[mythtv-users] Global Hot Keys (Volume +- or Mute)

[Raymond Boettcher]

This has been a problem forever.  It's gotten to the point that I've started writing a X11 App to handle the issue separate from MythTV.  The Volume Control should be accessible from ANY part of MythTV.  As MythTV has background music play ability and Emulator Support it would be nice to be able to change the volume without having to re-enter the music interface or having to exit your game to take a voyage into a music player or something just to adjust the volume, quit back out and restart the emulator.

In my efforts to resolve this issue, I wrote a program that runs in the background while attached to X11 that registers HotKeys.  I of course made it go after the F9-F11 series of keys as those are the keys bound in MythTV.  That way my program can handle them but if the program isn't running, crashed, or whatever, MythTV will handle it by default.  I have learned that binding a Hotkey using an X11 Call will cause X11 to not send the Key Event to MythTV but to my program instead.  This allows my program to present a very handy volume control that comes up on top of MythTV no matter what it is doing, including some Emulators.  I can also use the Power Button on my TV Controller to present a system menu on top of MythTV just in case it has issues that will allow me to Restart MythTV, the X-Session or even the computer itself.  Once the menu comes up it Hotkey binds the arrows and enter key to navigate the overlayed menu instead of passing the arrow
 keys to MythTV.  Once the menu goes away due to inactivity or is exited, the key bindings release for the arrows and enter key automatically giving navigation control back to MythTV.

No my TV controller is not using LIRC and I don't even have LIRC installed.  I have found that using LIRC is a pain in the neck and many programs don't support LIRC.  This makes it harder to exit an Emulator using a TV Controller unless you completely configure LIRC to send Key Events for everything.  My method is simply programming a Universal "Learning" TV Controller to the Keys found on a Infrared Keyboard that comes with the USB IR Sensor.  Because it's an Infrared Keyboard, the sensor comes up as a HID Keyboard Device.  I can even navigate LILO or GRUB from my TV Controller.  Try that with LIRC :)

In any regard, is there going to be a solution for this?  I realize this may have just been overlooked because most people likely punch their volume controls from their home theatre system directly to "Device" on their TV Remote for MythTV as most universal remotes support Volume or Channel punch through.  But I am running the old style surround computer speaker setup that has 3 stereo wires that plug into the sound card for the various front, rear and center/sub channels.  As it is, I had to configure MythTV to adjust Master by default otherwise my front speakers would change volume and the rest of the speakers would remain at the same volume.

Raymond Boettcher
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