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I'm having a heck of a time getting my remote controls working on a new Rasbian build.

I've loaded Kodi (it was XBMC then) onto a couple windows machines and an openElec/RPi system and in those cases, both my generic RC6/MCE remote and my Logitech Harmony One were pretty much fully functional right out of the box but on this new Raspbian/RPi setup (tried both on PI 1 Model B+ and PI 2 Model B), only a few of the RC6 buttons are functional and so far, I've only found one button (PLAY) on the Harmony One that works.

I've followed several troubleshooing and setup guides and done lots and lots of trial and error with the keyboard.xml fiile over the past few days, but a lot of info I found is dated (LIRC, etc.) and nothing I've tried has made the slightest difference.

I'm hoping you guys can point me in the right direction.

I've tried the Keymap Editor Add-on but it only seems to recogize a very few keypresses and doesn't seem to produce a keyboard.xml file on save. Instead, it writes a file called gen.xml in my ~/.kodi/userdata/keymaps directory (Kodi runs under the pi user).

Here's gen.xml after mapping the "Enter" key to the select action

ir-keytable -t sees every keypress wiht the RC6 remote. Note that the first keypress below is the enter key mapped above by Keymap Editor. I have no idea how/why Keymap Editor registered the "Enter" key as key id="61453" since I don't see that code in the ir-keytable -t output below.


With the Harmony One, ir-keytable -t doesn't even register most keys. It did pick up the "Play" button (the only functioning button on the remote that I can find), but no others out of a few I tried.


Interestingly, ir-keytable -t stops registering keypresses with Kodi launched. Is Kodi somehow hijacking the IR reciever?

I feel like if I could just get one change to register in Kodi, the rest would fall into place but my ignorance is really working against me here and I've been banging my head against a wall for the last week trying to get this figured out. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing?

Can try using OSMC instead or do you have to use Raspbian?

I wasn't familiar with OSMC but it looks pretty slick now that your mention it. I like Kodi for its looks, scrapers & Metadata & Mysql connectivity so the whole house can stay in sync. I went Raspbian so that I could run a full Linux environment underneath Kodi.

I'll look into OSMC. I don't necessarily need or want a dead simple media server, but the plethora of builds, versions and platforms involved with XBMC/Kodi makes it a huge pain in the neck to troubleshoot problems like my current remote control issue. If OSMC simplifies the configuration without reducing the feature set, that may be a better way to go.

I believe its build on top of Raspbian so you can still do plenty of things with it, I use openelec coz it's just kodi with no other things to worry about. OSMC looks very nice and may give it a try once the final release is out to get added functionality and hopefully a browser.

I loaded up OSMC and it looks good and the remotes work but other than that, I wasn't impressed enough to abandon my Raspbian build. Raspbian is working out great for the RPi 2 and also runs fine on the RPi1 B+ and I love having a full Linux machine to develop code on at home..

So... I'm back to square one with the remotes and could still use a hand from anyone who's gotten a custom keyboard.xml to work or knows how to get full functionality from a standard RC6/MCE remote with Kodi on Raspbian.

I've fresh-installed Raspbian + Kodi three times now, and the result is always the same, i.e. ir-keytable sees every keypress in the OS, but once I get into Kodi, only a few remote control buttons do anything and the Keymap Editor Add-on is only registering a few keys from each remote.

Anyone have any thoughts? Surely I'm not the only one who's seeing this issue...

I'm experiencing this also, if you solve this please report back. I even imported all the .xml files from openelec , because their mappings seem to work better, and the keys that didn't register before on raspbian still didn't. So I think the setting we are looking is outside of kodi.

Please post if you make any progress!
thx

I'll do that. I can move the same receiver and remotes to a Pi running openELEC or OSMB and they work perfectly, so it may be an issue with the Raspbian Kodi build. I've gotten busy elsewhere the past several days so I've resigned myself to limping along with things as they stand for now.

I did, though, order a $20 Flirc IR receiver dongle (which happens to be on sale at the moment for $15 (https://flirc.tv/product/flirc/)) and will try it with my Raspbian setup when it gets here and report my findings. The dongle apparently emulates a keyboard and my wireless keyboard is fully operational with my Raspbian/Kodi setup, so I'm hoping that'll get me running.

I'm happy to say that the Flirc IR dongle solved the problem for me.

They had a streamlined setup for my Logitech Harmony One remote (Actually, I just had to add the Flirc device in the PC Harmony setup utility), and I now have complete enough functionality with my Logitech remote that I'm putting off my decision to buy another Pi just to power an openELEC or OSMC setup (both of which work perfectly with my Logitech and MCE remotes).

The Kodi keymap editor still isn't recognizing keypresses which haven't been set up in the Flirc GUI so Flirc doesn't seem so much to have opened a pipe from my remote to Kodi as to just be translating registered keypresses into something Kodi can deal with.

Before setting up the Logitech I tried setting up my MCE remote in the Flirc GUI and while the formerly-dead buttons on the remote were now triggering actions in Kodi, they weren't always the actions I'd configured, i.e. UP moved the selection down, PLAY engaged fast-foward, but I imagine that with more research and experimentation I'd be able to get it set up propery.

If you decide to go the Flirc route, be advised that there's no GUI for any flavor of Pi OS. Their landing page featuring their excellent Flirc Raspberry Pi Case (bought that too, love it!) led me to believe that they were marketing Pi add-ons, so I assumed their GUI install apt-get instructions would install the GUI on my Pi. Not so. (apt-get install flirc returns "Unable to locate package flirc"). After burning an hour trying to install the software, I found a post from an admin on the Flirc forum confirming that the GUI doesn't run on Pi. You have to configure the dongle on a PC, then move the dongle to the Pi.

(2015-04-17, 03:06)charlesmayo53 Wrote: [ -> ]I loaded up OSMC and it looks good and the remotes work but other than that, I wasn't impressed enough to abandon my Raspbian build. Raspbian is working out great for the RPi 2 and also runs fine on the RPi1 B+ and I love having a full Linux machine to develop code on at home..

So... I'm back to square one with the remotes and could still use a hand from anyone who's gotten a custom keyboard.xml to work or knows how to get full functionality from a standard RC6/MCE remote with Kodi on Raspbian.

I've fresh-installed Raspbian + Kodi three times now, and the result is always the same, i.e. ir-keytable sees every keypress in the OS, but once I get into Kodi, only a few remote control buttons do anything and the Keymap Editor Add-on is only registering a few keys from each remote.

Anyone have any thoughts? Surely I'm not the only one who's seeing this issue...

OSMC is a linux distro just like Raspbian or OpenELEC. Kodi runs on OSMC just like it runs on Raspbian and OpenELEC. The OSMC gui that you see it a Kodi skin, takes two seconds to switch it to Confluence if you like.

OSMC has amazing remote control support. I've never had my Gyration MCE remote work well with anything other that windows until I tried OSMC. Best Raspberry Pi distro for running Kodi.