How do I configure an ordinary TV remote control to work with lirc on Linux?

Question

I am running MythTV on Ubuntu 9.10 and I would like to use a TV remote to control it. I know that lirc needs a configuration file for the remote, but none of my remotes is in the official database. If I point a remote at the receiver on my TV card (a Pinnacle PCTV "Solo", model 72e) and press a button, dmesg logs the code generated by the remote, so I assume I just have to make a config file with a list of commands assigned to these codes.

I've read a few how-tos but I still don't understand exactly how to create the config file. Some of the guides I've read refer to IR receivers on TV cards working at a "higher level of abstraction", which I take to mean that they decode the signal and provide a code, like the ones I can see in dmesg, rather than just giving raw data, but none of them explain where to go from there!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Making configs for remotes is relativly straightforward. I've made a few and submitted them all. The command is irrecord:

irrecord myremote.conf

It takes patience, and you might need to edit the conf file afterwards if you made a mistake. You can run the command again to add new buttons if you missed any. This of course assumes that you have all the prerequisite hardware setup, which it sounds like you do.

This just allows irc to understand what buttons you are pressing, afterwards you need to map buttons to keypresses with mythttv's lircrc.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/LIRC#LIRCRC