PVR-150 IR blaster with 2.6.31 Karmic Koala kernel

[Trevor Bradley-2]

Hey there.. I've been using a modded version of lirc 0.8.5 with my
Hauppauge PVR-150's IR blaster for a while here:
http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/blog/?p=24. I have an older PVR-150
card with it's IR blaster taped to the front of my cable box. The IR
blaster is the type with a cable that plugs directly into the back of
the PVR-150.

It's worked great for the past couple years on Slackware and then later
Ubuntu, but after my update to Ubuntu Karmic Koala in the past few days,
the modded lirc 0.8.5 no longer compiles with Karmic's 2.6.31 kernel. I
thought of backtracking and booting Karmic with an older kernel, but
Karmic's upgrade of gcc means that drivers can't be compiled against the
older kernel, so that option is out.

On his modded LIRC page, Mark also posts a patch file for his changes to
lirc. I attempted to download the latest lirc 0.8.6 CVS and patch it
with Mark's SVN patch. The patch appears to apply without error, but the
PVR 150 card ["i – Hauppauge PVR-150 TV card (note: _NOT_ ‘g – Hauppauge
TV card’)" as described on his website] doesn't show up during setup.sh
as it does in his patched version. I'd get a working lirc, but only for
PVR-150 remote reception, not IR blasting.

Now perhaps the obvious thing to do here is be patient and wait for Mark
to put out a 0.8.6 update, but I've emailed him and it's possible he's
not actively updating anymore. Another option is to hunt around for a
cheap IR blaster to replace the PVR-150's blaster, but I'm not sure what
the cheapest/most compatible option is here. Or I could attempt to
fiddle around with Mark's patch further and try to figure out what's
wrong... unfortunately I've been sick and software patching and
debugging isn't my thing right now.

I'd like my MythTV backend to stop recording just one channel and am
willing to shell out a few coins for a new blaster if it will make the
problem go away, but if there's an option or a bit of knowledge I've
been missing, I'd really appreciate knowing about it. :)

Thanks in advance for any help/advice you might be able to give,
Trevor Bradley


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[Jarod Wilson]

On 10/31/2009 01:01 PM, Trevor Bradley wrote:

> Hey there.. I've been using a modded version of lirc 0.8.5 with my
> Hauppauge PVR-150's IR blaster for a while here:
> http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/blog/?p=24. I have an older PVR-150
> card with it's IR blaster taped to the front of my cable box. The IR
> blaster is the type with a cable that plugs directly into the back of
> the PVR-150.
>
> It's worked great for the past couple years on Slackware and then later
> Ubuntu, but after my update to Ubuntu Karmic Koala in the past few days,
> the modded lirc 0.8.5 no longer compiles with Karmic's 2.6.31 kernel.

Yep, 2.6.31 introduced some major i2c changes.

> I thought of backtracking and booting Karmic with an older kernel, but
> Karmic's upgrade of gcc means that drivers can't be compiled against the
> older kernel, so that option is out.

Horsefeathers.

...
> Now perhaps the obvious thing to do here is be patient and wait for Mark
> to put out a 0.8.6 update, but I've emailed him and it's possible he's
> not actively updating anymore. Another option is to hunt around for a
> cheap IR blaster to replace the PVR-150's blaster, but I'm not sure what
> the cheapest/most compatible option is here. Or I could attempt to
> fiddle around with Mark's patch further and try to figure out what's
> wrong... unfortunately I've been sick and software patching and
> debugging isn't my thing right now.

I've been maintaining a version of lirc_pvr150, renamed lirc_zilog, in
my git tree for quite some time now. Its long since been updated to
function with 2.6.31 (among other things -- also works with the HD PVR).
I've already talked to Mario Limonciello, and I believe he's thinking
about throwing together a dkms package for Ubuntu users.

In the short term, you can grab this:

http://wilsonet.com/jarod/junk/lirc-snap-20091027.tar.bz2

Unpack it, cd into the unpacked directory, then:

$ make CONFIG_INPUT_LIRC=m CONFIG_LIRC_ZILOG=m -C
/usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r) M=$PWD modules

(all on one line there)

Then drop the resulting .ko files over the top of your existing ones, or
in a modprobe path of higher precedence, and run depmod. Then you should
be able to modprobe lirc_zilog and have a working setup again.

--
Jarod Wilson
jarod@...

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[Trevor Bradley-2]

Jarod Wilson wrote:

> I've been maintaining a version of lirc_pvr150, renamed lirc_zilog, in
> my git tree for quite some time now. Its long since been updated to
> function with 2.6.31 (among other things -- also works with the HD
> PVR). I've already talked to Mario Limonciello, and I believe he's
> thinking about throwing together a dkms package for Ubuntu users.
>
> In the short term, you can grab this:
>
> http://wilsonet.com/jarod/junk/lirc-snap-20091027.tar.bz2
>
> Unpack it, cd into the unpacked directory, then:
>
> $ make CONFIG_INPUT_LIRC=m CONFIG_LIRC_ZILOG=m -C
> /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r) M=$PWD modules
>
> (all on one line there)
>
> Then drop the resulting .ko files over the top of your existing ones,
> or in a modprobe path of higher precedence, and run depmod. Then you
> should be able to modprobe lirc_zilog and have a working setup again.
>

It worked!  12 years of Slackware experience helped here.

Here's a few hints for others who used Mark's lirc braindump before and
are trying Jarod's lirc files on ubuntu...

1) /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r) was in
/lib/modules/2.6.31-14-generic-pae/ for me
2) my .ko files live in
/lib/modules/2.6.31-14-generic-pae/kernel/ubuntu/lirc/*/*.ko
3) Don't forget to run depmod!  Otherwise you can't modproble lirc_zilog
4) lircd expects to find lircd.conf in /etc/lirc/lircd.conf, not
/etc/lircd.conf.  Otherwise you get a "lircd config file contains no
valid remote control definition" error.
5) I'm not entirely sure if my irsend binary worked without root access
before or not.

That saved me a lot of work angsting over hunting around for a new IR
blaster.  Thank you very much Jarod!

Trevor

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