RemotePi Plugin and board

Hi, I’m interested in implementing RemotePi on my system.
I have Rasp3 and Allo Boss DAC.
I see that these pins are necessary:

Pin 2 and Pin 4 + 5V
Pin 6 and Pin 9 GND
Pin 8 GPIO 14 for the shutdown signal and TxD for the serial communication
Pin 10 GPIO 15 for the shutdown signal and RxD for the serial communication
Pin 12 GPIO 18 for the IR receiver. This can be changed to GPIO 17

The first 2 there is no problem, GPIO 17 is also accessible.
I do not see accessible GPIO 14 and 15 from J19 of Allo Boss.
Is there any way that works? Can I reassign other ports by soft?
In the Volumio store, will it be possible to get RemotePi?
regards

Hi danielfelix,

I think it should be possible to use the RemotePi board with the Allo Boss DAC.

According to the header pin out details on page 6 of Allo’s technical manual GPIO18 is used by the DAC. So you will have to modify the RemotePi board in order to use GPIO17 as described here: https://www.msldigital.com/pages/support-for-remotepi-board-plus-2015. I am using a HifiBerry DAC+ and therefore had to do the mod on my RemotePi as well - it is very easy.

In order to get access to pins 8 and 10 of the RPi you would have to solder wires either to the contacts of the 40 pin header on the bottom side of the RPi PCB or to the contacts of the 40 pin connector on the bottom side of the Allo or you would need to use some kind of adapter between the RPi and the Allo that allows you to grab the needed signals, like a 40 pin male to female ribbon cable.

I don’t think it is possible to assign the TxD and RxD signals to other pins of the 40 pin header of the RPi. AFAIK the UART of the RPi is hardwired to physical pins 8 and 10. It might be possible though to use other pins for a serial connection but that would mean you cannot use the UART and you would have to do the serial communication completely in software.

Hi gvolt, I understand.
I can use the cable provided by MSL or do it by wiring the pins as you did.
The plugin, solves all the software installation except lircrc? I do not have to “write” anything (except the installation of lircrc)?
best regards

Yes, the RemotePi plugin does everything needed to communicate with the RemotePi board and sets the proper GPIO in pin but it does not install lirc.

Lirc is not necessarily needed, e.g. if you would just want to power on an off your system. The IR commands for powering on and off are stored into the RemotePi board directly as you probably already have seen.

But lirc is necessary in order to control Volumio functions like “play”, “stop” etc. by IR remote. I would recommend to install version 1.2.0 of the IR Remote Controller plugin which needs to be downloaded from github and installed manually.

For a little more information see my post over here https://volumio.org/forum/volumio-plugins-collection-t6251-30.html#p45865.

Thank you! Soon I will travel to Europe and buy the RemotePi.
It is a pity that it can not be found in the Volumio store.

regards

If I use an IR like the one in the post https://volumio.org/forum/how-installed-lirc-with-receiver-and-remote-volumio-t360.html
can I use your plugin to configure lirc according to the point “Set up IR receiver for LIRC”?
In fact, the on/off part will not work.

Yes you can install and set up lirc without the IR Remote Controller plugin. The way described in your link should work. I would use systemctl commands to start, stop and especially enable lirc though. If you use

systemctl enable lirc.service

you won’t have to modify /etc/rc.local in order to get lirc started on every boot.

Just to clarify: My plugin will not configure lirc but just modify /boot/config.txt in order load the lirc-rpi overlay with the proper gpio_in_pin.

EDIT: This will also work if you have no RemotePi board installed but an IR receiver connected.

The on/off part of the RemotePi board will work as long as you store the required IR commands into the RemotePi board. Powering on and off works independently from lirc then.

EDIT: As you correctly noted this on/off functionality will indeed be missing if just an IR receiver is connected.

BTW to me it seems you don’t need to be in Europe to order the RemotePi board. Their website states “We ship anywhere in the world where there is postal service.”

Can you send me what you have in the .lircrc file?
Your location is /home/volumio/.lircrc?
I live in Argentina, in the middle of the pampas, to get a postal shipment is a miracle!

My lircrc file contains pretty much the same commands you find in https://github.com/volumio/volumio-plugins/blob/master/plugins/accessory/ir_controller/configurations/Denon%20Remote%20RC-1204/lircrc. You can reuse that. Of course the values for the “button” entries must be adapted to the key names in your lircd.conf. It is crucial that they match.

Since I am using the IR Remote Controller plugin (version 1.2.0) my lircrc file is not located in /home/volumio. The plugin stores the lircrc and lircd.conf files for each remote control in its configuration folder /data/plugins/accessory/ir_controller/configurations/<name_of_remote>/. As I use an LG AKB73615701 remote (ATM) I have created a subdirectory “LG AKB…” in the given path where I placed my own lircd.conf and lircrc files. If one selects a remote from the plugin’s UI lircrc and lircd.conf are copied to /etc/lirc. So that’s where my lircrc file resides (and why).

But I assume you won’t use the plugin. It should work putting the lircrc file in /home/volumio - at least according to http://www.lirc.org/html/configure.html :wink: - but I haven’t tested it.

Ah, I see!

There’s no way, I follow the instructions, I get to the end, and nothing.
When I do mode2 -d / dev / lirc0
This pops up:

volumio @ volumio_2: ~ $ mode2 -d/dev/lirc0
mode2: could not open / dev / lirc0
mode2: default_init (): Device or resource busy

any ideas?

Assuming that you don’t have a RemotePi board: Do you have another IR receiver connected?

If that is the case:
How is it connected?
Has the lirc-rpi overlay been loaded and what gpio_in_pin has been set?
Is lirc running / what is the result of systemctl status lirc.service?
Did you stop lirc before executing mode2 -d / dev/lirc0? When using mode2 commands lircd must not run.

I already found it, I moved to the .lircrc file, I put it in /etc/lirc / with this name: lircrc (no dot)
Now work fine!
Thanks!!!

Great, congrats! :slight_smile:

Here the configuration that worked correctly:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19teJUUrYTscdM_KeJVK6ZjJF4gpzRqvwLNlr1cy7UgA/edit?usp=sharing

Hi, how did you solve the physical pin connection?
Thank you

Pin1 5V
Pin6 Ground
Pin 11 GPIO17

You can see a picture on the link.

Thank you, reading the thread i lost the part where you abandoned RemotePi and used a standard IR receiver.
What about the Allo BOSS? I can’t see it in the pictures…

Maybe the topic of the post is wrong, I never used RemotePi, I started to investigate from there and I shared what I really did.
I have two Raspberry running, one with a USB DAC Dragonfly, of which are the photos in the doc and another with ALLO BOSS. Now I uploaded the photos from the second to the doc.
I use the pins available in Allo’s J19:
2 - 5VDC
8 - GPIO17
16 - GND
I hope I have clarified the idea.

regard