IR-KEYTABLE without LIRC / LIRCD

Quote from nitin.verma

I'm using GPIO IR receiver for recording IR remote buttons but I am facing inconsistency to record and execute remote key using LIRC. My question is if we can use remote key operation in my code via IR keytable approach, if yes kindly help and provide steps to perform same.

Referring approach mentioned here

Hi, please don't hijack my thread as your questions have nothing to do with it. You are wanting to use a GPIO IR receiver with LIRC. I am trying to use a USB receiver without LIRC, so your questions are totally irrelevant to this subject. Please create your own thread and ask your questions there.

When I said I'm not too sure about what any of that means, I was referring to your previous post that I had quoted.

I am aware that the code I posted disables the eventlircd service, but it does not do it on subsequent boots unfortunately

I need to find a way to permanently override the eventlircd service and stop it running. This is the last step in getting IR-KEYTABLE to handle all keyboard events!

Maybe the developers would consider adding an option in the LibreELEC settings to allow the user to disable eventlircd as well as LIRC... Who do I need to contact to request this?

Quote from infinity85

I'd also like to see this. And from the logic point of view the "Disable LIRC" button should also be linked to disabling eventlircd as well altogether.

Your eventlircd discovery explains now why I wasn't able to use ir-keytable last week, when I first tried it. There seemed to be some kind of interference in keypresses and I didn't know how that could be, as I thought LIRC was disabled.

I'm also looking forward to test this somehow as soon as it is solved.

Yes, I think those of us with IR keyboards should be given the option to disable both LIRC and EVENTLIRCD to enable us to exclusively use IR-KEYTABLE in-kernel.

For me, running the command "systemctl stop eventlircd.service" allows me to see IR remote output in "ir-keytable -t".

I am just installing Ubuntu on a spare PC and then I will attempt to compile my own copy of LibreELEC without the LIRC and EVENTLIRCD pacakges. If this builds successfully and subsequently works for my IR keyboard, I will put in a formal request for a feature to allow disabling EVENTLIRCD from the LibreELEC setup menu, similar to the option to disable LIRC.

Quote from HiassofT

So another possibility to (logically) disable eventlircd is to create an empty udev rule file - the button-presses should then show up as input/keyboard events in kodi instead of lirc events.

Code

: > /storage/.config/udev.rules.d/98-eventlircd.rules

OK from my experimentation, this code creates a blank 98-eventlircd.rules file but it does absolutely nothing to prevent eventlircd from working.
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Quote from HiassofT

Using ir-keytable on LE is rather simple: just drop your keymap in .config/rc_keymaps and it'll be automatically picked up by ir-keytable -a (run from standard udev rule).

I'm doing this for about half a year now on RPi, have this line in config.txt

Code

dtoverlay=gpio-ir,gpio_pin=5,gpio_pull=1,rc-map-name=rc-hauppauge

and placed a slightly modified hauppauge keymap in rc_keymap.

If you've done this before it's a piece of cake on LE as well

so long,

Hias

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I agree, initial setup is pretty simple, and I am able to get it working for IR remote control keys. BUT, IR keyboard keys such as KEY_C don't work!

Quote from HiassofT

eventlircd will be running but it won't grab any input devices and translate the input events to lirc events - at least it shouldn't

so long,

Hias

That might be so, but it definitely doesn't allow key presses to be passed to Kodi!

One thing I have noticed is that the output of IR-KEYTABLE changes sometimes:

Found /sys/class/rc/rc0/ (/dev/input/event7) with:
        Driver mceusb, table rc-rc6-mce
        Supported protocols: unknown other lirc rc-5 jvc sony nec sanyo mce-kbd rc-6 sharp xmp
        Enabled protocols: lirc rc-5
        Name: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared
        bus: 3, vendor/product: 147a:e03e, version: 0x1001
        Repeat delay = 1000 ms, repeat period = 1000 ms

"event7" sometimes appears as "event11" but I'm not sure this is related to my issue as sometimes all keys work when it is pointing to "event7" and other times they do not.

This is so frustrating! I had it working for all keys on first boot this morning, but after a reboot only specific keys are working again! I KNOW it is possible for Kodi under LibreELEC to work with all IR keyboard commands because I've had it working. I just don't understand what is breaking it on reboot!
[hr]
Here are my Kodi logs:

Kodi Log when full IR keyboard works (you can see on line 522 that key "c" has been recognised and processed to launch the context menu in Kodi)

Kodi Log when only some IR controls work

I have compared both files in NotePad++ with the Compare addon and can barely see any difference in the logs; certainly nothing standing out as the reason for the failures. This leads me to believe it is definitely NOT a Kodi issue, but more likely something behind the scenes.

I'm still convinced it's an issue with key presses being intercepted by something in between IR-KEYTABLE and Kodi.

LibreELEC developers, do you know what I could be alluding to?

OK so after further investigation, I have managed to create a complete list of key names that IR-KEYTABLE recognises. I ran a command to pull a list of current key names from IRRECORD:

irrecord -l

This gave me a list of 549 possible names, covering "KEY_" and "BTN_". Since I won't be using "BTN_" as this seems to refer to buttons on a controller, I removed these from the list and individually tested the remaining 435 "KEY_" names. Of these 435, 18 were not recognised at all by IR-KEYTABLE so I am left with 417 key names that I can use:

List of 417 key names compatible with IR-KEYTABLE

I tested these in blocks of 100 with a different keytable each time, in case you are wondering how I tested 400+ names.

Now I know IR-KEYTABLE can receive IR signals and map them to these key names without issue, I need to know how and where these key names are translated into Kodi. Where does Kodi look when trying to match an IR signal to a key name?

XORG!

It's xorg causing the issue. If I boot LibreELEC and the IR keyboard keys don't work, I run:

systemctl restart xorg.service

After that the additional keys magically work! This looks to be consistent behaviour so I believe this is the cause of my issue. I think the reason for the keys working sporadically is because on boot, sometimes my IR-KEYTABLE startup command in autostart.sh is getting loaded after xorg, meaning xorg doesn't recognise the new key names.

Trust me to finally figure this out after I have ordered a Flirc!

So now I just need to figure out how to delay xorg on startup... preferably in autostart.sh but I guess this will have to be done in a udev rule. Any ideas?