I bought a cheap media center remote control that I want to use at my home theater pc to control xbmc and vdr. Unfortunately the remote doesn’t work out of the box. Googling for a howto took me to this thread which helped a lot but took quite a lot of time to read and find the useful hints in tons of posts. Now here’s the solution in brief:

First you need to blacklist (disable) some modules. Add the following lines to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

blacklist ati_remote
blacklist lirc_atiusb

Now add the following to /etc/lirc/hardware.conf:

#Chosen Remote Control
REMOTE=”mceusb”
REMOTE_MODULES=”"
REMOTE_DRIVER=”atilibusb”
REMOTE_DEVICE=”/dev/lirc0″
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF=”/etc/lirc/lircd.conf”
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=”"

#Chosen IR Transmitter
TRANSMITTER=”None”
TRANSMITTER_MODULES=”"
TRANSMITTER_DRIVER=”"
TRANSMITTER_DEVICE=”"
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF=”"
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_ARGS=”"

#Enable lircd
START_LIRCD=”true”

#Don’t start lircmd even if there seems to be a good config file
#START_LIRCMD=”false”

#Try to load appropriate kernel modules
LOAD_MODULES=”true”

# Default configuration files for your hardware if any
LIRCMD_CONF=”"

#Forcing noninteractive reconfiguration
#If lirc is to be reconfigured by an external application
#that doesn’t have a debconf frontend available, the noninteractive
#frontend can be invoked and set to parse REMOTE and TRANSMITTER
#It will then populate all other variables without any user input
#If you would like to configure lirc via standard methods, be sure
#to leave this set to “false”
FORCE_NONINTERACTIVE_RECONFIGURATION=”false”
START_LIRCMD=”"

Now add the following to /etc/lirc/lircd.conf. This will translate the codes sent by the remote control to some (well known, standard) keyname:

# Please make this file available to others
# by sending it to <lirc@bartelmus.de>
#
# this config file was automatically generated
# using lirc-0.8.4a(atilibusb) on Tue Sep  8 23:54:34 2009
#
# contributed by funnybox2006, modified by nebu
#
# brand:  X10
# model no. of remote control: OR22V with RF USB Dongle
# devices being controlled by this remote:
# note: use atilibusb driver for this remote and set device in hardware.conf to /dev$

begin remote

name        mceusb
bits           16
eps            30
aeps          100

one             0     0
zero            0     0
pre_data_bits   8
pre_data       0×14
post_data_bits  16
post_data      0×0
gap          139982
min_repeat      2
toggle_bit_mask 0×80800000

begin codes
Power                    0xD702
Red                      0x87B2
Yellow                0×0934
Green                0x88B3
Teletext             0x6B96
Blue                    0x0A35
Back                 0xF520
More              0x84AF
Up                   0xEF1A
Left                     0x729D
OK                   0xF31E
Right                0xF41F
Down                 0x77A2
KEY_TIMESHIFTING     0x6D98
Guide                0×0631
DVD                  0xD904
LiveTV               0x719C
VolUp                0xDE09
Home                 0x709B
ChanUp               0xE00B
VolDown              0x5D88
ChanUp               0x618C
Mute                 0xD500
Replay               0x76A1
Skip                 0xF823
Rewind               0x79A4
Play                 0xFA25
Forward              0x7BA6
Record               0xFC27
Stop                 0x7DA8
Pause                0xFE29
One                  0x628D
Two                  0xE30E
Three                0x648F
Four                 0xE510
Five                 0×6691
Six                  0xE712
Seven                    0×6893
Eight                0xE914
Nine                 0x6A95
Star                 0x8CB7
Zero                 0xEC17
Hash                 0x0D38
Clear                0x85B0
Enter                0x0B36
end codes

end remote

Now restart Lirc: /etc/lirc/lircd restart and type irw. You should get some output when you press buttons on the remote and see that the mapping created above will work. The remote will now work with xbmc without changing anything at xbmc’s keymaps or other files. The lircd.conf uses standard keynames which are already mapped by the standard xbmc configuration files to xbmc actions.

Now start xbmc and have fun!

Update: Here is a explanation how to get the remote to work with vdr.