Volume Knob on Antec Fusion

Antec Fusion has this big, nice-looking volume knob. It would also be nice to let it actually do something. The following are the steps I took to make it to work nicely with an MCE remote. My Myth box was based on Fedora Core 6, installed using RPMs from Fedora and ATRpms as much as possible. If you have a system based on another distribution, adapt the steps accordingly.

Get the VFD to work

I followed the LCDproc page and made the VFD to work.

Edit udev rules

There are two lirc devices on the system (in my case, lirc_imon, and lirc_mceusb2), but it's sort of random that which device is assigned lirc0 or lirc1 at boot time. So we need udev to make some symlinks with unique names to point to the correct devices.

Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/lirc.rules, and add the following lines to the end of the file. You need to change the idVendor for your own devices.

KERNEL=="lirc[0-9]*", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0471", SYMLINK+="lirc_mce"
KERNEL=="lirc[0-9]*", SYSFS{idVendor}=="15c2", SYMLINK+="lirc_imon"

If you need info on how to write udev rules, or on how to find out unique SYSFS attributes you can use to write the rules, see here.

Add entries to lircd.conf

Following this thread, I added these lines into /etc/lircd.conf

begin remote
  name  ClickWheel
  bits           24
  eps            30
  aeps          100

  one             0     0
  zero            0     0
  post_data_bits  8
  post_data      0xFF
  gap          131993
  toggle_bit      0

  begin codes
       WheelCC                  0x010000
       WheelCW                  0x000100
       WheelClick               0x000008
  end codes
end remote

Edit /etc/sysconfig/lircd

Edit /etc/sysconfig/lircd to read as follows

# Options to lircd
LIRCD_OPTIONS="--driver=default --device=/dev/lirc_mce --output=/dev/lircd --pidfile=/var/run/lircd.pid --connect=localhost:8765"
LIRCD1_OPTIONS="--driver=default --device=/dev/lirc_imon --output=/dev/lircd1 --pidfile=/var/run/lircd1.pid --listen"

Modify the device names according to whatever symlinks you've chosen for your devices.

Edit /etc/init.d/lircd

Replace the line

daemon lircd $LIRCD_OPTIONS

with these two lines

lircd $LIRCD1_OPTIONS
lircd $LIRCD_OPTIONS

And add after the line

killproc lircd

another a line that reads

killproc lircd1

Edit .mythtv/lircrc

Add the following section to .lircrc.

begin
  prog = mythtv
  button = WheelCW
  repeat = 1
  config = ]
end
 
begin
  prog = mythtv
  button = WheelCC
  repeat = 1
  config = [
end

You can increase the repeat number to make the wheel less sensitive. But I've found that it feels the best by letting repeat=1, which makes every notch counts.