mike at acaciaclose
Jan 1, 2006, 2:15 AM
Post #2 of 4
(6502 views)
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Re: My wireless keyboard/mouse/remote setup
[In reply to]
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Yeechang Lee wrote:
> Larry's Club Cars <larrysclubcars [at] yahoo> says:
>
>> With a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse
>> in the frontend, do I really need a remote control?
>>
>
> I too have a wireless keyboard, but still bought myself a learning
> remote. A keyboard is nice for many MythTV-related tasks, and very
> efficient in many ways, but it just can't replace the convenience of
> sitting back on a comfortable chair navigating the frontend with one
> thumb. At the same time, a remote can't replace the convenience of a
> keyboard in simple things like entering letters and words. I made sure
> to get an IR keyboard/mouse so I could teach the codes to my remote;
> this way I haven't had to bother with lirc.
>
> I bought an ACK-581 (<URL:http://www.directron.com/ack581.html>).
>
> Positives include:
>
> * The keyboard and integrated mouse thumbpad work well, and at the end
> of the day that's what counts. Two PS/2 cables snake out of the IR
> receiver, so no compatibility worries about USB keyboards under
> Linux, as the KnoppMyth people warn against (although I'm using
> Fedora Core 4).
> * The black color goes well with the rest of my entertainment setup
> (although, naturally, the big-screen flat panel I've ordered only
> comes in silver). Beige is also available.
> * LinEAK's xosd plugin givss me nice-looking on-screen feedback for
> the multimedia keys.
>
> Negatives include:
>
> * Since seemingly few have heard of this model before, it's not
> supported out-of-the-box by LinEAK. It's not hard to add support
> with some perusing of LinEAK's documentation, but still an annoyance
> considering just how many keyboards LinEAK *does* support.
> * Not all the multimedia keys generate xev-visible keycodes out of the
> box; I had to write a little shell script to generate them with
> setkeycodes after figuring out the proper ones with the LinEAK
> documentation. (Mysteriously, following said steps, the Mute and
> Volume Up keys generated the same keycodes, meaning I had to
> reassign Volume Up to a vacant keycode.) Sometimes, for some reason
> I can't figure out, the new keycodes disappear and I have to rerun
> the shell script. I thus set up a cron entry to regenerate them
> regularly.
> * If an IR signal gets cut off or garbled mid-keystroke (if, say, the
> line of sight gets interrupted while typing), the last-typed key is
> liable to continue to repeat endlessly until I push another key. I'm
> not sure if this is a quirk of this keyboard or the way the x86
> keyboard signaling architecture in general is designed.
>
> My learning remote is the fabled URC MX-500. Its price has come down a
> *lot* recently; mine was only $80 or so from Amazon.com.
>
> Positives include:
>
> * Enormous flexibility. I won't go into the remote's many virtues in
> detail; see the lengty review at
> <URL:http://www.remotecentral.com/mx500/> for more detail. Let's
> just say the remote can do pretty much anything you'd ever want an
> IR-based remote to do (with a couple of caveats that I'll get to),
> all with surprising ease of use, and that there's a reason it's been
> the king of super-programmable (yet still somewhat mass-market)
> remotes for years.
>
> Negatives include:
>
> * Size. It's big, even for a six-footer like me. Not a problem for me,
> and the remote and its keys all *feel* great, but those with small
> hands should be aware.
> * I can't figure out how to get taught keys to auto-repeat. The manual
> makes some vague mention of holding down the keys you teach to it on
> the source (the keyboard, in my case) in order to get the MX-500 to
> repeat, but for me that either does nothing or results in
> endlessly-repeating keys (no doubt with an identical cause to the
> similar issue I mentioned earlier regarding the keyboard). Why URC
> didn't enable the remote's keys to repeat automatically, without
> further effort, by holding keys down (or, perhaps, some setting to
> enable or disable repeating per key) I won't ever know.
> * I also can't figure out how to program keys with Shift-, Alt-, or
> Control-modifications (attempts to do so result in the modifiers
> often "sticking," again, no doubt related to the endless-repeating
> issue), although I suspect this is probably an issue with training
> any learning remote with a keyboard.
>
> Let me close the subject of remotes and keyboards with a puzzle. With
> the ATrpms MythTV packaging, I can't get the keystroke-editing
> function in Mythweb to work with the global keys section; any keys I
> put in there don't stick. Suggestions?
>
>
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Yeechang
Great writeup, I have gone for a similar route. I have several learning
remotes, and all of them really struggle to learn the key board, it can
take 8 or 9 times for it to learn each key.
Also have you tried the KDE keyboard customisation
http://www.acaciaclose.co.uk/31338/37429.html
Mike C
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