Trying to get remote working on weird hardware
#1
I've got an old Antec HD160 HTPC case that I'm using for my Kodi frontend to MythTV.  It came with an MCE remote (the common silver one).  However, the IR receiver is a weird one.  It's by a company called IRTrans.  It's so old, they stopped supporting it ages ago.  However, I got it running by disabling LIRC and setting up the IRTrans drivers.  I can run the test command and it shows the button presses correctly.  However, since Leia, it doesn't work in Kodi.

Since I'm running on openSUSE Leap 15.1, and not using LIRC, most of the solutions I've found on here do not apply (afaict).

Using logging in Kodi, it looks like Kodi is seeing some of the remote button presses, but it's not interpreting them correctly.  Here's a logfile I made after pressing the following sequence of buttons on the remote:
<first I pressed each number button twice, in sequence - 1, 1, 2, 2, etc.>
Then I pressed Up, up, down, down, left, left, right, right.

Here's the logfile I uploaded immediately after that:
Logfile

At the end, I see a bunch of Keyboard:  Scancode lines.  So it looks like it's recognizing the commands, but doesn't know what to do with them.  The problem is that I don't know how to get those inputs into a .xml config file. 

Does anybody have any clue on where I should start?

BTW, using this setup (IRTrans drivers with the config files for those drivers, no LIRC, and doing nothing in Kodi) it worked fine before Leia.  Of course, now it doesn't.
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#2
BTW, I tried using the Keymap Editor, but all I end up with is one line that says, "<keymap>\".  In the GUI, it doesn't actually map any keys.  So the editor isn't recognizing the button presses.
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#3
We have an add-on for that which might help you in that case. Look for "keymap editor": https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Keymap_Editor

Beside that, you can also drop the fiddling with an built in IR receive (that's what I did as my HTPC case also uses something IRTrans based) and buy a Flirc dongle. That's an USB dongle which can be used with nearly EVERY IR remote on this planet. Setting that up is pretty easy and all configs are stored on the dongle itself. That means, if you change your HTPC devices, you simply need to plug that dongle on the new HTPC and you are done with that. Kodi will recognize this device as a keyboard and all incoming IR commands are send to Kodi as keyboard commands. So it will work OOTB after you mapped the keys to it.

There are a bunch of good YouTube videos out there which will show how to set up a Flirc dongle. Not sure where you are from, but I can buy a Flirc Dongle on amazon for about 25€ and that's totally worth it.
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#4
(2019-10-23, 12:03)DaVu Wrote: We have an add-on for that which might help you in that case. Look for "keymap editor": https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Keymap_Editor

Beside that, you can also drop the fiddling with an built in IR receive (that's what I did as my HTPC case also uses something IRTrans based) and buy a Flirc dongle. That's an USB dongle which can be used with nearly EVERY IR remote on this planet. Setting that up is pretty easy and all configs are stored on the dongle itself. That means, if you change your HTPC devices, you simply need to plug that dongle on the new HTPC and you are done with that. Kodi will recognize this device as a keyboard and all incoming IR commands are send to Kodi as keyboard commands. So it will work OOTB after you mapped the keys to it.

There are a bunch of good YouTube videos out there which will show how to set up a Flirc dongle. Not sure where you are from, but I can buy a Flirc Dongle on amazon for about 25€ and that's totally worth it.
I have tried that add-on.  It's not recording any button presses.

I considered that, however, I don't know if I have a spare USB port.   Plus, I was hoping to get the built-in receiver working.  Maybe it's hopeless.

I wish I understood better what changed between the previous version of Kodi and Leia, as far as remotes.  Maybe then I could fix it on my machine.
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#5
@Yippee38 Is that the right log you uploaded earlier, because the only keypresses I see in it are you typing in 'logfile' !!

How does your IR Receiver appear to Linux ?  What, for instance, do you get in dmesg when it gets detected and set up ?  If it gets mapped to something like devinput you could perhaps use lirc with the devinput driver and point it to /dev/input/event11 or whatever it gets mapped to.
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#6
(2019-10-23, 03:23)Yippee38 Wrote: I've got an old Antec HD160 HTPC case that I'm using for my Kodi frontend to MythTV.  It came with an MCE remote (the common silver one).  However, the IR receiver is a weird one.  It's by a company called IRTrans.  It's so old, they stopped supporting it ages ago.  However, I got it running by disabling LIRC and setting up the IRTrans drivers.  I can run the test command and it shows the button presses correctly.  However, since Leia, it doesn't work in Kodi.

Since I'm running on openSUSE Leap 15.1, and not using LIRC, most of the solutions I've found on here do not apply (afaict).

Using logging in Kodi, it looks like Kodi is seeing some of the remote button presses, but it's not interpreting them correctly.  Here's a logfile I made after pressing the following sequence of buttons on the remote:
<first I pressed each number button twice, in sequence - 1, 1, 2, 2, etc.>
Then I pressed Up, up, down, down, left, left, right, right.

Here's the logfile I uploaded immediately after that:
Logfile

At the end, I see a bunch of Keyboard:  Scancode lines.  So it looks like it's recognizing the commands, but doesn't know what to do with them.  The problem is that I don't know how to get those inputs into a .xml config file. 

Does anybody have any clue on where I should start?

BTW, using this setup (IRTrans drivers with the config files for those drivers, no LIRC, and doing nothing in Kodi) it worked fine before Leia.  Of course, now it doesn't.
I did a search for IRTrans. Their "irserver" program is actually talking directly to kodi. They built their own infrastructure in their server for that. I looked at the code, and it's looking for the PID of kodi.bin. The process name has changed for Kodi 18 to support different platforms such as Wayland and GBM. For X11, the kodi binary is called kodi-x11 instead of kodi.bin. You'll have to modify their server to look for the new process. I didn't dig any deeper into how it's actually talking to kodi once it has the PID, but making it look for kodi-x11 instead of kodi.bin is a start.
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#7
(2019-10-23, 20:39)black_eagle Wrote: @Yippee38 Is that the right log you uploaded earlier, because the only keypresses I see in it are you typing in 'logfile' !!

How does your IR Receiver appear to Linux ?  What, for instance, do you get in dmesg when it gets detected and set up ?  If it gets mapped to something like devinput you could perhaps use lirc with the devinput driver and point it to /dev/input/event11 or whatever it gets mapped to.

Here's a paste of the dmesg output.  (It would help if I actually included the link.)Search on "1-5".  Those are the lines referring to the IRTrans device.
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#8
(2019-10-24, 02:10)yasij Wrote:
(2019-10-23, 03:23)Yippee38 Wrote: I've got an old Antec HD160 HTPC case that I'm using for my Kodi frontend to MythTV.  It came with an MCE remote (the common silver one).  However, the IR receiver is a weird one.  It's by a company called IRTrans.  It's so old, they stopped supporting it ages ago.  However, I got it running by disabling LIRC and setting up the IRTrans drivers.  I can run the test command and it shows the button presses correctly.  However, since Leia, it doesn't work in Kodi.

Since I'm running on openSUSE Leap 15.1, and not using LIRC, most of the solutions I've found on here do not apply (afaict).

Using logging in Kodi, it looks like Kodi is seeing some of the remote button presses, but it's not interpreting them correctly.  Here's a logfile I made after pressing the following sequence of buttons on the remote:
<first I pressed each number button twice, in sequence - 1, 1, 2, 2, etc.>
Then I pressed Up, up, down, down, left, left, right, right.

Here's the logfile I uploaded immediately after that:
Logfile

At the end, I see a bunch of Keyboard:  Scancode lines.  So it looks like it's recognizing the commands, but doesn't know what to do with them.  The problem is that I don't know how to get those inputs into a .xml config file. 

Does anybody have any clue on where I should start?

BTW, using this setup (IRTrans drivers with the config files for those drivers, no LIRC, and doing nothing in Kodi) it worked fine before Leia.  Of course, now it doesn't.
I did a search for IRTrans. Their "irserver" program is actually talking directly to kodi. They built their own infrastructure in their server for that. I looked at the code, and it's looking for the PID of kodi.bin. The process name has changed for Kodi 18 to support different platforms such as Wayland and GBM. For X11, the kodi binary is called kodi-x11 instead of kodi.bin. You'll have to modify their server to look for the new process. I didn't dig any deeper into how it's actually talking to kodi once it has the PID, but making it look for kodi-x11 instead of kodi.bin is a start. 
Interesting.  I'll take a look at that.  Not sure how to go about it, but that's what search is for.
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