Better support for multiple/held down keypresses

[Chris!]

Hi All,

Thought i'd let you know that Jason is concerned about the "sticky key" effect sometimes observed (e.g. when a key on the remote is pressed multiple times in quick succession resulting in a lot more scrolling than anticipated).

This is due to the way Flirc currently implements how it receives a signal, Jason explains it beautifully below:

Here is a quick tutorial:

Remotes send out a 'packet of data' in the form of light pulses. These packets are separated by each other by ~40ms-120ms. That number is constant on each remote, but varies from remote to remote.

When you press the button, the remote sends out a bunch of packets all with this fixed spacing (again, where the fixed spacing is different on each remote).

So when you press a remote button, flirc actually may sees like 30 packets. If you are rapidly pressing a button, I need to distinguish if this is you holding the button down, or if you are just pressing it rapidly.

It's not very easy to do, and I have a general concept that works for remotes, but will often feel 'sticky'.

As you can see there are significant variables in there:

As you can imagine and appreciate it will take a lot of Jason's work and (personal free) time, so your patience is appreciated - rest assured it's on his list, at the earliest after wake is perfected.

Pleasant regards

Chris

[Rand]

Interesting. Sounds extremely difficult if not impossible to have a perfect solution for every single remote out there. Personally, I would love to be able to tweak this myself to get perfect repeat detection with my own remote, rather than a mediocre catch-all solution. I understand the desire to have flirc be as easy as possible to setup but, perhaps, as the community grows, we could help develop "profiles" for specific remotes that are selectable in the GUI that have the necessary settings ready to go. In other words, help us help you B)

[Chris!]

Indeed - probably a lot of work for Jason to implement to start with. However things are happening behind the scenes that should free some of his time up... (cue suspenseful music)

[phantomwhale]

Consider me in suspense - have been trying to get my Harmony One working with the Flirc, with different TV brands and delay settings, and I'm always getting a "double-press". Better support for this issue would be awesome !

[ariflirc]

Using a Denon receiver remote - it gets difficult to use FLIRC at times due to the constant key repetition

Hoping this will be addressed reasonably soon :)

[mike]

I'd settle for a configurable delay even if it was a settings text/xml/plist file that had to be edited externally. I understand the desire to make it elegant but given the pace of development, quick and dirty is preferable for me. I purchased three of the flircs, but really only use one because of the quirks and wife-acceptance-factor.

[elliotnunn]

Chris,

I would like to "throw my name in the hat" as someone who wants to adjust flirc's response to rapid button presses. I recently purchased two flircs, and I was sad to find that it takes a fair bit of patience to navigate XBMC with all the runaway scrolling.

Would it be possible for us to patch the firmware ourselves with a hex editor? Could jason give us some pointers on how to do this?

Kind regards,

Elliot.

[Chris!]

Hi Elliot,

Jason is in the process of rewriting and testing a new firmware. This firmware's main aim is to Clean the firmware up (I have a feeling this thread will benefit from this)

Rest assured it is being worked on :)

Pleasant regards.

[elliotnunn]

Chris,

Thanks for letting us know! I wish Jason the best of luck, and I eagerly await the results of his hard work. I can't imagine getting this level of support from a larger-scale manufacturer, and I am very grateful.

Kind regards,

Elliot.

[mike]

Chris,

Any word on the new version you mentioned last month? I skimmed over the forums but I don't see any progress with the beta firmware. I'd like to put the other two Flircs I bought to use.

[Chris!]

Hi mike,

You're right there hasn't been any new beta's for quite a while. Jason is working through the kinks - restructuring code rather than the processes he was doing, you can keep up to date with what he's doing via his blog (blog.flirc.tv).

It does sound rather promising (taken from his latest blog posting)

My goal is to have major releases by the end of the month of both the firmware and the GUI.

Pleasant regards