# IrDA Support



## cahimira (Sep 11, 2012)

Hi, can anyone explain the actual IrDA support in FreeBSD? Thank you.


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## SirDice (Sep 11, 2012)

As far as I know this is it: comms/birda.


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## cahimira (Sep 12, 2012)

But birda use a serial line like old COM1 port. birda not support USB IrDA devices. I work in a project for build a MEDIA CENTER solution based en FreeBSD. And I need to control the media center using a regular IR remote. The media center hardware don't have serial ports, only USB ports.


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## SirDice (Sep 12, 2012)

IR Remotes don't use IrDA. IrDA is a serial connection. 

What you are looking for is comms/lirc.


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## nox@ (Sep 15, 2012)

*Receiving from IR remotes via USB (lirc)*



			
				cahimira said:
			
		

> But birda use a serial line like old COM1 port. birda not support USB IrDA devices. I work in a project for build a MEDIA CENTER solution based en FreeBSD. And I need to control the media center using a regular IR remote. The media center hardware don't have serial ports, only USB ports.


Well, USB IrDA dongles cannot be used for receiving signals from IR remotes anyway as is explained at the lirc website: http://lirc.org/irda.html.  If you want to be flexible in choosing your remote (i.e. want comms/lirc to be able to receive and decode "raw" IR pulses) then there are two types of USB receivers known to work on FreeBSD:

- "Original" MCE USB hardware driven by the Linux mceusb driver via multimedia/webcamd that provides a /dev/lirc0 device node for comms/lirc (see the wiki page http://wiki.freebsd.org/WebcamCompat for the mceusb hardware I and others have tested) [1] and

- FTDI-based USB hardware in "bitbang mode" via devel/libftdi that comms/lirc can use for example as 
`# lircd -H ftdi -d input=<pin number>`
(there are multiple FTDI-based devices sold, they are originally for USB-to-serial applications so you may need to connect an IR receiver chip yourself - see here http://www.huitsing.nl/irftdi/ and also this thread: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=33347)

HTH, 
Juergen

[1] Beware: there are a lot of other "MCE" receivers sold that only work with the remote they come with and that just emulate an USB keyboard - they are not working very well with lirc (repeat often cannot be made to work), and also often some buttons on the shipped remote produce nothing at all (like Volume up/down on a "Hootoo" one I have here and that I now use with a "real" mceusb receiver where all the buttons work after I made an /usr/local/etc/lircd.conf config for it using irrecord.)


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