FEDORA 14 LIRC on USB-UIRT

I am writing down the process to get LIRC working on Fedora 14 using USB-UIRC. I did not find any single place, where this was described properly.

1. First you can install LIRC package using yum by giving

yum install lirc-*

This would install lirc, lirc-lib, lirc-devel, lirc-remote and lirc-doc package.

2. Now connect USB-UIRT device to a USB port. You can check using ‘dmesg’, if it is recognised and attached to a port. If you have no other USB device connected, this would attach to /dev/ttyUSB0 port. For rest of this discussion, I am assuming this to be the case.

3. Now you can start lircd daemon giving this command:
sudo lircd -H usb_uirt_raw -d /dev/ttyUSB0

It may be possible to define the optional parameters in a hardware.conf file in /etc/lirc directory and start this daemon using a service command.
Once this is done, you can check using dmesg that daemon is running properly by seeing the message like:

Jun 13 11:34:05 localhost lircd-0.9.0[22536]: lircd(usb_uirt_raw) ready, using /var/run/lirc/lircd

4. Now you can check if it is working by running a simple command ‘mode2’ as :

sudo mode2 -H usb_uirt_raw -d /dev/ttyUSB0

Now point a IR remote control to USB-UIRT and mode2 would show you timings of IR control code by pulses and spaces. This shows that your system is working. This can also be seen graphically by using ‘xmode2’ command but it is not working on my system as of now and gives some font related problem.

5. Now you can learn the code of a remote control by using ‘irrecord’ tool. Give this command and follow instructions:

sudo irrecord -H usb_uirt_raw -d /dev/ttyUSB0 dishtv.conf

(here dishtv.conf is the file in which learnt command would be recorded.)

6. If you want to play back the controls, you can use ‘irsend’ utility. For this you should copy the learnt configuration to /etc/lirc/lircd.conf file. The name given for a particular remote is the name given in this configuration file. Let us assume that it is ‘dishtv’. After modifying the lircd.conf file, you should stop(or kill) and rerun lircd daemon so that it reads the configuration file again. After this, you can send IR control using

sudo irsend -d /var/run/lirc/lircd SEND_ONCE dishtv KEY_POWER

Here KEY_POWER is the name of a button that was given during learning phase using ‘irrecord’.

I found that it was necessary to take USB-UIRT very close to the device receiver to make it work.

Author: Prabhat Ranjan

Prof. Prabhat Ranjan is Vice Chancellor, D Y Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune. He was heading India's Technology Think Tank, TIFAC(tifac.org.in) as its Executive Director since April 2013 to April 2018. Earlier he was Professor at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar (DA-IICT) since 2002. He was educated in Netarhat School(near Ranchi), IIT Kharagpur and Delhi University. He received his Ph D from University of California, Berkeley where he carried our research on “Nuclear Fusion” at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory during 1983-86. He immediately returned to India after this and carried out research in Nuclear Fusion area at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Calcutta and Institute for Plasma Research(IPR), Gandhinagar. He played a major role in India’s Nuclear Fusion program and was Project Leader of the largest operational Indian Fusion Reactor, ADITYA, at Institute for Plasma Research from 1996-2002. His current interests include applications of Wireless Sensor Network to Wildlife, Planetary Exploration (Chandrayaan mission), Nuclear Fusion, Healthcare, Agriculture etc. He has received National Science Talent Search Award, IBM Faculty Innovation Grant and HP Innovate 2009 award, NPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Award 2012, Bihar Gaurav Samman 2012 etc. In March 2022, he was also honored with EduStar India’s Most Impactful Vice Chancellor Award for 2021-22. He has been recognized by outlook among few visionaries, who can lead India towards 5 Trillion Dollar Economy. He has been also honoured with Maharashtra Ratna Gaurav Puraskar by Shalini Foundation in 2024. He is also recognized among the top “100 Great IITians : Dedicated to the Service of the Nation”. View all posts by Prabhat Ranjan