IR Remote Control Support on Raspbian Buster – JustBoom

This guide will show you how to get your IR remote control working with the Raspberry Pi using the latest Raspbian Buster OS. Since the release of Buster there have been some significant changes to the way IR is handled, in particular there is now a new driver replacing the old lirc driver. In this guide will be showing you how to setup the JustBoom remote control with the JustBoom DAC HAT. This guide will work for any IR remote control and IR receiver.

What you will need

• Raspberry Pi board
• 8GB (min) micro SD card with latest Raspbian Buster OS
• Power Supply
• Mouse & Keyboard (or SSH)
• JustBoom HAT (IR receiver)
• IR remote control

Step 1 – First step is to add the new driver as a dtoverlay. Open up a terminal window or SSH into the Raspberry Pi and then edit the /boot/config.txt file to add the following line:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add:

dtoverlay=gpio-ir,gpio_pin=25

For the JustBoom HAT the IR receiver is connected to GPIO pin 25, if your differs then you will need to change to the pin that the IR receiver is connected to on the Raspberry Pi.

Reboot for the driver to be loaded:

sudo reboot

Step 2 – Now lets get those scan codes from your remote control. For this we are going to use IR-Keytable:

sudo apt install ir-keytable

Now run the following and press the keys on your remote to get the scan codes:

sudo ir-keytable -c -p all -t

Make a note of the button pressed and the scan code.

Step 3 – Install lirc (Linux infrared control) with the following commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install lirc

Note: Installation at this point may fail on Buster.

sudo cp /etc/lirc/lirc_options.conf.dist /etc/lirc/lirc_options.conf

sudo apt install lirc

Edit the following file:

sudo nano /etc/lirc/lirc_options.conf

Change the following lines:

driver = default

device = /dev/lirc0

Save and Exit:

CTRL+O & ENTER to exit

CTRL+X to exit

Step 4 – Create remote configuration file with scan codes.

sudo nano ~/lircd.conf

Add the following for the JustBoom remote scan codes:

# Please make this file available to others
# by sending it to <lirc@bartelmus.de>
#
# this config file was automatically generated
# using lirc-0.9.0-pre1(default) on Thu Dec 15 14:58:27 2016
#
# contributed by: Francesco Vannini
#
# brand: JustBoom
# model no. of remote control: IR Remote
# devices being controlled by this remote:
#
 
begin remote
 
  name  lircd.conf
  bits            5
  flags RC5|CONST_LENGTH
  eps            30
  aeps          100
 
  one           921   855
  zero          921   855
  plead         936
  pre_data_bits   8
  pre_data       0xA0
  gap          114211
  toggle_bit_mask 0x800
 
      begin codes
          Home                     0x10
          Mute                     0x12
          Power                    0x11
          Up                       0x1A
          Down                     0x1B
          Left                     0x13
          Right                    0x14
          OK                       0x15
          Menu                     0x16
          Back                     0x17
          Volume-Up                0x19
          Volume-Down              0x18
      end codes
 
end remote

Save and Exit:

CTRL+O & ENTER to exit

CTRL+X to exit

Back up the old configuration file and then replace with new file we just created:

sudo cp ~/lircd.conf /etc/lirc/lircd.conf

Reboot:

sudo reboot

Step 5 – Now lets test our remote with the following command:

irw