Adesso ARC-1100

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Introduction

The Adesso ARC-1100 has two parts: an IR receiver with USB cable and a remote control that is like many other Media Center remotes. What distinguishes this product from other remote control solutions is it looks like a USB keyboard and mouse to the computer. As a result:

  • It can interact with a boot menu.
  • It is more responsive than LIRC based remote control solutions. Multiple key presses don’t get lost like they tend to with LIRC solutions, so you can more quickly:
    • Navigate through lists using cursor and page keys.
    • Increase fast forward and rewind speeds.
  • If some dialog pops up when you least expect it, like Update manager or a warning about pressing the eject button on your DVD burner, you can dismiss the dialog using the remote's keys, or you can raise Mythfrontend's window by clicking on it using the remote’s mouse functionality.
  • It is affordable. I got it on sale from newegg in October, 2009, along with a 10% off coupon, for less than $25 USD (that includes shipping).
  • It can be used to train a learning remote. I use the Sony RM-VL710 and RM-VL600, which replaced the 710. According to Sony’s web site, the 600 was retailing for $24.99 USD in November, 2009.

There are some drawbacks:

  • Configuring this remote is a little more complicated than configuring an LIRC based remote. That’s because you need to use two different mechanisms (xmodmap and editing MythTV key bindings) to get full use of the remote, as opposed to editing a single LIRC configuration file.
  • Some keys are duplicates of others, like Play and Pause.
  • Some keys are effectively duplicates because they generate Ctrl+Shift seqences and because MythTV ignores the Shift state.
  • You will lose your xmodmap configured keys if you plugin/unplug the IR receiver or a USB keyboard and will need to execute the xmodmap command to restore those keys.

If the pros outweigh the cons, as they do for me, keep reading.

My Setup

I have a MythTV backend/frontend system running Mythbuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) and a MythTV frontend running Mythbuntu 8.04 (Hardy). Both are running MythTV 0.21-fixes. The frontend only system is a 5 year old Thinkpad R51 with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP. Jaunty doesn’t work with this IGP, but Hardy does. What surprised me was that the remote’s behavior is somewhat different on these two systems. I suspect it has to do with the version of X (xserver-xorg) provided by each distro. Hardy provides 7.3 whereas Jaunty provides 7.4. But the differences may also be due to the fact that one system is running on a Thinkpad and some of the Thinkpad-specific packages that were automatically installed. So you may want to double check how the remote behaves on your system using the X application, xev.

Although I haven’t upgraded to 0.22 yet, I believe MythTV 0.22 with QT4 shouldn’t be too different from MythTV 0.21 with QT3 when it comes to key bindings. So these instructions should still be useful.

The Remote

The following table provides details for each key on the remote. The column headings are:

Key Function
The key’s function according to Adesso documentation.
Sony RM-VL600
How I have mapped the Adesso remote to my Sony remote.
Key sequence, keycode (KC), keysym
The key sequence and/or keycode and/or keysym generated when the remote’s key is pressed. This information was extracted using the X application, xev. Some keys behave as you might expect with MythTV, like the cursor keys, the OK key and the Ch+/Ch- keys. These keys can be used without any configuration, and can also be used to control your computer’s boot menu. Some keys generate key sequences, usueally Control + an alphabetic key. These can be supported by editing MythTV’s key bindings. Other keys generate some atypical keycodes. On Jaunty, these keys are mapped to keysyms defined for multimedia keyboards, like Volume Up/Down and Previous/Next track. On Hardy, they are not. Fortunately, on both Hardy and Jaunty, the multimedia keys can be mapped to keysyms that can be used in MythTV.
Xmodmap
Shows which keys are configured using the X utility, xmodmap. Example files for hardy and jaunty are provided later.
MythTV Context, Action, Key binding
Shows MythTV key bindings. The three headings correspond to the headings provided in Mythweb’s Keybindings Editor. Only the key bindings shown in bold, or the context/action pairs shown in bold in the Notes column need to be changed if you are using MythTV’s default key bindings.
Notes
Should be self explanatory.