getting ready to set up htpc... (1 Viewer)

[tattoozit]

I am getting ready to set up a system, and have a couple of questions. I have some old DVB-s remotes and I was wondering if anyone could tell me if they would work. Im not sure if they are IR or not. the two that are alike, I believe came with Twinhans, and the other is a digistar that was used with another conexant DVB-s card. I have a usb IR receiver that I know my computer recognizes., and the fourth remote is for my viewsat fta receiver. I think it is IR, I'm not sure. Anyway, My real thought is, can I use what I have here to hook up a remote to use with mediaportal? Otherwise I will have to browse ebay...

thanks for listening,

toozit


Edit::::::

Well; I identified the IR receiver it is GATEWAY OVU400002/00 INFRARED RECEIVER

and in the device manager, it shows as an eHome Infered Receiver.

I think I read somewhere that there is a program called Girder to set this up. Is there an open source program that will do the same?

 

[etheesdad]

try eventghost,

hip, winlirc

eventghost is probably the best place to start

 

[tattoozit]

Thankls m8, I''ll give them a whack.

toozit

 

[tattoozit]

okay, I have no clue what im doing. the manuals are confusing to me. and im not even sure if what i have will work together. or if they do how to make them. can someone who has used this ir receiver tell me what they did to get whatever remote you use to work. Im trying to do this with the tools at hand, but if they wont work i would like to save myself some frustration.

anyway, Ill walk away from it for now, but Ill come back to it after the beach.


toozit

 

[etheesdad]

ehome is the driver that MCE remotes use, so it sounds like thats what the IR reciever is identified as.

Remote key mapping is arbitrary; the easiest way with eventghost is to:

1. select the correct plugins. From what you've said, a good place to start would be mce remote and mediaportal plugins and work from there.
2. see if there is a signal by pressing keys on the remote. Try a few different remotes/ plugin combination until you have one that works.
3. once you have a signal recognised in Eventghost, assign remote keys to the corresponding keys from the Mediaportal keymap

Its not rocket science. Basically if the software recognises the input from the remote, then all that remains is mapping them to keyboard commands in MP.

More help and support should you need it is available at the Eventghost forum

A word to the wise:

Ive set up a few different remotes on various machines, (windows and Linux), and these days, I think of it as one of those "time vs cost" equations. The last time I did this (which was a couple of weeks ago with a serial IR receiver, uIRC and a remote from a Leadtek tuner) it took me three days to get working (but cost me $ nothing).

Yesterday I picked up an HP MCE remote off Ebay for AU$20.50 including p&h which should map to MP from within the program's config, quickly and easily, so that next time I build a machine for someone, I wont have to do this again.

Personally I like a technical challenge and now that Ive got the remote working all is hunky dory, and theres the sense of satisfaction of having cracked a tricky problem. If I'm faced with mismatched remotes and IR devices in future though, I will be going the way of the cheap MCE remote from Ebay without even thinking twice about it

Any way I look at it, 3 days of my time is worth a lot more to me than the $20.50 a cheap, easy-to-set-up MCE remote costs.

Hopefully this will configure quickly and easily for you. And, realistically, it may only take an hour or so to set up if you can get the software to recognise the signal from the remote. If not, you might want to avoid some headaches involved in nutting out each different software application then figuring out if it will work with your hardware by shelling out a few bucks for an easier option that will work 'out of the box'.

Hope that helps.

Good luck with it.

 

[tattoozit]

Etheesdad, You seem to me a very wise man, and much like myself I must add I told my wife as we sat on the beach today. "screw it, I'm just gonna grab one off ebay. their only about 20 bucks." what the heck right? But hey, dont get me wrong. I also love the satisfaction of having solved a problem. especially a tough one. but I was already tussled a bit from setting up one htpc system before I decided on Mediaportal. VERY nice proggy by the way. anyway, I just figured it was easier. and Im trying to sell my wife on the htpc server thing anyway. want to impress her.

who knows, maybe I'll give it another shot when it isn't really necessary. maybe it will work then. thanks for the time.

you mind if I use this one...

"Any way I look at it, 3 days of my time is worth a lot more to me than the $20.50 a cheap, easy-to-set-up MCE remote costs. "

that's priceless



toozit

 

[etheesdad]

Etheesdad, You seem to me a very wise man, and much like myself I must add I told my wife as we sat on the beach today. "screw it, I'm just gonna grab one off ebay. their only about 20 bucks."

Great minds think alike

you mind if I use this one...

"Any way I look at it, 3 days of my time is worth a lot more to me than the $20.50 a cheap, easy-to-set-up MCE remote costs. "

that's priceless

toozit

Any time