# Keyboard and IR receiver for NAS+XBMC



## unruly (Feb 14, 2012)

I finished the build of my NAS+XBMC box with zfs on FreeBSD 9.0. Everything works great, but I still need to do a couple of final touches.  I need a keyboard and IR receiver for this thing. For keyboard I'm thinking about Logitech K400. It has touchpad which can replace mouse... Does anyone have any experience with this keyboard under FreeBSD? Or maybe you would suggest some other small keyboard for living room use (no separate mouse pls)?

I need an IR receiver that I'll be able to use to control XBMC using my Harmony remote control. What folks use for this thing? I never used any IR receivers for any computer so I'm pretty much clueless here....

One other general question (not sure if I need to open another thread for it): right now to start XBMC I need to login into account, startx and then xbmc in shell window... Is there a way this can be automated, so when I start the computer it starts X automatically and starts XBMC in it. I don't mind starting it manually as this machine is always up, but when something does not work I can simply tell my wife to off/on the box. 

Thanks in advance!


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## tingo (Feb 14, 2012)

To get X to start automatically, you need a (X) Display Manager. Setup is described in the Handbook: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-xdm.html
The various display managers have different setups / configs for autologin, which will log you in automatically.
Finally, you need to start xbmc after logging in.


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## unruly (Feb 20, 2012)

Thanks tingo. I did not have much time to work on this one, but I made an account which when I log in to it starts X, which starts xbmc, when *I* leave xbmc, it logs out properly. So the only thing *I* need *I* think is auto-login in "console" mode. I read somewere a while ago that someone did it, *I*'ll just google it. :0 

As of keyboard. K400 worked right away. Just insert dongle and start typing.

The only outstanding issue is making remote working in FreeBSD. I have Harmony 880. LIRC is installed, but still cannot tie the ends and cannot find much info on the  net. *A*ny pointers? Anyone?


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