I have a Fiire Chief... Now What?

[fearingsept]

OK so for Christmas I got a Fiire Chief remote. I plugged it in and synced it. Seems to work but I have a few questions. I checked the wiki and it mentioned something about installing gyruby. Is this still required to get all the functions of the remote or did this change with the release of 7.10?

Also, I may have a hardware issue but everything worked fine until I started using the Fiire Chief... I was trying to get used to it and was playing with the volume while watching a movie and it seems that if I go into the volume screen one time it works fine. But, if I play with the volume to much.. like 2 or 3 times eventually my video freezes and my MD stops responding to commands. I have to hold down the power button until it shuts down. My MD is a little on the slow side. It has an NVIDIA 5100 pci card with UI2 and translucencies. Running 1 gig of ram and the NIC is an on board 10/100. It also has an Intel Celeron Processor.

Is anyone else having this problem?

[krys]

I dont use a Fiirechief remote, but if I am watching a video and I fast foward/rewind to much or too fast my video will stop playing and it will take me to the home screen, havent noticed it on the volume feature yet.

[Dale_K]

I have two Fiirechief's running on a Fiire Prestige core/hybrid and a Fiire Invisible MD.  I've never had a problem with volume or FF/RR with any of them.  Although I've never tried to really give it a work out.  I'll give it a go tonight and report back.

As far as installing anything, I never had to.  Just plugged them in and they work. (7.10RC2)

[colinjones]

I've no idea what gyruby is, but I have never installed anything for the Fiire remote, just plug it in and the drivers install on their own ... done...

Never seen the volume issue, but then I don't use the "volume screen" I just use the volume up/down buttons on the fire remote - but note this is in digital/SPDIF mode, so LMCE isn't increasing/decreasing the volume on my sound card, it is sending the vol up/down RS232 messages to my amp. If you are using analogue sound and not controlling an amp, then LMCE is increasing/decreasing the volume on your sound card, which is completely different logic... so my experience would not apply to yours...

[krys]

I have never actually been able to control the volume of my pc as Collin is referring to in his post. Is there a setting that allows you to do this? I have a few different MD's and the volume control doesnt work for any of them, i have to route them through an amp or TV and control the volume that way.

[colinjones]

Krys - either you are sending your audio digitally through SPDIF (say) or analogue via RCA/Phono (say).

If it is digital, then you can't control the volume through the sound card, and you really want to use the amp to do this anyway. If you were to digitally process the stream on the PC to reduce the volume before it got to the amp you would effectively be reducing the dynamic range of your audio, and then have to have the amp set to a very high volume level to hear it at all. Thus at low volumes the audio would sound terrible! Which is why they don't do it. You want to keep your digital stream exactly the way it is and then use amp for its purpose of varying the volume level. To do that you need to set up a control path (pipe) between LMCE and your amp either by serial or IR blasting (say).

If your audio is setup using analogue connectors, then LMCE will control the volume directly on the sound card and you just need to set your amp at a reasonable mid-way volume and leave it. Then you can control the volume fully through LMCE. The control of volume through LMCE is transparent whichever connectivity you are using (analogue or digital) it knows which to do depending on which connection technology you are using. If analogue control isn't working then either it thinks you are using digital or the driver is suspect.

[Afkpuz]

I use a fiire chief also and have not had this problem.  If it's convenient, you might try reinstalling.  As for the gyruby, it sounds like that has something to do with sending ruby codes through the gyro remote.  The remote has the ability to send infrared from, so it might be related.

[krys]

I the MD's that I am referring to do not have sound cards in them or SPDif. I am just connecting pc speakers through the headphone jack on the back of the computer. The volume will not change or mute, however if I go into KDE I can manually turn the volume up or down and mute. If I remember correctly I can also change the volume during the AV wizard. It is like LMCE thinks I have something else controlling the volume, and it is like this from a fresh install before I hook up USB-UIRTs and recievers etc.

[colinjones]

sound card/sound hardware/sound chip - all the same thing. You are using analogue, essentially. It definitely should work, but only if the alsa sound system and the sound chip are communicating properly through the sound chip's driver....

If you can control it in KDE and the AV wizard, then the driver sounds fine.... a thought at the back of my mind is, I have noticed others talking about having to set which "output" of a piece of sound hardware is the "master volume". Before LMCE knows which output level to control to vary volume. And until then, LMCE was unable to vary the volume. Didn't have to do this, so I don't know whether it is a .conf file somewhere or what... you will have to research it. But you should be able to determine which level to control from alsamixer at the command line. Determine which control is the one to control over all volume, then find where to tell the system to use that one...

Search the forums for these posts...

[krippler]

krys: If you are connecting your speakers to the headphone jack on your computer, have a look here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5738
This isnt normally necessary if you're connecting the speakers to the back of the computer, but i believe it has worked in a few of these cases.