Generic HID Remote Driver for XBMC

This is a generic hid driver for use with XBMC if your computer came with a hid remote or you bought one. The base code was provided by coldsource

After having successfully used this for a while, I started having trouble when I upgraded my OS to Ubuntu 11.04 and later to Ubuntu 11.10. I debugged it a bit and provided this slightly hacked version that made it work for me. Tested on Lubuntu 14.04

This is provided asis and without any guarantee. Please see LICENCE for more details.

Usage

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=88560 contains the details...

Compile the drivers

$ make

Make sure your HID remote is recognized (listed)

$ sudo ./hid_mapper --list-devices

Run with learn mode so you can create your map file

find out the manufacturer and product of your device using

$ cat /proc/bus/input/devices

replace 1241 and e000 with the values of your device

$ sudo ./hid_mapper --learn --manufacturer 1241 --product e000

This will display the key codes for each key-down and key-up event

Pipe the output into a file to save some typing and push every button on the remote that you want to map (remember the sequence you pushed the buttons :-) )

$ sudo ./hid_mapper --learn --manufacturer 1241 --product e000 > mydevice.map

Now edit mydevice.map, remove the key codes of the key-up events (usually only zeros), remove the blanks and assign the keys as you like. The result should look like this:

010000520000000000:KEY_UP  
010000510000000000:KEY_DOWN  
...

Valid key names are defined in /usr/include/linux/input.h

Run with the map file to use it

$ sudo ./run_remote

to run this on every system start, put this into /etc/rc.local

Blacklisting the device in Xorg

It is necessary to blacklist the device in Xorg so it does not conflict with the mapper. Create a new file in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/. I have named it 50-HID-blacklist.conf and it contains:

# see output of lsusb for the USB id
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Remote blacklist"
        MatchUSBID "1241:e000"
        Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

Restart Xorg and you're done.

At this point the remote is not recognized anymore.

Extra steps if you need autostart

So far so good, now it's time to install it. You need to create a directory for the data file $ sudo mkdir /usr/local/etc/hid_mapper copy the datafile $ sudo cp lenovo-rc6.map /usr/local/etc/hid_mapper/remote.map install the driver $ sudo cp hid_mapper /usr/local/bin

---- The driver launcher --- If you use Lubuntu, install the driver launcher $ sudo cp 10-HID-REMOTE.rules /etc/udev/rules.d

If you are not using Lubuntu: Lubuntu comes with uinput module already compiled in the kernel, this is not valid with all distros. If you have uinput compiled as a module, you need to use the file 10-HID-REMOTE.rules described in section 2.3 of the document http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/tutoriel/hid It forces loading uinput module before the driver.

Reboot the HTPC and it shall work.