GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 577287
missing lirc_sir option in gnome-lirc-properties
Last modified: 2009-04-02 20:51:33 UTC
gnome-lirc-properties does not have an option for lirc_sir. I propose adding the following to receivers.conf [Generic: IrDA SIR Receiver] kernel-module = lirc_sir device-nodes = /dev/lirc0 With this (and some prior work to get lirc_sir to load properly) I am able to detect IR remote key presses from my ThinkPad T41 IrDA port with gnome-lirc-properties. Just as a reference, steps to configure lirc_sir on a ThinkPad are here http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_make_use_of_IrDA#LIRC_and_IrDA Unfortunately the Autodetect receivers option still picks up the ThinkPad Extra buttons through the input layer, instead of the infrared port so you need to select it manually from the list.
Created attachment 131694 [details] [review] patch to add lirc_sir to receivers.conf
Just as a comment. lshal --monitor --long does not cause any events when lirc_sir is loaded. Also you cannot key off the existence of an IrDA receiver, since by default that is already used by the irda daemon on most distributions, and you cannot load both the FIR (nsc_ircc in my case) and the lirc_sir driver as they are mutually exclusive. Quite a bit of config work is required to get lirc_sir to work properly, and if done wrong (at best) it will not work, or at worst the system will hang, so I do not think glp should get into the game of trying to configure the lirc_sir kernel driver.
Given the amount of work needed to make lirc_sir work for any particular hardware, I don't think we should add this to glp, but it'll probably help people to have this bug as a guide (I've added a note at http://live.gnome.org/gnome-lirc-properties) Could you please file a separate bug about glp detecting the Thinkpad extra keys? I'd need the lshal output attached as well.
I think I agree. While it would be nice to make it easier to use lirc_sir, fact is that it is almost 'black magic' getting it working, and even if you get it working you might find that the IR range is severely limited making it practically useless. On my T41 the range was no more then ~50cm.