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I have a MCE remote with a USB IR receiver. This works well in combination with RPi. Having said this, the receiver itself is larger than the RPi, which deserves a bit of the purpose... Wanted to check whether it is possible to add a small IR receiver to the RPi (without USB), which works with my MCE remote? Any difference in answer for RPi-B, RPi-B+ or RPi2? Thanks!!!
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There really needs to be an up to date guide, most guides include a lot of now unecessary steps.
Google for GPIO remote. In short, you need a 38KHz IR receiver that can operate at 3.3V. I'm using a TSOP34838. You need to wire it to the GPIO pins as shown in these guides, i.e. 3.3V, GND, and use pin 18 so there's little else to configure.
If you're using OpenELEC (you didn't say), all you still need to do now is add one more entry to config.txt, i.e.:
device_tree_overlay=lirc-rpi
Reboot, and you should now find your MCE remote working.
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Thanks, very much appreciated. I am indeed using openelec.
Above appears quite straight forward. When you say "wire", does this actually require me to do soldering? I am not too handy with these things and also wouldn't have the tools. Is there any way to avoid the soldering?
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No it doesn't require any soldering. you can connect it via wires, but you can get mce receivers that are small. rosewill sells one. you can also get flirc which is really small.
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Got that toshiba one myself but suffer from missed keypresses that didnt happen with a usb receiver. Got an RF mce remote with a usb small dongle and its working perfectly (Emprex 3009ARF).
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Thanks for all your replies. This is very helpful. I'd still have a small preference for an "internal" solution over a USB dongle. Few questions on the Toshiba one that two of you have been using:
1) What do you mean by "missed keypresses"? Is that about that you need to point to the IR receiver very directly and the range not being too great?
2) Do you have cases and does the Toshiba one fits into a normal cheap case?
3) The first reply referred to 38khz/3.3v. Is that what the toshiba set does?
4) I do not plan to use the "ugly" Toshiba remote, but would just buy it for the IR thingie and then use a different MCE remote. Will any MCE remote works with this thing and openelec out of the box?
5) Where is the remote eye? It'sweird that I cannnot really spot it from the photos
Thanks again!!!
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Jönke
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2015-03-14, 09:07
(This post was last modified: 2015-03-14, 09:08 by Jönke.)
4, yes it works with my other mce remotes
5, the remote eye , when sitting on pins on the the long side of rpi. It will point away from the rpi
I have not seen any missed keypresses so far on my rig