lcdproc needs patch for the imon lcd

[Wy]

Binary package hint: lcdproc

lcdproc does not support the imon LCD device.

Instructions are at http://codeka.com/blogs/index.php?cat=30
Patch is at http://codeka.com/blogs/imon/lcdproc-0.5.2-imonlcd-0.3.patch

[Niko_K (niko-krismer)]

I strongly agree with that.

It would ease configuration my remote control a lot.
I stopped cofiguration my remote control, because i was not willing to run two patches for lcdproc and lirc after every kernel update.

[qwertM3 (oleg-aleksandrov)]

Hello.
I have HTPC case with imon LCD device and it works "out of the box". My architecture is x86, lcdproc - 0.5.2-0ubuntu1. The only thing I had to manually was missing lcdproc daemon ( although LCDd was present ).

[RGilbert (rob-gilbert)]

ubuntu 8.04 requires the patch as listed above. Fusion black HTPC with imon LCD will work if lcdproc built with patch. currently patched and running, although only showing time. Would be nice if rhythmbox plugin available to display media.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10?

[sebrock (sebrock)]

Is this patch applied in 8.10 or is it still manual work?

[Sebastien Vajda (sebvajda)]

I've got an Antect Fusion Remote that has the iMon LCD with USB id 15c2:0038.
I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 64bits.

The latest Ubuntu lcdproc package 0.5.2-0ubuntu2 does not support this device and I still need to remove the ubuntu lcdproc and build it from source + the above mentionned patch.

Could you please include this patch at leat for Jaunty and possibly make available the new package 0.5.2-ubuntu3 (I guess) as backport to Intrepid ?

[Michael F. Rimbert (mrimbert)]

Confirmed that this is reproducible on 8.10 and 9.04 alpha 3, both of which have lcdproc version 0.5.2-0ubuntu2, without the requested patch to support the iMON LCD device.

[Nir Misgav (nirmisgav)]

I vote for that bug.
Not fixed in 9.04 alpha 5.

[Nick Fox (nickj-fox)]

While this patch fixes problems with certian Soundgraph Imon devices, has it
be investigated how it effects other devices is applied?

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Nirmisgav <email address hidden> wrote:

> I vote for that bug.
> Not fixed in 9.04 alpha 5.
>
> --
> lcdproc needs patch for the imon lcd
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/153185
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mythbuntu
> Developers, which is a direct subscriber.
>

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

Debdiff for intrepid that adds the driver to the lcdproc package, package submitted to my PPA for testing purposes (but as of time of commenting, not yet built).

Most of the patch just adds files to build the imonlcd.so driver and so should be contained and not effect any of the other drivers.

However, my patch does include a tweak to server/main.h to change the RENDER_FREQ from 8 to 4 which was said to improve stability for the imonlcd device. This is the only change that probably needs testing with the other devices. (RENDER_FREQ change recommendation: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=40290)

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

Simple patch refresh against jaunty.

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

The imonlcd patch is currently being updated.

It should provide "native" support for the :0038 device, in addition to the original :ffdc device.

The updated patch should also relieve the need to tweak RENDER_FREQ, as its stability should be improved.

Another patch is in the works to extend the character set used.

The new patch (v0.4) can be found here:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2690871&group_id=119&atid=300119

Unfortunately, it has not yet been tested on very many platforms...

In the LCDd.conf file, under the [imonlcd] group, Protocol= must be set the correct device, 0 for :ffdc and 1 for :0038.

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

2nd note: might want to look carefully at the changes to LCDd.conf in the above patch. The only section that's really needed is the [imonlcd] section, the addition of imonlcd to the "The following drivers are supported:" section, and of couse, Driver=imonlcd to use this driver.

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

hi, just wondering if this explains why my imon remote doesn't work either (I also have an antec fusion black). I don't care so much about the lcd, but perhaps if it's not working my remote signals won't be transferred on to lircd? just checking as i'm running out of explanations for my lirc problems. thanks,
matt

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

I've uploaded a new patch (v0.6) to SourceForge:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2690871&group_id=119&atid=300119

v0.6 improves the character set used by the LCD.

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

@Matt Price:

The remote is related to lirc, which has been updated to support many imon devices with version 0.8.4.a

A HOWTO can be found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1069267

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

@Jonathan,

thanks for the swift reply. I'm working with Jaunty, which seems pretty different from intrepid with regards to this stuff. Not finding a lot of jaunty users in that thread. will keep working at it. in the meantime, i'll try this patch and see if I can get the lcd working... thx!

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Matt Price <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 4:17:35 PM
> Subject: [Bug 153185] Re: lcdproc needs patch for the imon lcd
>
> @Jonathan,
>
> thanks for the swift reply. I'm working with Jaunty, which seems pretty
> different from intrepid with regards to this stuff. Not finding a lot
> of jaunty users in that thread. will keep working at it. in the
> meantime, i'll try this patch and see if I can get the lcd working...
> thx!
>

I'm procrastinating from doing real work.

Hmmm.

For remotes, it looks like jaunty is using lirc v0.8.4a, which is good.

The remote should work without applying the patch to lcdproc (or even installing lcdproc) as long as you have the lcd module plugged in to its power source!

However, to get the volume knob & a remote working requires some advanced changes to configuration files and start-up scripts, which that HOWTO walks you through.

-jk

[Nir Misgav (nirmisgav)]

In my experience lirc 0.8.4a still does not not support imon ir/lcd (15c2:0038) well (if any).

I had a success the lirc 0.8.5pre1 and lirc-modules-source from Kenny Millington's testing PPA
(http://packages.kennynet.co.uk/ubuntu jaunty-testing main). (thanks to Kenny for his help)

There are some tweaks that need to be done however after installing, because the device uses two entries in /dev/ (lirc0 and lirc1) and you need to connect them both, that is something that the Debian init-script does not support at the moment.

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

Nir,

> In my experience lirc 0.8.4a still does not not support imon ir/lcd
> (15c2:0038) well (if any).

Can you clarify a little?

Does the imon LCD (15c2:0038) display things with these patches to lcdproc and a vanilla install of lirc 0.8.4a?

Or is it the remote (and volume knob) that don't work with the :0038 device & lirc 0.8.4a.

The main reason I'm asking is that this is a bug against lcdproc, for which I hope to have a solution with these patches. Issues with lirc should be addressed there (and since you're having success with early versions of 0.8.5, it looks like they are).

The right thing to do may be to require lirc >= 0.8.5 for the :0038 device, if that is required for the LCD to display stuff.

[Nir Misgav (nirmisgav)]

With lirc 0.8.4a, I couldn't setup the imon device at all, therefore neither remote nor LCD can work. (I don't have a knob)
The lirc_imon module on 0.8.4a didn't work for me, but maybe other people have other experience.
(I haven't find any evidence for a success with 0.8.4a on the web).

So, fixing only lcdproc without upgrading lirc is useless IMHO.

It is Kenny Millington that made the lirc 0.8.5 packages, and who guided me through the process of configuring (and also commented on this bug report), so I think he could shed more light on this subject.

Regards,
Nir.

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

kenny's patched version of lcdproc more or less works for me. dmesg is
cluttered withthese messges, though:

> [10484.414087] lirc_imon: lcd_write: invalid payload size: 32 (expecting 8)
> [10484.664098] lirc_imon: lcd_write: invalid payload size: 32 (expecting 8)

and i have trouble getting anything to display on the screen, though I
tried this command:
 perl -e 'print pack "H*", "80000000091e0088"' > /dev/lcd0

and it did work for me. any more hints about either of htese issues
(payload size, and maybe a guide to getting lcd's to work)? thanks,
matt

--
Matt Price
<email address hidden>

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

sorry, didn't mean to hit the send button on that last. more accurate would be: the module does seem to load unproblematically, but it's not very functional. interestingly, the perl command works whether it's sent to /dev/lcd0 or /dev/lcd1, but lcdproc doesn't produce any output whatsoever regardless of what I put in /etc/LCDd.conf, which is this:

[imonlcd]
Size=16x2
Device=/dev/lcd0
Contrast=200
Protocol=1

feeling kinda stuck on my own. thanks again,
matt

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

@Matt:

Which patch are you using? (The 0.4 codeka patch works for me, I've yet to try Jonathan's updated patch.)

Also, in LCDd.conf what does the Driver= line say? I'm assuming it says imonlcd?

I'll try to get someone at home to power on my htpc machine so I can ssh into it and pull the config at some point today... :-)

My experience mirrors Nir's but unfortunately I never tested lirc 0.8.4a with lcdproc, since I was trying to get the remotes working first so that's probably not that helpful! (Sorry Jonathan ;-))

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

I'm an idiot! sorry, I never killed the perl program that had been
hogging the lcd device. once i did that lcdproc and LCDd both worked
fine! and xbmc even sends info to the screen.

the one thing that's still a problem is that the damned thing stays on
even when the computer is shutdown. Do you have that same issue? I'd
love it if a "poweroff" command could be sent on shutdown...

thanks again for all the great patches and packages,
matt

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

@Matt...

Yep, I have the same problem. We're going to have to defer to Jonathan on this one.

I've tried using usbmon+debugfs to sniff the Windows driver sending commands to the LCD during a shutdown under vmware... Unfortunately I haven't had much time to spend on this so I don't have much to report other than I can log the commands that get sent. I will try to spend some time investigating this over weekend unless Jonathan can confirm this is resolved in a newer patch?

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

@Jonathan:

A week or so ago I downloaded what I believe is the latest patch, but I'm having trouble compiling it.

Trying to build under intrepid/amd64 or intrepid/i386:-

if x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../.. -I../.. @LIBUSB_CFLAGS@ @LIBFTDI_CFLAGS@ -fPIC -Wall -Wall -O3 -Wno-unused-function -MT hd44780-hd44780.o -MD -MP -MF ".deps/hd44780-hd44780.Tpo" -c -o hd44780-hd44780.o `test -f 'hd44780.c' || echo './'`hd44780.c; \
 then mv -f ".deps/hd44780-hd44780.Tpo" ".deps/hd44780-hd44780.Po"; else rm -f ".deps/hd44780-hd44780.Tpo"; exit 1; fi
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc: @LIBUSB_CFLAGS@: No such file or directory
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc: @LIBFTDI_CFLAGS@: No such file or directory
make[4]: *** [hd44780-hd44780.o] Error 1
make[4]: Leaving directory `/tmp/buildd/lcdproc-0.5.2/server/drivers'
make[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/tmp/buildd/lcdproc-0.5.2/server'
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/buildd/lcdproc-0.5.2'
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/buildd/lcdproc-0.5.2'
make: *** [build-stamp] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: failure: debian/rules build gave error exit status 2

(libusb-dev and libftdi-dev are installed in the chroot in which it's compiling lcdproc, just incase it was that, it was my best guess anyway!)

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Matt Price <email address hidden>
> Sent: Friday, April 3, 2009 8:55:48 AM
>
> I'm an idiot! sorry, I never killed the perl program that had been
> hogging the lcd device. once i did that lcdproc and LCDd both worked
> fine! and xbmc even sends info to the screen.
>

No worries! I'll have to remember that one when helping others in their troubleshooting.

> the one thing that's still a problem is that the damned thing stays on
> even when the computer is shutdown. Do you have that same issue? I'd
> love it if a "poweroff" command could be sent on shutdown...

No real solution, and yes, it's horribly annoying.

If you have "OnExit=2" in the [imonlcd] section of LCDd.conf, the LCD will correctly turn off when LCDd is shutdown. (You can test this by running sudo /etc/init.d/LCDd stop and seeing what happens).

Something in the linux/ubuntu shutdown process somehow resets the LCD and the backlight comes back on.

This may be worthy of a separate ubuntu bug report.

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Kenny Millington <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Sent: Friday, April 3, 2009 9:37:06 AM
> Subject: [Bug 153185] Re: lcdproc needs patch for the imon lcd
>
> @Jonathan:
>
> A week or so ago I downloaded what I believe is the latest patch, but
> I'm having trouble compiling it.
>
> Trying to build under intrepid/amd64 or intrepid/i386:-

Thanks.

It's a bug in the v0.6 patch. (Too many changes to acinclude.m4). It's a result of doing the development with the CVS release, and not scaling everything back in the patch to the 0.5.2 release.

I'll get a v0.6.1 patch out shortly.

-jk

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Kenny Millington <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Sent: Friday, April 3, 2009 9:37:06 AM
> Subject: [Bug 153185] Re: lcdproc needs patch for the imon lcd
>
>
> A week or so ago I downloaded what I believe is the latest patch, but
> I'm having trouble compiling it.
>

v0.6.1 patch uploaded to SourceForge:
  https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2690871&group_id=119&atid=300119

Patch over a fresh v0.5.2 lcdproc source directory:
  patch -p0 < lcdproc-0.5.2-imonlcd-0.6.1.patch

Then run:
  aclocal && autoconf && automake

Run configure with the imonlcd driver specified:
./configure --enable-drivers=imonlcd

(or --enable-drivers=all)

Finally, make.

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

@Jonathan...

Thanks for that, I can confirm it compiles ok.

I'm not at home so I can't test this at the moment so if anyone is feeling really brave I've pushed intrepid packages to my (personal) repo @ packages.kennynet.co.uk (intrepid-testing).

I'll try to give it a test tonight / over the weekend. :-)

Btw does anyone want jaunty packages to play with?

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

@ kenny:
i'm on jaunty only so sure, i'd love the new packages. though the ones
I have already are working great.

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

@Matt:

Well, I'd advise the adage of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but if you're feeling adventurous the jaunty packages should be pushed too (jaunty-testing).

Let me/Jonathan know how you get on (I haven't even had time to test it yet, I don't even have a jaunty machine here to check the repo published the packages successfully!)

:-)

[Kenny Millington (kmdm)]

@Jonathan:

Patch works for me, thanks.

This patch is worth it just for the Protocol= option IMO. :-)

If Matt Price confirms it works in Jaunty I'll create a debdiff and see if we can get it sponsored into the ubuntu package, although I'm guessing by now that'll be Karmic!

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 16:23 +0000, Kenny Millington wrote:
> @Matt:
>
> Well, I'd advise the adage of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but if
> you're feeling adventurous the jaunty packages should be pushed too
> (jaunty-testing).
>
> Let me/Jonathan know how you get on (I haven't even had time to test it
> yet, I don't even have a jaunty machine here to check the repo published
> the packages successfully!)
>

installed the packages, they work great! definitely better than the
previous version. thanks so much!

matt

> :-)
>
--
Matt Price
<email address hidden>

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

Looks like lcdproc 0.5.3 will include support for some of the SoundGraph iMON LCDs. You can check the current lcdproc CVS if interested.

[Jonathan Kyler (fblack947)]

lcdproc 0.5.3 should fix this "bug." There has been some discussion on the lcdproc-devel list of removing some of the debian scripts from the official release.

I have no idea if this is important to Ubuntu/Debian packagers or not.

Anyone care to weigh in? Thread here: http://lists.omnipotent.net/pipermail/lcdproc/2009-May/012972.html

-jonathan

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

Marking as resolved/released since Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) is shipping with lcdproc 0.5.3, which has previously been reported as a solution to this ticket.

[Nick Fox (nickj-fox)]

http://i-wikisport.com/product.php?topic=5fy