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KozmoNaut

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Irrecord gives inconsistent output

I am having trouble getting my remote control working. I am using an HP media center USB receiver and an NAD HTR8 remote control.

lsusb:

Bus 004 Device 007: ID 1934:5168 Feature Integration Technology Inc. (Fintek) F71610A or F71612A Consumer Infrared Receiver/Transceiver

I have switched the protocol to LIRC using ir-keytable:

Found /sys/class/rc/rc0/ (/dev/input/event8) with:
        Driver mceusb, table rc-rc6-mce
        Supported protocols: NEC RC-5 RC-6 JVC SONY SANYO LIRC RC-5-SZ SHARP XMP other 
        Enabled protocols: LIRC 
        Name: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared 
        bus: 3, vendor/product: 1934:5168, version: 0x0001
        Repeat delay = 500 ms, repeat period = 125 ms

And I get a bunch of data if I run 'cat /dev/lirc0' and 'mode2 -d /dev/lirc0', so there's definitely something coming from the receiver. But for some reason, irrecord seems to record different data every time I run it.

On one try, I get:

begin remote

  name  nad_htr8_custom2
  driver devinput
  bits           64
  eps            30
  aeps          100

  one             0     0
  zero            0     0
  gap          11914
  toggle_bit_mask 0x0

      begin codes
          on                       0x0672000001000258 0x01F4000001000258
      end codes

end remote

But on a second run immediately after, I get this:

begin remote

  name  nad_htr8_custom
  driver devinput
  bits           64
  eps            30
  aeps          100

  one             0     0
  zero            0     0
  gap          11916
  toggle_bit_mask 0x0

      begin codes
          on                       0x0640000001000258 0x01C200000100028A
      end codes

end remote

The keycodes are different. No matter which file I generate with irrecord, irw shows precisely nothing when I run it and try to use the remote.

And it seems to be happening randomly. Sometimes I can get the same codes 3 or 4 times in a row, other times they're consistently different. My LIRC setup is completely stock as installed by default.

What is happening to cause irrecord to act so inconsistently?

E: I have tried with a couple of other remote controls, and they all produce different results on successive iterations of irrecord. Somehow the USB receiver is not returning a consistent output.

Last edited by KozmoNaut (2015-09-30 18:51:27)

KozmoNaut

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Irrecord gives inconsistent output

I have tried with a different IR receiver:

Bus 005 Device 002: ID 1784:0011 TopSeed Technology Corp. eHome Infrared Transceiver

But there is the exact same issue with inconsistent output from irrecord. I get plenty of output from both 'cat /dev/lirc0' and 'mode2 -d /dev/lirc0', but after setting up a lirc config file using irrecord, there is absolutely no output from irw.

Please, someone must have a working config using a USB IR receiver? What's going wrong in my setup?

KozmoNaut

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Irrecord gives inconsistent output

I finally found a solution to my problem. I was trying to use the default LIRC driver, which apparently doesn't work well with USB MCE IR receivers.

The solution was found partially in this thread https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=148087 to switch the IR protocol from RC-6 to NEC, which is what my NAD remote control is sending. A proper MCE remote uses RC-6, so that's what the receiver defaults to.

In short, I'm now using the devinput driver and pointing LIRC at the /dev/input/by-id/usb-Topseed_Technology_Corp._eHome_Infrared_Transceiver_EID0137AG-8-0000063173-event-if00 device directly, irrecord worked flawlessly when pointed directly at it as well.

Now LIRC finally works again, for Mplayer, irexec, everything