LIRC iMON Patches

Fr 10. Apr 23:15:43 CEST 2009

Q: What is LIRC?

A: LIRC is an acronym for Linux Infrared Remote Control.
Quoting from the LIRC homepage:

LIRC is a package that allows you to decode and send infra-red signals of many (but not all) commonly used remote controls.

Q: What is iMON?

A: iMON is a USB IR/VFD bundle produced by SoundGraph and used in several Home Theater PC (HTPC) cases from e.g. SilverStone, Ahanix, Uneeds and others.

Q: ...and Patches??

A: Starting with version 0.71 the LIRC package contains drivers for the iMON VF-Display and IR remote control created by Venky Raju (venky's website).
Here you can find driver patches supporting recent kernels and providing better support for the iMON PAD remote control that comes bundled with newer versions of the iMON IR/VFD package.

iMON pad2keys patch

The iMON PAD remote controller features a "PAD Controller", a pressure sensitive mouse cursor control. Nice for MythTV, MCE and other graphical HTPC desktop environments but not really usefull to control the Linux VDRs OSD.

This patch generates Up-, Down-, Left- and Right-key events for the PAD Controller.

Note that this patch is based on a "betterkeys" mouse-and-keys patch that was originally posted by some user in venky's forum. The mouse device was completely useless for me and created only unnecessary kernel dependencies, so I've removed the mouse input device support, cleaned the patch up, applied some fixes and made all 58 keys of the remote controller available for use with VDR.

I do not claim any copyright for this patch. The original driver is GPL'ed and so is this patch.

History

2009-04-10
After nearly three years the patch has finally been added to lirc cvs. Thanks to Jarod!

2009-04-10
Refactored for use with lirc-0.8.5pre2.
lirc-0.8.5pre2 brings major additions to the imon driver!

Pad handling should be done for most devices out of the box. Afaik only older VFD/PAD combinations like mine (USB-ID 15c2:ffdc) require a (now much easier) patch.
The generated codes have been changed to match the codes used by newer imon devices! The patch now generates 0x01008000 for up, 0x01007F00 for down, 0x01000080 for left and 0x0100007F for the right direction.
No more use for the pad2keys module option, option removed.
VFD-Users: If the driver miss-detects your device as an LCD device, you will see many error messages like "lcd_write: invalid payload size: 32 (expecting 8)" in your syslog. Add options lirc_imon display_type=1 to your modules configuration (/etc/modprobe.conf, /etc/modprobe.d/lirc ... whatever is right for your distri) and send best wishes to Soundgraph for re-using USB-IDs for different devices...
For all people with newer devices (:0036, ..): Please, do not fiddle around with patches. Try the new version, it should work out of the box! (...and please, believe me, this patch is completely useless for you!)
ALL: Please, do not give yourself a hard time by fiddling around with mode2 and irw to create your own config before you've tried the ../remotes/imon/lircd.conf.imon-pad configuration that comes with the distribution!

2009-02-24
Updated patch for lirc-0.8.4a, sorry for the delay:

No further changes.

2008-05-12
Updated patch for lirc 0.8.3:

No further changes.

2007-10-14
Updated/changed patch for lirc 0.8.3pre1:

pad2keys function can be (de-)activated via a module-parameter. Deactivated by default!! Add "options lirc_imon pad2keys_active=1" to /etc/modprobe.conf (or where ever you like/have to) to activate the pad2keys translation.
added a new config file remotes/imon/lircd.conf.imon-pad2keys instead of patching the original imon-pad config.

LIRC CVS snapshot:
Download lirc-0.8.5_pre2-imon-ffdc-pad2keys.patch against lirc-0.8.5pre2.

LIRC stable:
Download old lirc-0.8.4a-imon-pad2keys.patch against lirc-0.8.4a.

Use right button, "Save Link As..." and apply the patch as usual:

                  #> tar xvjf lirc-0.8.4a.tar.bz2
                  #> cd lirc-0.8.4a
                  #> patch -p1 < ../lirc-0.8.4a-imon-pad2keys.patch

Example VDR remote.conf (VDR 1.4.0 & bigpatch).

Shiny new logitech harmony 885 - some keys of my iMON PAD controller gave up after one and a half year, but thankfully this one works like a charm using Computer > Media Center PC > Silverstone > LC-14M setting with the VFD device (USB-ID 15c2:ffdc) built into my vdr's case.