Amote - Android based universal remote

[mba]

Hi there,

just thought it was time to showcase my own little project utilizing the Raspberry Pi. I have long been a bit annoyed by the fact that I was able to turn on music on my XBMC based mediacentre from all around our house using the XBMC android remote but I wasn't able to turn on my multiroom-receiver or any other IR based devices without entering the livingroom, picking up the good-old remote and pressing the necessary buttons. My goal was having a small low-power linux device running LIRC, with some basic IR blaster circutry, which I could communicate with at all times and thereby controlling the IR based devices around our house. When I stumbled across the Raspberry Pi project I just knew it was perfect! My small contribution to this project is an Android based multi remote. Some of the highligts are:

• Design your own universal remote with a mix of buttons from different devices and LIRC servers
• Use icons, text and symbols for each button
• Configurable number of coloumns and rows and up to 10 different favorite remotes
• Different layout depending on screen orientation
• Should work with any standard LIRC server and WinLIRC
• Tested on Android 1.6 to 4.1

Get the app from Google Play (its free) and follow the instructions in the pdf manual (download it from here)

See a discussion regarding the LIRC gpio driver on the Raspberry Pi and installation tips here

My next goal is to get a TellStick up and running on the Raspberry Pi and implement support for it in the app. This way you should be able to turn lights on and off and controlling dimming on commercially available RF based light switches. See http://www.telldus.se/

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[kev0n]

Hi,
im looking in to a similar project, but i want to build a web interface like this one,
http://sebastiannilsson.com/k/projekt/e ... t-web-gui/
my main idea was to use the telldus, but i would also want to use a ir blaster, witch one do you use?
the web GUI above would be really nice but the problem is that its made for Eventghost, and they only exist on windows, have you tried the telldus with your Rpi? and if, witch program do you use?

[mba]

Nice idea

Hi,
im looking in to a similar project, but i want to build a web interface like this one,
http://sebastiannilsson.com/k/projekt/e ... t-web-gui/
my main idea was to use the telldus, but i would also want to use a ir blaster, witch one do you use?

I am just using a selfmade IR blaster atm. See http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html or http://aron.ws/projects/lirc_rpi/ has some examples.

the web GUI above would be really nice but the problem is that its made for Eventghost, and they only exist on windows, have you tried the telldus with your Rpi? and if, witch program do you use?

I haven't tried it yet, I am going to order the TellStick soon, as I reckon it only needs a ftdi driver which should be available in the kernel in the debian distro from the download pages already. I don't know about any software which would suit my purpose, so I guess I am writing my own telldus server which I can communicate with in a similar manner as the Lirc server. I think I could use the tdtool for inspiration. tdtool is a commandline tool for sending commands and such.
Doesn't telldus already come with a websolution? Or is it something completely different you are looking for?

[centralvic]

Hi, how does the app connect to the LIRC, bluetooth or LAN or something else ?

[davka003]

I have built a telldus web service for the RPi, sure my projects overlap a lot with the Amote as it also features a "remote building tool" but for webpages served by the built in webserver.

However it also contains a REST API for controlling Tellstick devices as well as a web interface to configure the different devices controlled by the tellstick.

I write about it here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... ck#p191580

Project home page:
http://automagically.weebly.com/

[mba]

Hi, how does the app connect to the LIRC, bluetooth or LAN or something else ?

It connects over lan. Lirc provides a network service when using the 'listen' flag.

[elParaguayo]

Just wanted to add that this is running beautifully for me with an IguanaIR transmitter/receiver on the RPi.

Thank you.

[mba]

Thanks for the thumbs up

After months of other stuff I finally got to making some additional blasters. I need to 'hit' everything from a central place in our livingroom so I needed a lot of IR diodes flashing simultaneously illuminating the entire room. I am using an irtoy usb blaster from Dangerous Prototypes, and I looked at the blaster circuit they are using see http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Fil ... oy-vii.png
I changed the circuit a bit. Using a 12V powersupply I can put about 7-8 TSAL6400 in series and make an omnidirectional blaster.

I will now start using it myself on a daily basis and if I get some time I will do some minor changes to the Amote app. If you have some input for improvements I will take a look at it.

Best regards
Martin

[infernocs]

Hi, how does the app connect to the LIRC, bluetooth or LAN or something else ?

It connects over lan. Lirc provides a network service when using the 'listen' flag.

I'm going crazy with this lirc thingy, I'we googled and read through forums three days now but I can't find any info on how to enable this "listen" mode. ¨

I'we setup lirc as explained here: http://alexba.in/blog/2013/01/06/settin ... spberrypi/
I can read and send ir codes but nowhere can I find information about how to enable the network thingy so I can use an android app to send the codes.

I suspect it should be in the hardware.conf but I'm probably wrong, actually I'm not even sure that's what enables the network handshaking to lirc.
Can't find anything in the documentation for lirc.

Please help.

[mba]

Hi,

From my old notes i did this:
I added listen to:
LIRCD_ARGS="--uinput --listen"
in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

I don't know if this still holds true as it is more than a year since I tried it last time. Are you using the default port 8765 and have you checked that the port the port is open on your network? Snippet from the LIRC manual:

-l, --listen [[address:]port]]
Let lircd listen for network connections on the given address/port. The default address is 0.0.0.0, which means that connections on all network interfaces will be accepted. The default port is 8765. No security checks are currently implemented. The listening lircd instance will send all IR events to the connecting lircd instances.

Best regards
Martin

[infernocs]

Thanks for the reply, don't know where to change the port so it should be default.
Was scanning for open ports on the raspi but no, just ssh, vnc and some others open.
I managed to manually start lircd with -l and that's what opens the port also.
I also scrolled the manual many times and found lines mentioning that --listen option but nothing about where to add it.
So thank you very much! This did the job Now to teach all my remotes and start blasting

Hi,

From my old notes i did this:
I added listen to:
LIRCD_ARGS="--uinput --listen"
in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

I don't know if this still holds true as it is more than a year since I tried it last time. Are you using the default port 8765 and have you checked that the port the port is open on your network? Snippet from the LIRC manual:

-l, --listen [[address:]port]]
Let lircd listen for network connections on the given address/port. The default address is 0.0.0.0, which means that connections on all network interfaces will be accepted. The default port is 8765. No security checks are currently implemented. The listening lircd instance will send all IR events to the connecting lircd instances.

Best regards
Martin