Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Ah, my apologies; I haven't had as much experience with projectors as with other devices (and I really do need to add a projector-specific panel to Pierogi, as there are some unique commands on most projector remotes). Let me take another look in my sources, I might be able to find some new config files...

Edit: My sources are showing that "NEC Projector Keyset 2" should have the right controls for the V260 projector. I'll see if perhaps there's an alternate version of the V260, but if you could, please re-check with this keyset and see if you can get the projector to react. Thanks!

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

sorry for being late but i checked again and it didn't work

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Thanks! I have found one more NEC projector keyset; it might do the trick. I'll look around to see if I can find any more, and put out another update.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Just downloaded Pierogi, because I couldn't find the remote for my tv. Worked straight away - THANK YOU! :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Thanks! :) Please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see added to the app; I've kind of left it on the back-burner for a while now, but I've managed to learn a few new UI tricks from other projects I've been working on, so I do plan to do a refresh of Pierogi eventually. (Plus, I need to get the documentation back in order, so I can finally finally get an update pushed into the Extras repository... :) )

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Oh, I am glad you asked!!! :D

Actually I have something (I have only played around with it for one day now, but I already have quite a few Keysets in my "favorite" list. The list is a great idea, but it would be really helpful, if they could be renamed or somehow labeled in the favorite tab... because I expect the list to become longer and then it might get confusing:rolleyes: - just a suggestion. ;)

Thanks again!

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Ah, let me ask, are you using the 1.0 version of Pierogi (from the Extras repository)? I have been continuing to update Pierogi for some time since that version was created; you can find the latest version (1.1.40) in the Extras-Devel repository. It still needs a little work before I can push it up to the Extras repository, but I think it is very usable. And yeah, it has the ability to give a "nickname" to each favorite keyset (which was indeed a feature that many folks requested). :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

uummmm... yeeaa. Thanks for the hint.

I usually read the last page to see if it is still "alive" and also check the first post to get an overview. I always find it helpful if the first post is updated and gives information on the current version and where to find it... but that's just me.
Anyway, I will check it out. :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

I tried to use Pierogi ... couldn't configure to LG hd tv, Samsung surround sound nor satelite decoder ... I spent a few hours trying various keysets ... non worked. I hope updated version does work .... Look forward to it

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

humm , make sure you are pointing the device in right direction.
oth howdo i delete faviouratr keysets

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

My apologies! :) I just haven't been keeping up Pierogi as I should; I've been spending my free time on a variety of other pasta products, as well as learning the ways of Android... I'll try to put a bit more effort back into my original app here. (It does help to see that folks are still using it... :) )

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Actually, LG tvs have been fairly well supported in Pierogi all the way back to before version 1.0. I'm not sure exactly what the problem would be; perhaps you could try the "Automated Keyset Search" in the development version of Pierogi. If that isn't able to trigger a response in any controllable device, there may be a problem with the IR port on your N900. :(

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Ah, well, I was trying to consolidate all management of keysets to a single screen, which is currently accessed by the "Select Keyset from List" option in the drop-down menu. (And yeah, I need to get this into the documentation!) If you go to that list, you can hit the "Only Show Favorites" checkbox to pull up your favorites, and from there, click on one of your favorite keysets. At that point, a dialog box pops up that gives you the option to remove it from the favorites list or change its nickname.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

got it :)
so complicated lol anyway its easy now :p
and yes i use pierogi ofen and most ofen people with 500 inch dual octa core slabs ask with their jaws open how you did that what app in playstore also pierogi was one of the prime reason that led to nabbing of my phone by the next door kid lol.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

thanks copernicus ... seems like a fault in the ir port ... :(

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Well, hmm. One quick check to see if the IR port is working at all is to look at it with a digital camera (if you've got a camera or another cell phone handy). The IR wavelength being used is invisible to our eyes, but most digital cameras are sensitive to it. For example, I just switched on Pierogi's automated keyset search (which spends a lot of time turing the IR LED on and off), and took a picture of my N900 from another cellphone -- you can see the light from the LED in the attached photo:

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Thanks Copernicus, will give it a try ... I have done an extensive search of the problem and it seems quite common on the N900 re. LIRC ... I know zip about programming and would not even know where to begin to repair ...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Ok, Thanks Copernicus ... I have established that the IR is working ... shows up on a photo ... So, I need to experiment more with options.

Perhaps I am too far away from the appliances ...

Hope to get to the bottom of this now.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Well, the IR LED on the N900 isn't extremely powerful. My TV reacts reliably from up to about 2m, hit-and-miss from 3m and not at all from 4m.

Still, useful when the kids lose the TV remote (again) :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

I finally installed the current version. Mainly because I was hoping the keyset for my Grundig tv would be included, but it is not. It is called “GRUNDIG 48 VLE 4421 BF”. I would be happy to provide you with any further information you need to maybe make it work – that would be soooo great! :D Just let me know what you need!

As a workaround I am currently using the “Grundig TV Keyset 2” from your list. The keypad works ok, but none of the other tabs. Especially the buttons on from the “main” menu show ... unexpected behavior :rolleyes: I guess that is because it is just not the right keyset…

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Ah, I have had lots of trouble with Grundig. :) I love their hardware, but they've used dozens of different (and often obscure) IR protocols in their products.

Well, at least that makes things a bit easier! :) The Grundig TV Keyset 2 is based on the classic RC5 protocol; I'll look around and see if I can find more Grundig-related RC5 configurations.

BTW, could you test out the "Philips TV Keyset 1" on your TV? Philips created RC5, and many manufacturers will simply use their keyset configuration directly. It might work for your Grundig...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Quick request:

Any chance you could promote one of the more recent versions down to extras-testing, and eventually extras? I see it's been sitting on 1.0.0 in extras and extras-testing for a while, and while I don't use pierogi extensively, it seems to me like the -devel versions have been pretty stable/safe for a long while now, while containing many useful improvements over 1.0.0.

I know it's a pain to keep up with that stuff (esp. prodding people to honestly up/down vote each version in extras-testing, then checking back every once in a while to see if it got enough votes yet), but there's definitely value that we as a community could extract if we kept trying to properly promote stuff down to 'extras'.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Ok, yeah, I do need to get moving on this. :) I've been nervous about all the major changes I've been making to the UI, hoping to get a little more feedback about them. (And yeah, I keep wanting to add more tweaks too...) Let me try to consolidate what I've got, and finally update the documentation.

Now that I think about it, here's one question I have about the current system: once you've pushed an app up to Extras, there's no real way to perform maintenance on it. That is, I very much like the idea of having a "stable" code branch and a "development" code branch. For example, once I pushed 1.0.0 up to Extras-testing, I went ahead and started tweaking the UI in version 1.1. However, there's no reason I couldn't back-port new keysets into the 1.0 branch (and I still have the 1.0 code sitting on my computer here); however, I see no (easy) way to maintain two different codesets within the Extras mechanism.

Ultimately, you've either got to push up a nearly perfect app to Extras-testing, or hold off on making any major changes to the app in Extras-devel until you're fairly sure you won't need to push up any fixes. I've been following the first path, and have been leery of pushing up my code until it's in a fairly stable state...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Awesome! That totally did it!!! The Philips Keyset is working :D

Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Thanks! I'll go ahead and add the Philips keyset to the list of Grundig keysets as well, then. :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Just out of interest, how many genuine keysets are there in Pierogi?
Without duplicates, that is? At least to the nearest order of magnitude ;)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

That is an interesting question! I don't really keep count, myself; let me take a quick look...

Ok, as of today, there are 680 named keysets. Of these, there are only a few outright duplicates (such as the Grundig TV Keyset 5 I just added). (I had expected that there would be a lot of manufacturers simply copying existing keysets, but that doesn't seem to be the case.)

There are, however, quite a large amount of keysets that only differ from each other by a few commands. For these, I've been delegating one keyset as the root, and having the rest only store their differences from the root. I've labeled the branch keyset names with a letter, so they'd be "Keyset 1a", "1b", and so forth. I'm counting 173 of these right now; so, in essence, there should be roughly 500 truly unique keysets in Pierogi at this point...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Well, on the devices I have which are constantly on Extras-devel, I've found the UI perfectly fine. I don't really have anything stand out in my mind as particularly bad/unintuitive about it. Well, that Automated Keyset Search or whatever - it's a bit unclear just from looking at it how it's supposed to work. But I suspect if I just started fiddling with it, I'd figure it out pretty quickly.

I have a couple of other ideas for how you can enable pushing keyset updates without having to update the entire app:

1. Separate it out into two packages, "pierogi" for the actual executable, conffiles, etc, and "pierogi-data" (nice, general naming that I see Debian packages use all the time) or "pierogi-keysets" or something more explicit like that, for the actual keyset data. Then pierogi can list pierogi-data in it's "Depends" field. That way, when you've got a keyset update, you can upload and promote it through independently of the code-base. Since keysets are probably a lot easier to verify as not-broken than a non-trivial program is, this allows you to decouple the promotion of keyset updates from the promotion of the program, while still keeping it within the packaging system.

2. You could have pierogi automatically check for keyset updates and download new keysets. The biggest advantage it has over the repos is that you can get keyset updates out even faster. The biggest (dis)advantage (depending on what aspect of this point you feel is more significant), this removes the "community-votes-on-it" check from the keyset data. The biggest technical disadvantage is that now you're maintaining it on some other server outside of the repos (which has two implications: 1, availability is now dependent on a third party besides community-maintained infrastructure; 2, it's outside the package management system, which means that if a good reason ever came up, I couldn't make a package depend on a specific version or later of your keyset files.)

[edit]Another advantage to point 1 is that it requires no additional complexity in the pierogi code: pierogi doesn't have to suddenly gain a whole slew of networking, version checking, downloading/unpacking/etc code, which number 2 would require. Admittedly, you could just shell script all of that, thereby offloading most of the complexity, but it's still more than nothing - I imagine the keysets are currently in their own separate files already, and not hard-coded into the code, hence my assumption that just having it as two separate packages would add no complexity. But if they are hard-coded into the binary right now, then I would argue it would be must better from a design perspective to split them off regardless of what you did with the packaging for the repos, so that complexity is justified and ought to be in there anyway.[/edit]

Well, I think the first path is more or less the correct one, but I wouldn't necessarily be so cautious/strict about what goes to testing. I think the idea is, you push things from -devel to testing as soon as you think it's ready for extras. Which to me would mean, as soon as I subjectively think it doesn't have any new bugs/problems, or that any problems it does have are outweighed by the improvements. But once I was fairly certain I didn't break anything with it, I'd go and push it down into testing.

For aircrack-ng, for example, I would usually capture some packets, maybe crack a single WEP network with it, but then I'd figure "well, it installs/uninstalls/reinstalls fine, and the likelihood of stuff having broken isn't too big since the code is mostly good, so I'll just push it into testing and other people who use it will yell at me or downvote it if there's a problem."

As a maintainer, I expect -devel to be my playground/scratch-space, -testing to be where versions I thought were good enough for general consumption to go, and extras to be where version "the public" considered worthy would go. I trust that if I put a flawed version into -testing, it will either get caught and stopped early on, or if a problem does get through, that the fix will likely be promoted through fairly quickly.

So in short, I think your extras-testing criteria needs to be that it's "nearly-perfect" - you just need to think it's "probably not more broken than it was".

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Thank you! :) I'm really not a UI guy, and so I've always been nervous that what works for me may be completely off for the public at large. (Which is why I always want to at least get the documentation straight before pushing anything up...)

Ah, well, that's the thing -- in Pierogi, the keysets are part of the actual executable. Looking at, say, an average LIRC config file, you might think that a keyset is a large, complicated beast; but the LIRC is protocol-agnostic, and does nothing but count raw IR pulses. Once you understand the protocol that a device is using, all you're left with is at most a few dozen integers -- one for each button on the given remote. I really saw no reason not to enter these directly into the code...

Ah, well, the problems with the QtIrreco app kind of steered me away from this path. Actually, I really am not a fan of most modern remote-control apps, even if all they are doing is downloading advertisements; I really think a simple tool like this should be fully independent, and work without needing to access the net for anything. :)

But yeah, I am looking at this concept for other projects...

For most projects, I would agree; however, given that IR keysets are tiny static sets of integers (as the devices being controlled generally do not support modifications to their controls), I still believe that in this case there's no downside to simply adding them directly to the code. :)

Hmm. Alright, well, they do say that "perfect is the enemy of good". :) Let me get the documentation into a relatively good shape, and push up what I've got... :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

some usability improvements might be considerd
swiping left right could change tabs as lying on bed one would not need to look the ph to toggle tabs as that way its more like a actual remote
hardware volume keys as an option to actually control the volume of tv or change channels of hifi sattop whatever
camera butt half press to mute full press to power down when sleepy
fullscreen option as many times i found myself to quit pierogi when using blindly
if implemented hw buttons should work regardless of screen lock not like lanternes camera button toggle which goes dead when screen lock kicks in;)
all in all fear less just look at every android version ui changes or look at win 8s slight ui changes comparedto xp 7 people coudnt care more ..
pasta products are awsome i just want to enjoy them nore.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

I see, and I can completely understand why you'd do so: if it's just a few ints here and there, it's reasonable enough, since the overhead to add some text file parsing to load the keyset(s) would be pretty large.

Still, I would vote in favor of having separate keyset files, preferably in a human readable format. It would enable not only the packaging flexibility suggested above, but also would enable a lot of flexibility for the end-user: people could test/develop modified/new keysets, even on their N900s directly, without having to rebuild the app for every change.

If you're okay with the idea but just don't want to take the time to code it, I wouldn't mind taking a go at it, and then you can reject/approve my patch as you wish.

I agree completely, which is why I was much more in favor of alternative 1 than alternative 2 anyway. Besides things like IDS/IPS rulesets, which need to have as rapid of updates as possible, I am tempted to say distributing stuff through third party servers when it can be packaged instead is not the best route to go - I just figured I'd throw it in there for completeness.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

That would be interesting; the real problem is that Qt was only starting to add gestures to their framework right as they were giving up on supporting the N900. :( All the low-level gesture code is there, but you can't just say "when the user swipes left, do this"; instead, you need to collect the user's movements, decide when a "swipe" has been performed, and then manually manipulate the screen to react to that. I've got a little app that changes the screen when the user swipes, but I don't yet have the code to make the window slide left or right to indicate that a potential swipe motion has been detected, so it's a little unintuitive. :(

Well, but I've already got the volume keys tied to changing between your favorite keysets. :) The other problem is that the volume keys are on the same side of the N900 as the IR LED, so you kind of have to put your fingers all the way around the device while it is pointing at the TV or whatever; very awkward. :)

That would be nice! Same problem, though; the buttons on that side of the device are just awkward to use.

The hardware keyboard would be good for both of these situations, though; as I recall, I had started using it for some of these tasks some time back (as Sixwheeledbeast had pointed out to me). I'll have to look and see what shape that code is in. :)

Hmm. That probably wouldn't be too hard to add. I don't think Pierogi benefits as much from full-screen mode as other apps would, but I could give it a try. (The big problem would probably be placing more controls onto the screen for accessing the options on the drop-down menu; but then, I've been wondering if folks would prefer having access to those options on the main screen rather than via the menu. I'll think about it...)

Yeah, as I recall in order to do that I needed to give an elevated status to the app, which for these little utilities, I'm really not all that enthusiastic about. :) I don't want to potentially drain your battery just because you left Pierogi or Lanterne running in the background...

But let me take another look. :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Well, I do have reservations about this. For one, the original purpose of Pierogi was to create a little experiment of my own; I knew that many CIR control systems were similar to each other, and I wanted to see if I couldn't compress keysets together by creating families of similar controls. And, I went ahead and used the C++ class inheritance scheme to implement these families. As such, there are a lot of concepts built-in to the current Pierogi system that would be difficult to explain to the general public.

Second, Pierogi is way late to the game here. The N900 originally launched with an IR remote control mechanism that uses 100% human-readable keyset files; that is, the Linux Infrared Remote Control (or LIRC) project. (And the Irreco / QtIrreco project built a GUI shell around it.) So, you can today set up the LIRC server on your N900 and run your own config files on it. (Although, I do have to admit that calling LIRC config files "human-readable" is a bit of a stretch; the syntax they use is, honestly, pretty awful.)

However, let me make this counter-proposal: what about a two-tiered keyset mechanism? It shouldn't be hard to let Pierogi continue to support its internal set of keysets (following my rather obscure implementation mechanism), and then optionally read in a set of more standard external config files.

I think the only significant effort here would be to come up with a decent human-readable file format. The LIRC format is, well, just awful; moreover, as it only records individual pulses, it is fundamentally incompatible with the current Pierogi system. I'm using a protocol-based system now, so a config file would presumably involve naming the protocol to use, then (sometimes) a manufacturer ID, (usually) a device ID, and finally a sequence of key IDs. The key IDs will also need to be mapped to the internal Pierogi button list.

I've gotten a whole lot more experience writing recursive-descent XML parsers in the last year, which folks can probably see from my other pasta products, so I'd be happy to support an XML-based file format. But I could probably do something else too, if another type of format would be preferred. :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Another update to Pierogi is now making its way up to the Extras-Devel repository. Other than the addition of a Grundig TV keyset, the main modification is an update to the documentation available from the drop-down menu. I'm not sure it makes for entertaining reading, but at least it now covers the main points of the Pierogi UI (other than the macro system, which I have simply left out).

As such, I'm going to go ahead and classify this update, 1.1.41, as a "release candidate". I'm going to continue to pound on it a bit myself for a day or so, and if no one else has any objections, I'll go ahead and submit this version to Extras-Testing. With luck, a much updated version of Pierogi will soon be available in the Extras repository. :)

I'll probably try to work through some of my other pasta products, and see if I can't shape them up into something that can be pushed into Extras...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Shouldn't the promotion go through the testing and voting process? Just asking ;)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Just a quick thought: have you got the keyboard open when you're using the app? I've found that often the ir port is blocked by the n900's screen when that is the case.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Yes, I kind of thought that's what happens when one submits an app to the Extras-Testing repository. :) (Or am I missing a step? I'm pretty sure that's what I did to start the process before...) I'm planning on doing that tomorrow, if no other problems show up...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

To be honest, I do not quite have all the details figured out. I have only one package and that is in Extras-Devel. I somehow always assumed you need to get enough votes first, before the promotion to Testing. You are much more experienced. I will just shut up.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Well, I've only done it once before (for Pierogi), and that was a very, very long time ago (as folks have been pointing out to me :) ). So I don't know if the process is still the same...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Propagating from devel to testing is purely based on developers decision (release candidate for testers/masses first).
There it should be tested and upvoted by at least 6 positive votes, then it will hit extras a few (quarantine) days later.