Kodi Community Forum - lirc mce remote far away from smooth, help please

hi,

I just configured my new POV ION 330 Setup.
Everything is working fine and stable. Last litte problem is the remote.

I got this one:

Running ubuntu 9.04 minimal and xbmc svn r22133
Followed this guide: http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMCbuntu

Installed lirc with apt-get install lirc and choosed "Windows Media Center Remotes new version"

Tested with irw and it works.

The problem is it is far away from beeing smooth.
(As for example the original remote from an xbox1). Or the remote of an dvb-2 card working with lirc on another Computer.

Scrolling down and up in xbmc for example is like 10times slower as doing it with an keyboard plugged in.

Here are my lirc settings:

hardware.conf

Code:
# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

#

#Chosen Remote Control

REMOTE="Windows Media Center Remotes (new version Philips et al.)"

REMOTE_MODULES="lirc_dev lirc_mceusb2"

REMOTE_DRIVER=""

REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"

REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb"

REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

#Chosen IR Transmitter

TRANSMITTER="None"

TRANSMITTER_MODULES=""

TRANSMITTER_DRIVER=""

TRANSMITTER_DEVICE=""

TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF=""

TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_ARGS=""

#Enable lircd

START_LIRCD="true"

#Don't start lircmd even if there seems to be a good config file

#START_LIRCMD="false"

#Try to load appropriate kernel modules

LOAD_MODULES="true"

# Default configuration files for your hardware if any

LIRCMD_CONF=""

#Forcing noninteractive reconfiguration

#If lirc is to be reconfigured by an external application

#that doesn't have a debconf frontend available, the noninteractive

#frontend can be invoked and set to parse REMOTE and TRANSMITTER

#It will then populate all other variables without any user input

#If you would like to configure lirc via standard methods, be sure

#to leave this set to "false"

FORCE_NONINTERACTIVE_RECONFIGURATION="false"

START_LIRCMD=""

lircd.conf

Code:
#Configuration for the Windows Media Center Remotes (new version Philips et al.) remote:

include "/usr/share/lirc/remotes/mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb"

lircd.conf.mceusb

Code:
begin remote

  name        mceusb

  bits                 16

  flags  RC6|CONST_LENGTH

  eps                  30

  aeps                100

  header       2667   889

  one           444   444

  zero          444   444

  pre_data_bits        21

  pre_data        0x37FF0

  gap              105000

  toggle_bit           22

  rc6_mask    0x100000000

      begin codes

...

I played around with "gap", but it got even worse that way.

root@xbmc:~# dmesg|grep lirc

Code:

[    8.417791] lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, major 61

[    8.536984] lirc_dev: lirc_register_plugin: sample_rate: 80

[    9.153141] usbcore: registered new interface driver lirc_mceusb

[    9.153279] lirc_mceusb: USB Microsoft IR Transceiver Driver v0.2

[   16.480141] lirc_mceusb2: Philips eHome USB IR Transceiver and Microsoft MCE 2005 Remote Control driver for LIRC $Revision: 1.44 $

[   16.480147] lirc_mceusb2: Daniel Melander <[email protected]>, Martin Blatter <[email protected]>

[   16.483423] usbcore: registered new interface driver lirc_mceusb2

root@xbmc:~# lsusb

Code:
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 045e:006d Microsoft Corp. eHome Remote Control Keyboard keys

Second problem is that lirc_dev is running by default even is lirc itself is not installed. That leeds to an "Starting LirC [failed]" at every boot.
And after returning from suspend mode somethimes there is a lirc_dev error message insted of returning to xbmc. So is there any way to disable lirc_dev?

Anyone has this remote and has it running smoothly with xbmc?
Any suggestions? Help?

thanks!

I have that same IR receiver. It is actually an "old version" mceusb remote. See how you in your dmesg log at the 8-9 second mark lirc_dev and lirc_mceusb are loaded? That's being loaded because that's the hardware you have. Later on when lirc starts it loads the lirc_mceusb2 module, which does nothing.

You may want to try to `dkg-reconfigure lirc` and select the other Windows Media Center Remotes option.

However, you may still be disappointed because I actually found this post googling trying to figure out why there's like a 250ms lag between me pressing a button and it being sent through lirc too. If your remote is behaving like mine, there's that initial lag but if you hit something like the down button 3 times really fast, it moves down fast on the last 2 presses, just not the first. I found something that seems to indicate that something similar to this was fixed in the mceusb2 driver, but I can't find any more info.

If you figure something out, I'd be glad to hear it.

CapnBry Wrote:I have that same IR receiver. It is actually an "old version" mceusb remote. See how you in your dmesg log at the 8-9 second mark lirc_dev and lirc_mceusb are loaded? That's being loaded because that's the hardware you have. Later on when lirc starts it loads the lirc_mceusb2 module, which does nothing.

You may want to try to `dkg-reconfigure lirc` and select the other Windows Media Center Remotes option.

However, you may still be disappointed because I actually found this post googling trying to figure out why there's like a 250ms lag between me pressing a button and it being sent through lirc too. If your remote is behaving like mine, there's that initial lag but if you hit something like the down button 3 times really fast, it moves down fast on the last 2 presses, just not the first. I found something that seems to indicate that something similar to this was fixed in the mceusb2 driver, but I can't find any more info.

If you figure something out, I'd be glad to hear it.

It doesn´t actually change anything for me if iam using mceusb or mceusb2.
Same behavior with those two modules.
I tried the remote with windows xp. And it is like it should be. Very fast responding as it should be.
Looks like its a lirc problem.

Also tried irrecord to learn the keys manuelly. But no success. Still slow.

No success yet. Huh

ibydos Wrote:It doesn´t actually change anything for me if iam using mceusb or mceusb2.
Same behavior with those two modules.
I tried the remote with windows xp. And it is like it should be. Very fast responding as it should be.
Looks like its a lirc problem.

Also tried irrecord to learn the keys manuelly. But no success. Still slow.

Yeah the reason mceusb and mceusb2 give the same results is because you're always using mceusb, the 2 isn't used because that's not the hardware you have. It is definitely a lirc issue though.

I've noticed that as of 7 weeks ago, the lirc folks have merged the mceusb and mceusb2 modules. Maybe this means it won't be as laggy between keypresses. Bad news is that it isn't in a released version of LIRC yet, and so definitely will not be in Ubuntu 9.10.

Digging up a thread out of nowhere! Well the mceusb/mceusb2 merge did not fix the delay problems. I turned off lircd and played around with the mode2 application for a while and found that the driver was passing data as quickly as the buttons were being pressed, but there was still a massive delay in when they'd come out if irw. I mean massive on the order of 500-750ms, which is intolerable for navigation. What it seemed was that after the mceusb driver would send the pulse information to lircd, lircd would wait some timeout period before passing the data up as button presses.

What I ended up doing is editing the lircd.conf file and doing three things:
-- removing all the other remotes that I wasn't using
-- reducing the "gap" from 114605 to 100000
-- editing all the codes to remove their leading zeros

I'm not sure which of these was the answer, I think the first had the most to do with it, but now my remote is in the same league speed-wise with using an attached keyboard. Harmony remote still sucks though, taking about 200ms per button (set to 0ms interkey delay)

Hi i have removed the other other remotes from the Lircmap.xml and now the remote inputs are faster.
Next i changed the gap and maybe its a little little little bit faster :-)
thx CapnBry for the hint
edbq