Gowand

Description

Gowand is a Go package that provides functionality for handling and processing "Casts" from a MagiQuest wand.

This package is based partially on work done by rveach in his pywand package.

Gowand is not associated with MagiQuest or Creative Kingdoms in any way, and is not intended to be used for any commercial purposes. MagiQuest is a registered trademark of Great Wolf Resorts, Inc.

Pre-requisites

Gowand requires the following:

• LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control) installed and configured
  • This is installed by default on many popular Linux distributions
• An IR receiver connected to your computer and configured in LIRC

Installation

To install the gowand package, you can use go get:

go get github.com/applehat/gowand

Usage

The most basic usage of gowand is to create a new wand and start listening for wand casts. The following example shows how to do this:

package main

import (
	"github.com/applehat/gowand"
)

func main() {
	// Get a new wand
	wand := gowand.Wand()
	wand.Start()

	wand.OnCast(func(wc gowand.WandCast) {
		// Dump the wand cast data to the console
        fmt.Printf("%+v\n", wc)
	})
}

You can alternatively handle the channel that wand casts are sent to yourself. The following example shows how to do this:

package main

import (
    "github.com/applehat/gowand"
)

func main() {
    // Get a new wand
    wand := gowand.Wand()
    wand.Start()

    // Get the channel that wand casts are sent to
    wandCastChan := wand.Chan()

    // Loop forever, handling wand casts
    for {
        select {
        case wc := <-wandCastChan:
            // Dump the wand cast data to the console
            fmt.Printf("%+v\n", wc)
        }
    }
}

Configuration

By default, gowand will assume your IR device is at /dev/lirc0. If this is not the case, you can specify the device before starting:

wand := gowand.Wand()
wand.SetDevice("/dev/lirc1")
wand.Start()

Hardware

I uased a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian for testing, with an 1838 IR receiver connected to GPIO pin 18.

Add the following to your /boot/config.txt file to enable the IR receiver (requires a reboot):

dtoverlay=gpio-ir,gpio_pin=18

Then on the Pi, the wiring is:

IR Receiver	Raspberry Pi
GND	GND
VCC	3.3V
OUT	GPIO 18

There is a lot of information on the internet suggested that a 36KHz IR Receiver will work better then the more common 38KHz IR Receiver, tho I have been able to somewhat reliably get the 38KHz receiver to work.