Kodi compatibility issues with RemoteBuddy and Candelair driver 1.30
#1
Just some background.... I use RemoteBuddy to script remote commands from my Harmony to Kodi on my Mac Mini and this stopped working recently and I traced it to the update of Candelair from 1.28 to 1.30

In a nutshell, I was not happy with the limited buttons available on an Apple remote so I used multiple Apple remote IDs and paired with RemoteBuddy, then programming these signals into my Harmony. Then I was able to assign each one a Kodi specific command, to get pretty in depth on controls.

I am running RemoteBuddy 1.30.2 with Candelair IR driver 1.30. When I run the Candelair remote diagnostics without Kodi running - all is good and says that RemoteBuddy has shared access to the IR device. HOWEVER, once I start up Kodi the remote does not work. The diagnostics then show:

The IR Receiver USB interface is used by IOUSBInterfaceUserClientV3
An unknown driver class is accessing the USB interface of the IR Receiver. Depending on what it is doing, this may keep macOS and applications from receiving Apple Remote button presses.

The IR Receiver USB device is used by Kodi (PID 424)
An application is accessing the IR Receiver USB device via an IOUSBDeviceUserClient. Depending on what it is doing, this may keep macOS and applications from receiving Apple Remote button presses. The application is located at /Applications/Kodi.app/Contents/MacOS/Kodi.

As shown in the release notes for 1.30:
https://www.iospirit.com/labs/candelair/releasenotes/
"Candelair is now natively using Apple's new USB stack (introduced with El Capitan) on macOS 10.11 and later."

While my solution here was to uninstall the Candelair driver, what I am reading from the Candelair diagnostics may imply that Candelair runs in a friendly sharing access mode, whereas Kodi demands exclusive access. I was not able to get around this by disabling the Apple remote option either. So - while this may be a Candelair issue, if there is an improper access method by Kodi to the USB stack, I thought I would share. I plan to post this almost verbatim over there on their forums so they are aware too.
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#2
Try killing the XBMCHelper process (which is the only thing that accesses the ir) - disabling the apple remote option should do this alreay though.
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
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#3
Disabling Apple Remote does not seem to do this. Is there another method to stop the XBMCHelper process from relaunching other than manually killing it? Preferrably I would have a solution that survived a reboot/relaunch of Kodi and was not a manual hack such as renaming the process executable, etc that would be overwritten with software update, etc.

Also - I seem to have left out the fact that I tested this on Kodi 16.1 and also on 17 beta 5.

As I said, disabling Candelair works fine for now but if this was a "bug" I wanted to be sure to report it.

Thanks!
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#4
Ensure you disable "allow to start kodi by remote" or what it is called in the input section. That should really prevent xbmchelper from launching *wonders*
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
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Kodi compatibility issues with RemoteBuddy and Candelair driver 1.300