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| Remote Control Recommendations http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20459 |
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| Author: | Greg Frost [ Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:28 am ] |
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rsay: I have an MCE remote and tried to use the blaster for my TV (one of the two 3.5 mm blaster sockets on the receiver unit). It sort of worked, but just barely. It wasnt reliable. I used mine with some IR emitters that came with a commandIR II (which I was beta testing and ran into firmware related problems which were unsurmountable without replacing the entire unit - so I abandoned that). What are you using as an emitter? I guess it could be my commandIR emitters are not compatible with the MCE unit. It could be that my TV is just not compatible with the modulation that the MCE blaster is producing. |
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| Author: | rsay [ Fri Nov 20, 2009 8:26 pm ] |
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Greg, I'm just using the emitter that came with the remote. I got mine from km_electronics on ebay for 21.95 + shipping. If you search for "Microsoft MCE Media Center Remote Control Complete Kit" you should be able to find it easily. The emitter came with a peel away sticky so I could mount it directly over the IR receiver on my tv. 100% reliable for me. I don't know if it was a valid test, but I just pushed buttons on my TVs remote and looked to see if the MCE receiver lit up. I figured that if it could receive the signal it could probably transmit the same thing. |
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| Author: | Greg Frost [ Fri Nov 20, 2009 8:35 pm ] |
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Well, I pulled apart my TV's remote and used an oscilloscope to examine the signal on the IR led and it has a modulation frequency of 48 kHz. When I monitor the signal coming from the mceusb it is modulated at 66 kHz and my TV wont accept it (even though the pulse train looks pretty much the same). I have tried setting "frequency 48000" in the lircd.conf, but it doesnt seem to affect the rate of modulation that the mce blaster is producing. I am now googling to see if it is possible to control the modulation rate. |
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| Author: | Greg Frost [ Sat Nov 21, 2009 1:00 am ] |
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After a lot of googling and then some poking around in the code, I think the problem is that Linhes uses lirc_mod_mce to support the MCE remotes and that is based on a very old version of the lirc_mceusb2 with support incorporated for the keyboard and mouse. Only newer versions of the lirc_mceusb2 support changing the carrier frequency. So without changing the code (and that is a bit daunting) it is not possible to use the transmitter with a different carrier freq and the keyboard at the same time. |
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| Author: | Greg Frost [ Sun Nov 22, 2009 4:09 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
I have backported the carrier setting code for mceusb to the lirc_mod_mce module and now the blaster works great, So I would say that the Microsoft MCE remote is highly recommended. It works well even at quite a long range. For those wanting to use the blaster, you should upgrade your lirc package via pacman. Ironic that for a software company, Microsoft makes pretty good hardware. |
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| Author: | grg3 [ Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:55 am ] |
| Post subject: | MCE Remote |
After upgrading to R6, I had difficulty getting my irblaster working again. I tried one of the MCE remote kits that are available on EBay. It was a brand new oem version. Unfortunately, although the remote itself worked OK, the blaster did not. After reading the mythtv remote page http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MCE_Remote#Support_Status and looking at lsusb, I concluded that I must have the model referred to as Phillips ehome. Supposedly, blasting is not supported on this model. I was able to use it as a remote for my frontend, but I had hoped to use it on my backend. It would be interesting if it could be made to work on a backend, because it is a great alternative to using a serial port. |
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| Author: | Greg Frost [ Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
This is my MCE remote: Code: Bus 004 Device 009: ID 0471:0815 Philips eHome Infrared Receiver
The blaster works for me. You would need the latest lirc package from core-testing if the receiver on the device you are trying to blast is sensitive to IR carrier frequency. This is because the MCE defaults to something like 66 kHz which almost nothing uses and the latest lirc package has an update allow lirc to control the carrier frequency. |
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