Update on my Raspbmc media player project.

The Infrared Remote control is working great now.  This means that I can just reuse a free old remote control and move the $20 wireless USB keyboard onto another project.    This also means that the player draws even less power now, the IR Receivers are amazingly low power.  I am re-using the old remote control from the media player that Netgear deactivated as soon as I hooked it up to the Internet. 

I got an IR receiver from Lady Ada's site here:  http://www.adafruit.com/products/157 for just a couple of dollars.  Plus shipping, so buy a lot of other stuff there too. *L*

I also bought the cable and bread board connector for the Raspi here:  http://www.adafruit.com/products/914 Since this is  reusable for many projects I consider it a tool and am not adding it to the cost of this single project.

If you want they sell a remote control with a configuration file all figured out for you already.  If you want to reuse and old remote, that is easy to do too.

I followed the directions on Ada Fruit as well and programmed my remote control in just a few minutes.

http://learn.adafruit.com/using-an-ir-remote-with-a-raspberry-pi-media-center

I had to type in the commands from a screen shot, here is something you can copy and paste from:

sudo modprobe lirc_rpi
sudo kill $(pidof lircd)

mode2 -d /dev/lirc0

irrecord -d /dev/lirc0 ~/lircd.conf

 

A lot of remote controls have been programmed already, and the config files shared at this site: http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/

This receiver is so much more sensitive than any I have ever used before.  I can literally point the remote control 180 degrees away from the chip and it still reads the button presses.  The old media player would sometimes not get a button press pointing right at it.

I have three more of the chips and 3 more Raspi boards, so I will be adding a wire harness to each of these 4 chips and wiring up every Raspi I own with inexpensive IR. 

The Raspi's can also send IR so I will be working on that next.