getting the IgaunaWorks IR USB transceiver to work

A while ago I bought this infrared transceiver. Here are the steps to get it to work under Fedora Core 4 (my current kernel version is 2.6.11). In particular, my goal was to get the Apple remote to work with mplayer.

For Fedora 8 it was sufficient to install the latest iguanaIR RPM (here now 0.93-1), and a recent lircd: I installed version 0.8.2 from source (first removed the lirc RPM that was already there, and disabled it using system-config-services). See the instructions below starting at "lirc software". Note: much later, some system update cycle had put lirc-0.8.4a-81.fc8 in place, which broke things again.. Removing it, and installing lirc-0.8.1pre2-1 from source fixed it again.

the Apple remote	the IguanaWorks USB IR transceiver	enclosed in a Lego case!

iguanaIR software

• check which version of udev you are running: rpm -q udev. If it is below 071, run yum update udev (I was running 059, which may actually have been ok)
• get the latest RPM from IguanaWorks' download page, and install it, for example:
  rpm -ivh iguanaIR-0.27-1.i386.rpm
• in the file /etc/rc.d/init.d/iguanaIR, change the line:
  START="daemon --user=iguanair $IGPATH $IGUANAIR_OPTIONS -l $LOGFILE"
  to:
  START="daemon --user=root $IGPATH $IGUANAIR_OPTIONS -l $LOGFILE"
  (note that iguanair changed to root)
  (you may also want to comment out the line with udevtrigger, unless your version of udev has it)
• replace the file /etc/udev/rules.d/iguanaIR.rules by this file:
  SYSFS{manufacturer}=="IguanaWorks", RUN="/sbin/service iguanaIR rescan"
  (the file supplied in the rpm did not work for me). Note: from udev 098 onwards, you should use ATTRS{manufacturer} instead.
• to control the amount of output of the igdaemon to /var/log/iguanaIR.log, modify /etc/default/iguanaIR to read:
  IGUANAIR_OPTIONS="-v -v"
  (for example, this will produce a lot of debugging output, use "" for the smallest number of logged messages)

lirc software

• download lirc from this page, the file lirc-0.8.1pre2.tar.bz2 worked for me (so do not get the "official" 0.8.1 version), and compile and install:
  tar xjvf lirc-0.8.1pre2.tar.bz2
  cd lirc-0.8.1pre2
  ./configure
  From the menu that appears, select "Driver Configuration", then "USB Devices", then "Iguanaworks USB IR Transceiver", click "Ok", then select "Save configuration & run configure"
  make
  make install
• if you have the small Apple remote, then you can try this this apple.conf file, or this one (I found that I had to regenerate the file for a 2nd remote (!))
• if not, and with your remote handy, run irrecord apple.conf and carefully follow the onscreen instructions (you are free to use a different filename of course, remote.conf for example)
• add this line to /etc/rc.local:
  /usr/local/sbin/lircd /etc/apple.conf
  (assuming you've put apple.conf in the /etc directory)

mplayer

• After you've installed lirc, you can simply recompile mplayer. Its configure script should detect that you have lirc installed (ignore the message about "lircc"). If you installed mplayer from an rpm file, it is possible that it already has Lirc support enabled.
• Next, create a file ~/.lircrc, which specifies which remote buttons correspond to which mplayer command (you can use this example). Use mplayer -input cmdlist and mplayer -input keylist for a full list of commands and keys, respectively.

testing, configuring

Some "notes to self" I wanted online:

• test if receiver is receiving anything:
  igclient --receiver-on --sleep=30
• full irrecord command line:
  irrecord -H igaunaIR -d /dev/lircd my_remote.conf
• check for iguana daemon errors:
  tail /var/log/iguanaIR.log
• manually send a remote command:
  irsend SEND_ONCE lgtv POWER
• list all available remote commands:
  irsend LIST lgtv ""

You may want to reboot to test your setup. It should work regardless of whether the transceiver is plugged in during boot, or is plugged in later.