1 (0x3f8, 4)
3. With transmitter diode
4. Software generated carrier

I can't see how to enable these options within hardware.conf or anywhere else that I usually configure lirc from. Do I need to recompile lirc? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks . .

OK I have been trying a few things but I need to know how far I can go without recompiling lirc.

Firstly I created a device lirc1.

I then figured out that the serial port seems to be hardwired into lirc_serial module when compiled so I had to move my other devices around to get my hombrew receiver/transmitter onto ttyS0.

I then put "setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none" into my bootmisc.sh and restarted. Now I can run "mode2 -d /dev/lirc0" and see what my hauppage receiver sees, and using mode2 on /dev/lirc1 and see what my homebrew receiver can see. Really cool!!

Now I am really confused as to how to get my transmitter working. I want to use the transmitter to do things like turn on my stereo and maybe control some other stuff devices (thus the high power transmitter design) but not for changing channels. I have tried running the irblaster script and reading the instructions but I can't seem to get it working.

I ran lircd and had it using my homebrew reciever/tranmsitter which worked fine, but when I tried an irsend command nothing is transmitted. The iguana works website says to enable:
1. Home-brew (16x50 UART compatible serial port)
2. COM1 (0x3f8, 4)
3. With transmitter diode
4. Software generated carrier
but this seems to only be configurable when compiling lirc. I am a little weary of compiling lirc since I have read of so many problems compiling under R5E50. I was hoping to be able to use the preconfigured irblaster stuff but I don't know if my transmitter is compatible. Do I have to compile? If I have to, what lirc source should I use and where can I get it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've been doing some playing with switching remotes recently too, in my case from mceusb2 to iMON.
Here's what I've turned up, but go with more experienced posters if they reply.
I ran into the same lack of info about hardware.conf on the wiki's and lirc site. I'm not sure if the hardware.conf is an lirc thing or a knoppmyth thing, but it's actually pretty brilliant. It contains variables sourced by /etc/init.d/lirc script for starting and stopping the lircd daemon. When you look through the /etc/init.d/lirc script, hardware.conf suddenly makes sense. It looks like a conf file, but it is actually a sh script that is being used to set env variables.

I think you can simply re-run the lirc setup, but I'm not sure how, failing that, if you have to edit files.

I think you want to have
MODULES="lirc_dev lirc_serial"
in hardware.conf

/etc/modules also lists modules that should be loaded at boot, but I'm not sure is that goes with or instead of hardware.conf.

I'm not certain about the next but I'm pretty sure step 2 is wrong for your setup. I can pretty much bet you're NOT on COM1 since you're on an addon card. check your card's docs for the IRQ/port settings.

to add the settings to linux I believe you want to make a file in /etc/modprobe.d (say "lirc") this would contain the opions needed to configure the lirc_serial kernel module something like

only you need the correct irq and io for the addon card's serial port like I mentioned above.

I realize I'm not giving the answer, but I hope this gives more pieces to the puzzle...

It would be nice if there was some comprehensive documentation about the hardware.conf and lirce start script implementation. I am using COM1 as I moved the other stuff to the add on card in order to use COM1 for lirc. I am currently using the new receiver but I have to startup lircd manually instead of using the init.d script since it wants to default to the other receiver.

My main problem now is getting the transmit function working as I don't know if my transmitter will work with the serial module that comes pre-installed in Knoppmyth. I hope I don't have to recompile lirc as many folks have complained of problems doing this on R5E50.

I got it working. It looks like I had a loose connection on my transmitter that was stopping it from working. It also looks like the Knoppmyth lirc_serial module is setup to use COM1, and is already setup to use software carrier, diode transmitter and Homebrew uart.

It now works great and the serial reciever is recognized by lirc and gets assigned to /dev/lirc1 device that I made. The original hauppauge receiver is still recognized as /dev/lirc0 so if I wanted I could run two instances of lircd and have them both working at the same time. The homebuilt receiver is much better than the hauppauge as I can now use it with all of my remotes.

One thing that is kinda strange is that the irblaster script said that I needed to add the remote codes I wanted to transmit to /etc/irblaster/irblaster.conf but the codes only worked when I put them in my /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.

Thanks for all the help.