Can't get my remote to work [Solved]

[leonja]

Hi all,
I have been trying out LMCE for the past couple of weeks.  I think it is a great system.  I have been able to get everything more or less working, except the remote control that came with the Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE kit.  The remote is silver on top and black on the back, and has RC6 printed on the back.  The receiver is black and is marked "SMK" in the backside.  The kit came with an IR blaster that hooks up to back of the IR receiver.

The transmitter appears to connect with the receiver, as the red light in the receiver turns on every time I push a button in the transmitter.  The LMCE does nothing.  I have been unable to get the LMCE box to recognize that the IR receiver is connected to the USB port.  Plugging or unplugging the receiver provokes no response from LMCE.

I tried specifying in the Web Admin, Media Directors page the IR receiver as being mce_usb, or mce_usb2 as suggested in some posts.  When using the mce_usb2 option, the system adds automatically a XP MCE Remote to the MD definition.  The configuration of the XP MCE remote seems to indicate it is using a configuration file that is for a RC6 remote.   However, nothing works.

"sudo apt-get install lirc" reports that the software version installed is the latest.

Is the IR blaster supported under LMCE?

Appreciate any help on this.  I don't know what else to try.

Jaime

[tschak909]

I would recommend getting a USB UIRT and using that instead.. It can use that remote, but the IR reciever inside that card is problematic to support under LMCE. You'll also gain the ability to transmit to more IR devices as well.

-Thom

[Hagen]

I'd like to add a weird fact.
My RC6 (says it's an RC6 on the back on the battery cover) works like a charm, but...
Only when I use the embedded graphix and UI1
Once I install a GeForce 7600 it doesn't work at all, not in UI1 or UI2 (any of them).
If I remove the GF7 and just use the native graphix (and reinstall) it works like a charm again.
Any takers as to solving this, as it might most definitely be connected.
I have the RC6 trough the "MS MCE remote" pack. So the USB uirt is used.

Weird problem...

[leonja]

tschak,
Sorry I am not familiar with a USB UIRT.  I read this receiver is included with the MS MCE remote, is that it?  Another post I found in this forum suggests that the next release of LMCE will include the LIRC version that supports this remote.  I will keep my fingers crossed.

Hagen
I am using a GeForce 5700 FX video card. Hmmmmm, I wonder if this has anything to do.

Thanks all,
Jaime

[tschak909]

http://www.usbuirt.com/ <-- trust me, you want this. don't waste time with anything else.

-Thom

[Hagen]

I have the same setup as you (except the Hauppage card) and it works great as I said until I plug in the GF card...
I have no idea why it behaves in this manner, almost like there is a conflict...

[vatertime]

leonja and hagen,
Do you both have the Nvidia GeForce 5700 Ultra? I haven't been able to get linuxmce running successfully using UI2 and was wondering if you had, and without any problems using the latest drivers.  Sorry about this being unrelated to the post, but have really struggled with this issue.

[Hagen]

I have used GF6200 (AGP) and GF7600 (PCI-E) and they all work.
Never any of the fives, sorry.
(I have used ATI Rage fury 128s as well, but not with UI2)

[leonja]

vatertime
I have a PNY AGP video card with Nvidia 5700 FX chipset running in the core/hybrid with UI2 with alpha blending.  It is running well with the nvidia driver that comes with the DVD. 

I have also setup a second Media Director in my study room, booting through the network.  The study room computer has an nvidia 8600GT, for which I had to download a new driver 100.14.19 from www.nvidia.com.  It is running with UI2 with alpha blending after the driver upgrade (only UI1 before the upgrade).  I just completed this installation today and I still need to see why Mythtv is having problems showing tv from the core (I get a black screen), the rest is apparently working ok.

I ran into problems at the beginning because the installation script would setup the vesa driver instead of the nvidia.  You might want to try forcing the nvidia driver in the KDE System configuration utility (Kmenu, System Settings).

Good luck,
Jaime

[leonja]

Hi,
WOOHOO!!!  It works.  I would like to report that I was successful in getting my PVR-150 (SMK receiver, RC6 transmitter) remote control working.  Life is good again  .

I used Mitsus instructions in

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3095.0

except I downloaded the source code for lirc release 0.8.2 and copied into it the lirc_mceusb2 module source version 1.37.  You can find all of this at www.lirc.org.  As a side note here, I had to use the command bunzip2, and not bunzip as shown in Mitsus post.

The lirc documentation states that the PVR-150 remote with SMK receiver is supported in mceusb2, starting from version 1.30 (June 29, 2007), as pointed out by darrenmason in

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2517.0

After the successful compilation, I rebooted my LMCE and the remote control immediately began responding.

Thank you Mitsus for your clear step-by-step instructions and thank you darrenmason for pointing out the correct cause of the problem.  It has taken me a week to finally solve this problem.  Hopefully other users like me, with the Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE kits, will find this information useful.

Thanks again,
Jaime

[Hagen]

Hopefully this will be resolved in 710 by adding new drivers to the repositories then, same with GF8xxx cards.
I find myself eagerly awaiting the 710 release 

[Marper]

Hi LeonJa,

I must be dense as a rock, I've tried those steps Mitsus provided and I'm lost.  I'm a Linux newbie and not know where to go to copy this code.  Can you help me out a little  

[totallymaxed]

Hopefully this will be resolved in 710 by adding new drivers to the repositories then, same with GF8xxx cards.
I find myself eagerly awaiting the 710 release 

lirc 0.8.2-0 is installed LinuxMCE 0710