[mythtvnz] SkyStar 2 remote with serial dongle...

[Steve Holdoway]

I've just purchase a SkyStar 2 card with serial dongle, which I want to connect up to freeview-powered mythbuntu box - running both a front and back end. This is my first try...

Can anyone point me at where I'm going wrong? I'm getting output from mode2 -d/dev/lirc0 - not paying too much notice to the content as it seems to be pretty random ( and supposed to be from my reading of the docs! ).

This is what I've done so far, after a clean install of mythbuntu 7.10, apt-get updated to now...

I've downloaded a lircd.conf frm sourceforge and stuck it in /etc/lirc

( starts...

#
# this config file was automatically generated
# using lirc-0.6.6(any) on Wed May 19 00:28:01 2004
#
# contributed by Nicolas Huillard
#
# brand:                       TechniSat
# model no. of remote control: 100TS035
# devices being controlled by this remote: SkyStar 2 TV (DVB PCI card)
#

begin remote

  name  100TS035

)

I've also installed it in /usr/share/lirc/remotes/technisat/100TS035

and modified /etc/lirc/hardware.conf to

#
#Chosen Remote Control
REMOTE="Technisat 100TS035"

# Arguments which will be used when launching lircd
LIRCD_ARGS=""

#Don't start lircmd even if there seems to be a good config file
#START_LIRCMD=false

#Try to load appropriate kernel modules
LOAD_MODULES=true

# Run "lircd --driver=help" for a list of supported drivers.
DRIVER=""
# If DEVICE is set to /dev/lirc and devfs is in use /dev/lirc/0 will be
# automatically used instead
DEVICE="/dev/ttyS0"
MODULES="lirc_serial"

# Default configuration files for your hardware if any
LIRCD_CONF="technisat/100TS035"
LIRCMD_CONF=""

( do I need a driver in there??? There doesn't seem to be one on the list that's remotely (ha!) relevant )

To ensure that the uart stuff doesn't get in the way, I've modified /etc/init.d/lirc, adding a new function

unload_modules ()
{
        for mod in $*
        do
                /sbin/rmmod $mod 2> /dev/null || MODULES_MISSING=true
        done
}

and extending the load_modules function

        unload_modules $*
        /bin/setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none

before modprobe -k to guarantee that the serial port is initialised properly. I like overkill!

At this point, mode2 shows output when buttons are pressed on the remote.

Next, I need to integrate it into mythtv to get some use out of it. I've run  

  mythbuntu-lircrc-generator

both as root and as my login user ( steve ). I've looked arounf through the system for any other occurrences of .lircrc / lircrc and replaced with the generated ones ( /home/mythtv/.lircrc being the only one I could find ).

Still nothing is actually controlled by the remote. The resources mentioned by google are pretty messy - they seem to be referencing all different versions of mythbuntu ( I'm using the latest one based on gutsy ), and it's pretty confugsing to say the least!

Can anyone out there point me to the next step? I'm pretty linux savvy so don't hold back (:

TIA,  Steve.


-- 
Steve Holdoway <steve at greengecko.co.nz>