help needed with initial use of IrDa and LIRC
 

I have never used IR before, and I thought I'd try to use it on my old
Dell laptop. I simply want to be able to invoke commands using an
arbitrary remote.

I'm confused as to whether I should use IrDa or LIRC, or both. The man
pages and other docs I've read don't discuss the difference/relationship
between IrDa and LIRC.

Here's what I've done so far:

Went into the BIOS and made certain that the Infrared was turned on, set
it to COM2, Fast IR. Since it doesn't tell me, I assume that COM2 is 0x2f8
and IRQ3, which AFAIK is associated with ttyS1

Downloaded irda-utils.

At some point, not sure when, I noticed that on bootup I was getting this
message:

"Loading saved-state of the serial devices. /dev/ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq =
4) is a 16550A"

I assume this is the physical RS-232 serial port on the back of the
laptop. Don't know why this message appears.

And this message: "Skipping IrDa Service: irattach (not enabled) ... done"

root@eve:~# irattach /dev/ttyS1 -s

I loaded the lircd daemon wth this command:

root@eve:~# lircd -p 0666

keith@eve:~$ lsmod | grep ir
irtty_sir 12797 2
sir_dev 17229 1 irtty_sir
irda 78683 1 sir_dev
crc_ccitt 12331 1 irda

keith@eve:~$ sudo findchip -l
SMC
NSC
WINBOND

keith@eve:~$ sudo irdadump
01:48:02.173744 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=4 (14)
01:48:02.261632 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=5 (14)
01:48:02.349625 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=* eve hint=0400 [
Computer ] (19)
01:48:04.829637 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=0 (14)
01:48:04.917585 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=1 (14)
01:48:05.005635 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=2 (14)
01:48:05.093636 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=3 (14)
01:48:05.181627 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=4 (14)
01:48:05.269625 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=5 (14)
01:48:05.357631 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=* eve hint=0400 [
Computer ] (19)
01:48:07.837639 xid:cmd 273e72df > ffffffff S=6 s=0 (14)
...etc

keith@eve:~$ uname -r
3.0.0-1-686-pae (Wheezy)

When I apt-get installed lirc, I got these messages:
No valid /etc/lirc/lircd.conf has been found..
Remote control support has been disabled..
Reconfigure LIRC or manually replace /etc/lirc/lircd.conf to enable..

Looking at the LIRC webpage I see that the remote that I had wanted to use
is not supported... it's a SONY RMT-CE100A

Reading some instructions over the web it seems I could use irrecord to
create a lircd.conf file for my remote, so I tried:

keith@eve:~/temp$ sudo irrecord ce100a

irrecord - application for recording IR-codes for usage with lirc

Copyright (C) 1998,1999 Christoph Bartelmus(lirc@bartelmus.de)

irrecord: could not get file information for /dev/lirc
irrecord: default_init(): No such file or directory
irrecord: could not init hardware (lircd running ? --> close it, check
permissions)

keith@eve:~/temp$ ps aux | grep lirc
root 4425 0.0 0.0 3380 384 ? Ss 22:11 0:00 lircd
keith 4539 0.0 0.1 3484 764 pts/0 S+ 22:14 0:00 grep lirc

So it seems I need to configure LIRC first, then use irrecord... but I am
unsure how to do that. Help?

Thanks,
Keith Ostertag


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