[plug] LIRC & Irman anyone

[Ryan]

While I have not done what you are suggesting if I was to do it I might:

- Go to Dick Smith and buy an Atmel Hotchip and the 4/16 channel Discovery 
IR kit

I already have these two items, but for other reasons.

Just by using the tiny example programs provided with the Hotchip, you can 
have its onboard UART acting as a serial terminal server and it can also be 
quite easily programmed (using Linux of course) to output text depending on 
the state of any of its 32 odd I/O lines, use the IR receiver module to 
toggle these inputs and in the crudest form imaginable you could get handy 
with some shell script and suck the results from your serial port .. or 
step up and use Perl/C etc.  It's quite a mundane task for such a powerful 
processor to do, but it is simple-ish to implement.  you could get more 
involved and make it drive LCD screens and things later on however it it's 
not getting hot enough.

Avoids having to buy IR receiver units with existing drivers etc (of which 
I don't know anything about), and it saves having to make complicated 
communications programs to talk to any device on your serial port, the 
communications protocols are all managed by the Hotchip, it just pumps out 
clean unadulterated whatever-you-wants for you to read however you wish.

.. and 2 marginally higher powered Atmel chips and some RAM can decode 
192Kb MP3s and interface with an IDE bus (if you are into that kind of 
stuff) ... who needs a PC?

a quick Debian interrogation fires back all the programs you need to 
program the Hotchip (or use the crap Windows one it comes with):

ava - Algebraical Virtual Assembler for Atmel's AVR MCUs
avra - Assembler for Atmel AVR microcontrollers
avrp - Programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers
uisp - Micro In-System Programmer for Atmel's AVR MCUs

Just an idea ... I tend to solve problems with means I am familiar with 
before looking around for possible simpler solutions :)

Ryan

At 07:00 AM 24-09-01 +0800, you wrote:


>Hi all
>
>I am hoping to have access to my wife's mp3 collection  available by ir
>remote control
>on her PC and I guess LIRC is the way to go for the software component.
>
>The LIRC site offers plenty of advise on ir receiver hardware from
>simple home-brew serial port units
>to off the shelf units.
>
>I kind of like the idea of the Universal Remote Control (aka Irman)
>universal unit.
>Especially the idea you can build it yourself and it reduces CPU loads.
>The soldering component
>I could probably manage but the idea of programing the Micro processor
>is a bit intimidating.
>
>Has any one in the group tackled this type of project and if so which
>route did they take?
>
>Does anyone know of any off the shelf ir receivers/ir receiver
>transmitter combinations
>available locally? Preferably one that has worked for them or someone
>they know running Linux.
>
>Hoping for plenty of good ideas from the group.
>
>
>Mark