Difference between revisions of "USB-UIRT"

Revision as of 21:31, 6 December 2010

The USB UIRT allows any USB-equipped PC to transmit and receive infrared signals. LIRC 0.8.1 supports the USB-UIRT natively. LIRC 0.7.1 does not support the USB-UIRT natively, but the patch listed below can be used.

Links

Manufacturers Website: http://www.usbuirt.com

LIRC 0.7.1: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/lirc/lirc-0.7.1.tar.bz2

Patch for LIRC 0.7.1: http://www.gemair.com/~neveld/usb-uirt/lirc-0.7.1-usb_uirt.patch.bz2

Utility

The manufacturer produces a (Windows) helper utility for this remote. It allows the user to set the usb wake-from-standby key. This means you can suspend your machine to S3 (Suspend to RAM), then wake it up with a button on your remote control (NOTE: this feature doesn't appear to function properly under linux). Also, it has several other features, including turning off the blinking response to IR signals. The current verstion is at: http://www.usbuirt.com/lrnhelper_0_0_5.zip

LIRC 0.7.1 Installation

# tar xvfj lirc-0.7.1.tar.bz2
# cd lirc-0.7.1
# bzcat ../lirc-0.7.1-usb_uirt.patch.bz2 | patch -p1
# ./setup.sh

Choose Driver Configuration, USB Devices, USB-UIRT2(receive and transmit)

Save Configuration & Exit

Edit configure.sh

#!/bin/bash

./configure \
--with-moduledir=/lib/modules/2.6.15-gentoo-r1/misc \
--with-tty=/dev/ttyUSB0 \
--with-x \
--with-syslog \
--with-driver=usb-uirt2_raw \
--with-major=61 \
--with-port=none \
--with-irq=none \
--prefix=/usr \
"$@" 

Compile

# sh ./configure.sh && make && make install

Gentoo Installation

In Gentoo, /etc/make.conf should contain

LIRC_DEVICES="usb_uirt_raw"

Emerge the lirc package

emerge -av lirc

Configure lirc, /etc/conf.d/lircd should contain

LIRCD_OPTS="-H usb_uirt_raw -d /dev/ttyUSB0"

Connect the USB-UIRT and start lircd

/etc/init.d/lircd start
rc-update add lircd default

Kernel Driver Issue

Description of bug

The USB-UIRT uses a USB-to-serial adapter chip, and the Linux driver for this was broken after kernel 2.6.20 when changes to the parameters passed into the quirk functions resulted in a NULL pointer causing a kernel oops.

UPDATE: It has been seen that Ubuntu 10.10 with LIRC and a USB UIRT has successfully controlled teh power of a DENON receiver.

Partial Fix

A number of distributions are using a patched FTDI driver that solves the kernel oops, but is missing a critical fix to allow the USB-UIRT to work.

In /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c locate the function ftdi_tiocmget and add "case FT232RL:" just after "case FT223C:". Then rebuild and install your modules.

Without this fix you will get an error from lircd about not being able to set DTR.