Linux Infrared HOWTO
Werner Heuser
<wehe[AT]tuxmobil.org>
Linux Mobile Edition Edition
Version 3.7
TuxMobil
Berlin
Copyright © 2000-2003 Werner Heuser
$Date: 2005/10/08 14:29:43 $
The Infrared-HOWTO provides an introduction to Linux and infrared devices
and how to use the software provided by the Linux/IrDA project. This package
uses IrDA(TM) compliant standards. IrDA(TM) is an industrial standard for
infrared wireless communication, and most laptops made after January 1996 are
equipped with an IrDA(TM) compliant infrared transceiver. Infrared ports let
you communicate with printers, modems, fax machines, LANs, and other laptops
or PDAs. Speed ranges from 2400bps to 4Mbps.
The Linux/IrDA stack supports IrLAP, IrLMP, IrIAS, IrIAP, IrLPT, IrCOMM,
IrOBEX, and IrLAN. Several of the protocols are implemented as both clients
and servers. There is also support for multiple IrLAP connections, via
several IrDA(TM) devices at once. The Linux/IrDA project started at the end
of 1997 and experienced some major rewrites since then. Please don't expect
every feature working straight yet. As far as I know Linux/IrDA is the only
open source IrDA implementation available.
Remote Control (RC) via infrared is the aim of the Linux Infrared Remote
Control - LIRC project, and also described in this HOWTO.
Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Werner Heuser. For all chapters permission is
granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of
the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being
"Preface" and "Credits", with the Front-Cover Texts being "Linux Infrared
HOWTO", and with the Back-Cover Texts being the section "About the Document
and the Author". A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
"GNU Free Documentation License".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
Preface
1. About the Document
2. Status of the Document
3. About the Author
I. IrDA
1. About the Linux/IrDA Project
2. Getting Started
3. Specific Connections and IrDA - Protocols
4. Hardware Supported by Linux/IrDA
5. Advanced Topics
II. Infrared Remote Control
6. Introduction
7. Linux Infrared Remote Control - LIRC
8. Lego Mindstorm
9. Serial Infrared Remote Controller
10. Infrared Tools for the COREL Netwinder PC
11. ir
12. irmctl
13. IRManager
14. irXxD
15. XR3
16. IR File Chooser
17. IControl
18. jlirc
19. lircemu
20. tonto
21. Infrared Remote Control ./. IrDA
III. Appendix
A. Credits
B. Revision History
C. Serial Infrared Port Sniffers
D. Infrared Light and Eye Safety
E. Copyrights, Disclaimer, Trademarks
List of Figures
5-1. IrDA Stack
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface
Better red, than dead.
Unknown AuthorEss
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. About the Document
This document is based on the [http://irda.sourceforge.net/] documentation
part of the Linux/IrDA project homepage and the [http://www.hpl.hp.com/
personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html] Linux/IrDA Tutorial by Jean
Tourillhes. I have also included material provided by the Linux/IrDA core
team, the Linux/IrDA mailing lists and other sources.
The document is included in [http://tldp.org/] THE LINUX DOCUMENTATION
PROJECT - TLDP .
The latest version of this document is available at [http://tuxmobil.org/
howto_linux_infrared.html] TuxMobil-HOWTOs.
Mathieu Arnold provides an earlier version of the [http://www.mat.cc/]
IR-HOWTO in French. A Japanese translation of issue v3.4 is provided by the
[http://www.linux.or.jp/JF] Linux Japanese FAQ Project .
Please feel free to contact me for comments or questions about the HOWTO. I
know this material is not finished or perfect, but I hope you find it useful
anyway. For other questions and current information about Linux/IrDA please
ask in the Linux/IrDA mailing list as explained below.
Werner Heuser <wehe_at_tuxmobil.org>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Status of the Document
The latest kernel I used is 2.4.19 and the latest irda-utils version is
0.9.15. I tried to check all information but I don't have all the necessary
infrared hardware yet, so if something doesn't work for you, please don't
blame me.
Warning Former kernel and irda-utils versions need a completely different
setup. Since I don't recommend to use former versions, all references
to these setups are removed from this document. You may find some
hints in the chapter Code History.
I have included all the changes to be in sync with the 2.4.x kernel series
and the latest Linux/IrDA development now. Therefore some testing and
proof-reading has still to be done. So please don't expect anything working
straight out of the box.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. About the Author
Since I have installed [http://tuxmobil.org/hp800e.html] Linux on my first
laptop (HP OmniBook 800CT), I am addicted to Linux and mobile computers. I
have written the [http://tuxmobil.org/howto_linux_laptop.html]
Linux-Mobile-Guide and founded [http://tuxmobil.org/] TuxMobil: Linux with
Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs, Mobile Phones and Portable Computers. I am also
interested in [http://repair4laptop.org/] upgrading, repairing and modding
laptops or notebooks, [http://repair4pda.org/] disassembling and reassembling
PDAs and HandHelds and [http://repair4mobilephone.org/] taking apart and
modding mobile (cell) phones. In May 2000 I have founded the German vendor
[http://xtops.de/] Xtops.DE: Linux, Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs pre-installed,
to sponsor the TuxMobil project.
I am also the author of the [http://computerecology.org/]
Linux-Ecology-HOWTO, which describes Linux as a means to save our
environment, as well as founder of [http://dataconv.org/] DataConv a survey
of data conversion and migration tools.
I. IrDA
Table of Contents
1. About the Linux/IrDA Project
1.1. Project History
1.2. Code History
2. Getting Started
2.1. Software
2.2. Kernel
2.3. Kernel Module Options
2.4. Configuration
3. Specific Connections and IrDA - Protocols
3.1. Starting the IrDA Stack
3.2. Printer Connection
3.3. LAN Connection - IrLAN
3.4. HP NetBeamer Connection
3.5. Palm III Connection - IrCOMM
3.6. Linux Terminal on Palm (Handspring Visor) via IR
3.7. Psion 5 Connection
3.8. Connecting from Linux to WinCE 2.11
3.9. Connecting from Linux to WinCE 3.0 (aka PocketPC)
3.10. Cellular Phone Connection
3.11. Digital Camera Connection
3.12. Microsoft-Windows and Linux/IrDA
3.13. Linux to Linux Connection
3.14. Multiple Instances
3.15. Connection to Docking Station
3.16. Connection to Keyboard
3.17. Connection via Serial Cable
3.18. Null Modem Cable Connection
3.19. Peer-to-Peer Mode / Direct Mode
3.20. Linux/IrDA with Toshiba Notebooks
3.21. IrDA Card in a Desktop Computer
4. Hardware Supported by Linux/IrDA
4.1. Obtaining Information about the Infrared Port in Laptops
4.2. Hardware Surveys
4.3. Big Endian
4.4. SMP
4.5. IrDA Hardware
4.6. IrDA and USB
4.7. Linux PDAs: Agenda, iPAQ, Yopy, Zaurus
5. Advanced Topics
5.1. Troubleshooting
5.2. Mailing List
5.3. GUIs: Gnome, KDE
5.4. How to Make Infrared Light Visible
5.5. Power Saving
5.6. Beyond IrDA
5.7. IrDA Network Neighborhood
5.8. Linux/IrDA and APM
5.9. Performance Testing
5.10. IrDA Protocols
5.11. FAQ
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 1. About the Linux/IrDA Project
1.1. Project History
The project started at the end of 1997 with the name Linux/IrDA. Due to
some troubles with the name IrDA, which is trademarked by the Infrared Data
Association IrDA , the name was changed to Linux/IR. At the end of 1998 the
relationship between both became better and the name was changed to Linux/
IrDA again. Since February 1999 the project is an official member of IrDA .
Companies and developers which are interested in joining these efforts
should contact the Linux/IrDA Project or me at <wehe_at_tuxmobil.org>.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. Code History
The Linux/IrDA project has undertaken some changes in the program code,
which you should know to understand some possible confusions with older
documentation, which you shouldn't use anyway.
Warning Some caveats in the documentation have been caused by changes of the
following concepts, device names and parameters. I hope I have got
them alright now, they confused me sometimes, too. The new style
stuff works from Kernel 2.2.15 / 2.4.0. Some important changes were
made again in Kernel 2.6, not all of these are mentioned in this
document yet, I will fix that hopefully soon. Anyway I recommend not
to use any earlier kernel version than 2.6. This document will
describe differences to the kernel 2.4 series in the appropriate
places to provide documentation for situations where you must use
kernel 2.4, which is hopefully rare. You should always use current
Kernel, irda-utils and documentation.
* For 2.0.x kernels Linux/IrDA support worked in a totally other way
(only user-land programs) and is no longer supported by the Linux/IrDA
project. Since 2.1.131 and 2.2.0 it is part of the kernel.
* The major device number of the irda device changed from 61 to 161 (as
far as I remember there was also a major number 60 around, too), also
there have been different and now obsolete minor device numbers around,
see the list of current device numbers below.
* The irmanager is obsolete now, its tasks are now achieved by irattach.
* The module name /dev/ircomm_tty changed to /dev/ircomm-tty , but there
are other modules around which use either "-" or "_" in there names, this
might be confusing.
* The device names /dev/irnine and /dev/ircomm_new are obsolete.
* IrLPT is handled by IrCOMM now. So all references to irlpt_server are
obsolete.
* From irda-utils 0.9.15 the behaviour of the -s option of irattach has
changed. The option must not use the parameter 1 anymore.
* The toshoboe driver for Toshiba laptops has been removed from 2.6
kernels.
* Some important changes (e.g. for module names) were made in Kernel 2.6,
these are not mentioned in this document yet, I will fix that hopefully
soon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2. Getting Started
2.1. Software
The commands provided by the irda-utils package are the basic set of tools
to get a working IrDA connection. The other tools (e-Squirt, IrNET, ..) are
optional. Since version 0.9.15 manual pages are included. Most current manual
pages are at [http://tuxmobil.org/software.html] TuxMobil.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1. IrDA-Utils
2.1.1.1. Compilation
* Use the latest source of irda-utils available at Linux/IrDA Project.
Also recommended is the latest glibc library. You may find out the
current version with ldd --version. The use of the older libc5 library
may lead to compile errors.
* Untar the package with tar xvzf irda-utils<VERSION> . I recommend to do
this in /usr/src.
* Do a make clean (not necessary if you compile the package for the first
time).
* Do a make all to build the binaries.
* Do a make install, this brings all commands into the right place and
installs some config files in /etc/irda.
* Sometimes, when you compile the IrDA stack or some various IrDA
package, you may have the compiler complaining the things such as
IRLMP_HINT_MASK_SET or IRDAPROTO_ULTRA are not defined. This is because
of a mess related to kernel headers and the way most distributions deal
with it. If you have the 2.4.X kernel source lying around, the fix is
simple. Just copy the header irda.h from the kernel to your include
directory cp /usr/src/linux/include/linux/irda.h /usr/include/linux
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.2. Precompiled Packages
Debian/GNU Linux provides an irda-utils package since Potato. Also Mandrake
since 6.1, Redhat since 6.1 and SuSE since 6.1 contain RPM packages of the
irda-utils. Some caveat with precompiled packages might be some
incompatibilities between kernel version and appropriate package version.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3. Contents of Linux/IrDA-Utils
2.1.1.3.1. irattach
irattach uses the module set as parameter; it can be a specific FIR driver:
irattach toshoboe or ircomm (and then it loads the module aliased as "irda0"
in /etc/modules.conf)
If you are one of the lucky people which have a FIR chipset that is
supported, then you don't need to use irattach anymore. Now you just have to
modprobe the driver.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.2. irdadump
A program that displays all the frames sent, and received on the infrared
link.
One advantage of implementing IrDA device drivers as network device drivers
is that you should be able to attach sniffers to the device (or actually the
packet type). That way, it is possible to use a really handy utility called
irdadump (instead of tcpdump). This will make debugging MUCH easier.
Linux-2.2 implements the BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter), so its possible to
filter out exactly the frames you want to see.
Note: You probably have to be root for using irdadump . CONFIG_PACKET has
to be enabled in the kernel. If compiled as a module you might load the
module manually. irdadump has been converted into a library, so it can be
used from GUI applications as well.
Here is a sample output of a small session between Linux and a Palm III.
This log shows that the local irobex layer is not responding, so the Palm III
sends a disc frame.
dagbnb /home/dagb/linux/irda-utils/irdadump/ # ./irdadump
20:18:15.305711 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=0
20:18:15.385597 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=1
20:18:15.465568 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=2
20:18:15.545953 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=3
20:18:15.625574 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=4
20:18:15.705575 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=5
20:18:15.785601 xid:cmd:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=255,info=Linux
20:18:18.075526 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=0
20:18:18.225498 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=1
20:18:18.375495 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=2
20:18:18.526355 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=3
20:18:18.675614 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=4
20:18:18.676364 xid:rsp:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xb50c14b,S=6,s=4
20:18:18.765506 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=5
20:18:18.927221 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=255,info=Palm III
20:18:18.975796 snrm:cmd,ca=0xfe,pf=1
20:18:18.976534 ua:rsp,ca=0x58,pf=1
20:18:18.977145 ua:rsp,ca=0x58,pf=1
20:18:19.585627 rr:rsp,ca=0x58,nr=0,pf=1
20:18:19.585810 rr:rsp,ca=0x58,nr=0,pf=1
20:18:19.606413 i:cmd,ca=0x58,nr=0,ns=0,pf=1
20:18:19.606582 rr:rsp,ca=0x58,nr=1,pf=1
20:18:19.627708 rr:cmd,ca=0x58,nr=0,pf=1
20:18:19.627871 i:rsp,ca=0x58,nr=1,ns=0,pf=1
20:18:19.650571 disc:cmd,ca=0x58,pf=1
20:18:19.650736 ua:rsp,ca=0x58,pf=1
20:18:21.165524 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=0
20:18:21.315608 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=1
20:18:21.315793 xid:rsp:saddr=0x05c589 > daddr=0xb50c14b,S=6,s=1
20:18:21.395499 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=2
20:18:21.545516 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=3
20:18:21.695500 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=4
20:18:21.845840 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=5
20:18:22.007222 xid:cmd:saddr=0xb50c14b > daddr=0xffffffff,S=6,s=255,info=Palm
III
20:18:22.056143 snrm:cmd,ca=0xfe,pf=1
20:18:22.056310 ua:rsp,ca=0xc8,pf=1
20:18:22.056381 ua:rsp,ca=0xc8,pf=1
37 pacckets received by filter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.3. irdaping
Makes it possible to try and ping a remote device using IrDA test frames.
Not all devices implement support for test frames. This is a program similar
to ping(8). It sends IrDA test frames, enriched by some userdata which
contain the frame number and the time the frame was sent. You can also change
the size of the frame by using the -s option. You must supply an IrDA device
address, and not an IP address. You have to be able to get that device
address by using irdadump.
Here is one output sample (pinging an ACTiSYS IR-100M):
dagbnb /home/dagb/linux/irda-utils/irdaping/ # ./irdaping 0xf7be8388
IrDA ping (0xf7be8388): 32 bytes
32 bytes from 0xf7be8388: irda_seq=0 time=102.466003 ms.
32 bytes from 0xf7be8388: irda_seq=1 time=102.202003 ms.
32 bytes from 0xf7be8388: irda_seq=2 time=102.170998 ms.
32 bytes from 0xf7be8388: irda_seq=3 time=101.633003 ms.
4 packets received by filter
Christian Gennerat "I use an alias which does not use any parameter (in
$HOME/.bashrc): alias irping="irdaping \`grep daddr /proc/net/irda/discovery|
sed s/.*daddr://\`" It works fine when there is only one discovered client."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.4. irkbd
Implements support for the mouse and keyboard protocol as used by the
Tekram IR-660 infrared docking station. For details on how to use external
keyboards with Linux PDAs see below.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.5. findchip
Tries to find out which FIR IrDA chipset your machine is using. Try out
findchip -v to check it out. For other methods to detect the chipset see
below.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.6. irsockets
A collection of programs which uses IrDA sockets.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.7. irpsion5
File transfer program for exchanging files with your Psion PDA.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.1.3.8. /etc/irda
This directory contains the configuration file irda.conf. You may for
example configure the serial port for the SIR driver. For first testing you
should try the SIR driver.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.2. openobex
The overall goal of the [http://sourceforge.net/projects/openobex/]
OpenOBEX project is to make an open source implementation of the Object
Exchange (OBEX) protocol. OBEX is a session protocol and can best be
described as a binary HTTP protocol. OBEX is builtin in devices like PDA's
like the Palm Pilot, and mobile phones like the Ericsson R320, Siemens S25,
Siemens S45, Siemens ME45, Nokia NM207 and Nokia 9110 Communicator. OBEX is
optimised for ad-hoc wireless links and can be used to exchange all kind of
objects like files, pictures, calendar entries (vCal) and business cards
(vCard). A typical application is the "beam" function of PalmOS.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.3. e-squirt
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html] e-Squirt
is a simple protocol for sending URLs over the IrDA medium. This allows for
interaction with CoolTown enabled devices.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.4. IrNET for Linux-IrDA
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html] IrNET is a
protocol allowing to carry TCP/IP traffic between two IrDA peers in an
efficient fashion. It is a thin layer, passing PPP packets in a IrTTP socket.
It uses PPP in synchronous mode for efficiency, and offers lots of
flexibility and various features. The main part of IrNET in included in
kernel 2.4.x, and a user-space daemon (to automate connections) is available
on the web page.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.5. Java - IrDA Interface
This [http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html] Java
Infrared Socket API provides a way of communicating through infrared medium
on a linux machine using Java. Thus, Java application developers can develop
applications involving infrared access much easily. The API is very similar
to java.net.Socket API and has been implemented using the Linux infrared
stack. Both connection oriented streams (IrSocket and IrServerSocket) and
connectionless Ultra (UltraSocket, UltraPacket) interfaces are available.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Kernel
2.2.1. Preface
Please read the [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO/] Kernel-HOWTO from
TLDP to get more information about the compilation process. Thomas Hertweck
has written another useful [http://www.thomashertweck.de/kernel.html]
Linux-Kernel-HOWTO (but it is only available in German and Italian). Check
the [http://irda.sourceforge.net/] Linux/IrDA Project or the Linux/IrDA
mailing list archives for latest patches.
You'll find the Linux/IrDA Kernel code in:
/usr/src/linux/net/irda (protocol stuff)
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/irda (device drivers)
/usr/src/linux/include/net/irda (header files)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.2. General Parameters
Make sure you use kernel 2.6 sources. I recommend not to use any earlier
kernel version, but this document will describe differences to the kernel 2.4
series in the appropriate places. If unsure about your kernel version try
uname -r.
For current 2.6 kernels there are no patches necessary. In case there is a
kernel patch from the Linux/IrDA project or other places to apply (for
example for kernel 2.4), put it into the directory /usr/src or where else
your kernel sources live and apply something like (replace
patch-2_4.0-irdaXXX with the actual file name):
cd /usr/src
tar xvzf patch-2_4.0-irdaXXX.tar.gz
cd linux
patch -p1 -l < ../patch-2_4.0-irdaXXX
For latest drivers experimental support has to be enabled CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL
, at least in kernel 2.4.
Enable sysctl in "General Setup" CONFIG_SYSCTL.
You should have proc file system support CONFIG_PROC_FS.
Also serial support for the SIR features CONFIG_SERIAL.
I am not sure whether there has to be printer support for using a printer
with Linux/IrDA CONFIG_PRINTER. But I assume this feature is not necessary.
Networking support _must_ be enabled CONFIG_NET.
Make sure you have module support CONFIG_MODULES in your kernel! Test it
e.g. with lsmod.
Also kerneld support CONFIG_KERNELD. But kmod (CONFIG_KMOD) also works. A
monolithic kernel seems to work, too. But modules are highly recommended!
To use irdadump you probably have to set CONFIG_PACKET.
If you only apply the Linux/IrDA patch, you should not have to do a make
clean, so that should save you some time. I suggest you do something like
this:
For kernel 2.4 use: make dep && make all && make modules && make install &&
make modules_install. For kernel 2.6 use: make all && make install && make
modules_install. If you get really strange errors, then try to rebuild from
scratch after a make clean.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.3. IrDA Specific Parameters
The following is from ../linux-2.4.3/Documentation/Configure.help (kernel
2.4) or ../linux-2.6.x/net/irda/Kconfig, ../linux-2.6.x/drivers/net/irda/
Kconfig (kernel 2.6) with some modifications by me. Please consult the latest
available kernel documentation for current information and new drivers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.3.1. IrDA subsystem support
CONFIG_IRDA Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrDA (TM)
protocols. The Infrared Data Associations (tm) specifies standards for
wireless infrared communication and is supported by most laptops and PDA's.
To use Linux support for the IrDA (tm) protocols, you will also need some
user-space utilities like irattach . For more information, see the file
Documentation/networking/irda.txt. You also want to read the InfraRed-HOWTO,
available at [http://tuxmobil.org/howtos.html] TuxMobil .
This support is also available as a module called irda.o. If you want to
compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt.
IrDA Cache last LSAP
CONFIG_IRDA_CACHE_LAST_LSAP Say Y here if you want IrLMP to cache the last
LSAP used. This makes sense since most frames will be sent/received on the
same connection. Enabling this option will save a hash-lookup per frame.
If unsure, say Y.
IrDA Fast RR's
CONFIG_IRDA_FAST_RR Say Y here is you want IrLAP to send fast RR (Receive
Ready) frames when acting as a primary station. This will make IrLAP send out
a RR frame immediately when receiving a frame if its own transmit queue is
currently empty. This will give a lot of speed improvement when receiving
much data since the secondary station will not have to wait the max. turn
around time before it is allowed to transmit the next time. If the transmit
queue of the secondary is also empty the primary will back off waiting longer
for sending out the RR frame until the timeout reaches the normal value.
Enabling this option will make the IR-diode burn more power and thus reduce
your battery life.
If unsure, say N.
IrDA Debug
CONFIG_IRDA_DEBUG Say Y here if you want the IrDA subsystem to write debug
information to your syslog. You can change the debug level in /proc/sys/net/
irda/debug
If unsure, say Y (since it makes it easier to find the bugs).
IrLAP Compression support
CONFIG_IRDA_COMPRESSION Compression is _not_ part of the IrDA(tm) protocol
specification, but it's working great! Linux is the first to try out
compression support at the IrLAP layer. This means that you will only benefit
from compression if you are running a Linux <-> Linux configuration.
If you say Y here, you also need to say Y or M to a compression protocol
below.
IrLAP Deflate Compression Protocol (EXPERIMENTAL)
CONFIG_IRDA_DEFLATE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Deflate
compression protocol. The deflate compression (GZIP) is exactly the same as
the one used by the PPP protocol.
If you want to compile this compression support as a module, say M here and
read Documentation/modules.txt. The module will be called irda_deflate.o.
IrLAN Protocol But currently the IrLAN protocol is no longer maintained by
the Linux/IrDA core team.
CONFIG_IRLAN Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrLAN protocol.
If you want to compile it as a module (irlan.o), say M here and read
Documentation/modules.txt. IrLAN emulates an Ethernet and makes it possible
to put up a wireless LAN using infrared beams.
The IrLAN protocol can be used to talk with infrared access points like the
HP NetbeamIR, or the ESI JetEye NET. You can also connect to another Linux
machine running the IrLAN protocol for ad-hoc networking!
IrCOMM Protocol
CONFIG_IRCOMM Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrCOMM
protocol. If you want to compile it as a module (you will get ircomm.o and
ircomm-tty.o), say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. IrCOMM
implements serial port emulation, and makes it possible to use all existing
applications that understands TTY's with an infrared link. Thus you should be
able to use application like PPP, minicom and others. Enabling this option
will create two modules called ircomm and ircomm-tty.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.3.2. Device Drivers
IrTTY IrDA Device Driver
CONFIG_IRTTY_SIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrTTY line
discipline. If you want to compile it as a module (irtty.o), say M here and
read Documentation/modules.txt. IrTTY makes it possible to use Linux's own
serial driver for all IrDA ports that are 16550 compatible. Most IrDA chips
are 16550 compatible so you should probably say Y to this option. Using IrTTY
will however limit the speed of the connection to 115200 bps (IrDA SIR mode)
If unsure, say Y.
IrPORT IrDA Device Driver
CONFIG_IRPORT_SIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrPORT
IrDA device driver. If you want to compile it as a module (irport.o), say M
here and read Documentation/modules.txt. IrPORT can be used instead of IrTTY
and sometimes this can be better. One example is if your IrDA port does not
have echo-canceling, which will work OK with IrPORT since this driver is
working in half-duplex mode only. You don't need to use irattach with IrPORT,
but you just insert it the same way as FIR drivers (insmod irport io=0x3e8
irq=11). Notice that IrPORT is a SIR device driver which means that speed is
limited to 115200 bps.
If unsure, say Y.
Winbond W83977AF IrDA Device Driver
CONFIG_WINBOND_FIR Say Y here if you want to build IrDA support for the
Winbond W83977AF super-io chipset. This driver should be used for the IrDA
chipset in the Corel NetWinder. The driver supports SIR, MIR and FIR (4Mbps)
speeds.
If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/
modules.txt. The module will be called w83977af_ir.o.
NSC PC87108 IrDA Device Driver
CONFIG_NSC_FIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the NSC PC87108
and PC87338 IrDA chipsets. This driver supports SIR, MIR and FIR (4Mbps)
speeds.
If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/
modules.txt. The module will be called nsc-ircc.o.
Toshiba Type-O IR Port Device Driver
CONFIG_TOSHIBA_FIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the Toshiba
Type-O IR chipset. This chipset is used by the Toshiba Libretto 100CT, and
many more laptops. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read
Documentation/modules.txt. The module will be called toshoboe.o.
SMC IrCC (Experimental)
CONFIG_SMC_IRCC_FIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the SMC
Infrared Communications Controller. It is used in the Fujitsu Lifebook 635t
and Sony PCG-505TX. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and
read Documentation/modules.txt. The module will be called smc-ircc.o.
ALi M5123 FIR Controller Driver (Experimental)
CONFIG_ALI_FIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the ALi M5123 FIR
Controller. The ALi M5123 FIR Controller is embedded in ALi M1543C, M1535,
M1535D, M1535+, M1535D South Bridge. This driver supports SIR, MIR and FIR
(4Mbps) speeds.
If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/
modules.txt. The module will be called ali-ircc.o.
Serial dongle support
CONFIG_DONGLE Say Y here if you have an infrared device that connects to
your computer's serial port. These devices are called dongles. Then say Y or
M to the driver for your particular dongle below.
Note that the answer to this question won't directly affect the kernel:
saying N will just cause this configure script to skip all
ESI JetEye PC Dongle
CONFIG_ESI_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Extended
Systems JetEye PC dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here
and read Documentation/modules.txt. The ESI dongle attaches to the normal
9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY. To
activate support for ESI dongles you will have to start irattach like this:
irattach -d esi.
ACTiSYS IR-220L and IR220L+ dongle
CONFIG_ACTISYS_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the
ACTiSYS IR-220L and IR220L+ dongles. If you want to compile it as a module,
say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The ACTiSYS dongles attaches
to the normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by
IrTTY. To activate support for ACTiSYS dongles you will have to start
irattach like this: irattach -d actisys or irattach -d actisys+.
Tekram IrMate 210B dongle
CONFIG_TEKRAM_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Tekram
IrMate 210B dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and
read Documentation/modules.txt. The Tekram dongle attaches to the normal
9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY. To
activate support for Tekram dongles you will have to start irattach like
this: irattach -d tekram.
Greenwich GIrBIL dongle
CONFIG_GIRBIL_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the
Greenwich GIrBIL dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here
and read Documentation/modules.txt. The Greenwich dongle attaches to the
normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY.
To activate support for Greenwich dongles you will have to insert irattach -d
girbil in the /etc/irda/drivers script.
Parallax Litelink dongle
CONFIG_LITELINK_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the
Parallax Litelink dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here
and read Documentation/modules.txt. The Parallax dongle attaches to the
normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY.
To activate support for Parallax dongles you will have to start irattach like
this irattach -d litelink.
Old Belkin dongle
CONFIG_OLD_BELKIN_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the
Adaptec Airport 1000 and 2000 dongles. If you want to compile it as a module,
say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The module will be called
old_belkin.o. Some information is contained in the comments at the top of
drivers/net/irda/old_belkin.c.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.4. Current Kernel Patches
Note: donauboe is a new version of toshoboe better FIR support and
compatibility with Donauoboe chip from [http://libxg.free.fr/irda/
lib-irda.html] lib-irda. Note: the toshoboe drivers has been removed from the
2.6 kernel series.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Kernel Module Options
This survey of module options was generated with the modinfo command.
actisys.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no> - Jean Tourrilhes <jt_at_hpl.hp.com>
ACTiSYS IR-220L and IR-220L+ dongle driver
ali-ircc.o
Benjamin Kong <benjamin_kong_at_ali.com.tw>
ALi FIR Controller Driver
io int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "Base I/O addresses"
irq int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "IRQ lines"
dma int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "DMA channels"
esi.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
Extended Systems JetEye PC dongle driver
girbil.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
Greenwich GIrBIL dongle driver
irport.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
Half duplex serial driver for IrDA SIR mode
io int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "Base I/O adresses"
irq int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "IRQ lines"
irtty.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
IrDA TTY device driver
qos_mtt_bits int, description "Minimum Turn Time"
litelink.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
Parallax Litelink dongle driver
nsc-ircc.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
NSC IrDA Device Driver
qos_mtt_bits int, description "Minimum Turn Time"
io int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "Base I/O addresses"
irq int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "IRQ lines"
dma int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "DMA channels"
dongle_id int, description "Type-id of used dongle"
old_belkin.o
Jean Tourrilhes <jt_at_hpl.hp.com>
Belkin (old) SmartBeam dongle driver
smc-ircc.o
Thomas Davis <tadavis_at_jps.net>
SMC IrCC controller driver
ircc_dma int, description "DMA channel"
ircc_irq int, description "IRQ line"
tekram.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
Tekram IrMate IR-210B dongle driver
toshoboe.o
James McKenzie <james_at_fishsoup.dhs.org>
Toshiba OBOE IrDA Device Driver
max_baud int
w83977af_ir.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
Winbond W83977AF IrDA Device Driver
qos_mtt_bits int, description "Mimimum Turn Time"
io int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "Base I/O addresses"
irq int array (min = 1, max = 4), description "IRQ lines"
irda.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
The Linux IrDA Protocol Subsystem
irda_debug_R07c03e02 long
irlan.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
The Linux IrDA LAN protocol
eth int, description "Name devices ethX (0) or irlanX (1)"
access int, description "Access type DIRECT=1, PEER=2, HOSTED=3"
But currently the IrLAN protocol is no longer maintained
by the Linux/IrDA core team.
ircomm-tty.o
Dag Brattli <dagb_at_cs.uit.no>
IrCOMM serial TTY driver
ircomm.o
Dag Brattli <dag_at_brattli.net>
IrCOMM protocol
irnet.o
<none>
<none>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4. Configuration
2.4.1. Device Numbers
mknod /dev/ircomm0 c 161 0
mknod /dev/ircomm1 c 161 1
mknod /dev/irlpt0 c 161 16
mknod /dev/irlpt1 c 161 17
mknod /dev/irnet c 10 187
chmod 666 /dev/ir*
There might be some other device number necessary if you want to use the
irkbd features. You may find the latest device numbers in ../src/linux/
Documentation/devices.txt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.2. Device Arrangement
First you should put your IrDA devices in range. Though it might be
possible that the Linux/IrDA service detects every new device automagically I
only have good experience with the devices in range during the configuration
process.
Keep your infrared devices together in a range below one meter and an angle
of 30 degree. There has to be a direct line of sight between them. If this is
not possible, you may use a mirror (an unused M$ CD should work quite good).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.3. /etc/modules.conf
Add the following lines to your /etc/modprobe.conf (for kernel 2.4 /etc/
modules.conf) file (attention: the actual filename may depend on your Linux
distribution):
# IrDA over a normal serial port, or a serial port compatible IrDA port (SIR)
alias tty-ldisc-11 irtty
# IrCOMM (for printing, PPP, Minicom etc)
alias char-major-161 ircomm-tty # if you want IrCOMM support
# IRLAN
# But currently the IrLAN protocol is no longer maintained
# by the Linux/IrDA core team.
alias irlan0 irlan
# To be able to attach some serial dongles
# These values are hard-coded in irattach (not instance order)
alias irda-dongle-0 tekram # Tekram IrMate IR-210B
alias irda-dongle-1 esi # ESI JetEye
alias irda-dongle-2 actisys # Actisys IR-220L
alias irda-dongle-3 actisys # Actisys IR-220L+
alias irda-dongle-4 girbil # Greenwich GIrBIL
alias irda-dongle-5 litelink # Parallax LiteLink/ESI JetEye
alias irda-dongle-6 airport # Adaptec Airport 1000 and 2000
alias irda-dongle-7 old_belkin # Belkin (old) SmartBeam dongle
alias irda-dongle-8 ep7211_ir # Cirrus Logic EP7211 Processor (ARM)
alias irda-dongle-9 mcp2120 # MCP2120 (Microchip) based
alias irda-dongle-10 act200l # ACTiSYS Ir-200L
alias irda-dongle-11 ma600 # Mobile Action ma600
# To use the FIR driver. This applies only to the specific device!!!
#options nsc-ircc dongle_id=0x09 # NSC driver on a IBM Thinkpad laptop
#options nsc-ircc dongle_id=0x08 # HP Omnibook 6000
#alias irda0 nsc-ircc
# options smc-ircc ircc_irq= ircc_dma=
# alias irda0 smc-ircc
# options toshoboe max_baud=
# alias irda0 toshoboe
# options w83977af_ir io= io2= irq= qos_mtt_bits=
# alias irda0 w83977af_ir
# IrNET module...
alias char-major-10-187 irnet # Official allocation of IrNET
Then do a depmod -a to update, and then all IrDA modules should be
automagically loaded when you need them. Note for testing reasons you may
load them manually, but please make sure not to load them twice. There might
be some other entries necessary, if you want to use the irkbd features or an
USB dongle. A template file is included in the irda-utils package.
Note: With Debian GNU/Linux however you shouldn't edit /etc/modules.conf
directly, instead place the lines inside /etc/modutils/irda-utils and run
update-modules afterwards. Running update-modules seems obsolete for 2.6
kernels.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.4. /etc/irda
Have a look into the files in /etc/irda. Edit them to reflect your setup.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.5. BIOS Configuration
Make sure your infrared port is enabled in the BIOS and check what
interrupt and port address it uses. With some laptops it seems necessary to
have Microsoft-Windows installed to be able to set BIOS parameters.
I have got reports, that on some laptops, when connected to a docking
station, the infrared port was disabled .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.6. Serial Port
Please decide first whether you want to set up Irda either in SIR or in FIR
mode. It is recommended to start with SIR.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.6.1. SIR
Choose the ttySx according to your SIR port. Hint: dmesg | grep tty (for
details see the chapter Starting the IrDA Stack below).
To get the SIR "serial" device have a look into the BIOS. Then run dmesg |
grep tty to get a survey of tty devices supported by your machine. Now try to
choose the one, which is probably the IrDA device.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.6.2. FIR
If you don't succeed with SIR (which seems a rare case) you may try FIR.
First look up the BIOS. To avoid some conflicts with serial devices you
should do setserial /dev/ttySx uart none. Note: never use setserial /dev/
ttySx uart none, when setting up IrDA in SIR mode.
From Florian Lohoff You should also set "port 0x0 irq 0" otherwise you will
see interesting effects if there is suddenly a different S1 e.g. by inserting
a modem PCMCIA card. The serial driver will then touch the OLD ports without
having acquired those which will cause the irda stuff to die/hang. This is a
bug i havent been able to find in the serial driver but it definitly exists
(Put a printk into the serial_out serial_in stuff).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.7. Resource Conflicts: IRQ, IO
Is some cases IRQ conflicts may occur, especially conflicts with sound,
PCMCIA or the hotplug system have been reported. Check cat /proc/interrupts
to get some information about IRQ usage on your machine.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.8. Starting IrDA
Most important, you must sync your disks!!! Maybe you have to reboot your
machine. Have you read the disclaimer?
There are three sorts of low level drivers: SIR, FIR and dongle for
machines without an in-built InfraRed port. To start with Linux/IrDA I
recommend to use the SIR method.
Load the modules modprobe irda irtty. irattach /dev/ttyS1 -s to attach the
IrDA device to the IrDA services. Check lsmod and dmesg.
irdadump should show all available IrDA devices in range now. Hint: If you
are connecting different Linux boxes, you may use hostname YOUR_HOSTNAME to
set a unique hostname for each computer.
On the "server" side do pppd /dev/ircomm0 LOCAL_IP:REMOTE_IP On the
"client" side do pppd /dev/ircomm0 .
You may now test the connection with ping. And use all sorts of networking
connections (ssh, NFS, ...) now.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 3. Specific Connections and IrDA - Protocols
3.1. Starting the IrDA Stack
There are three sorts of low level drivers: SIR, FIR and dongle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1.1. Standard InfraRed - SIR
* Try to find out which serial port is used by the IR device. You may do
so by watching the output of dmesg. If serial support is modularized do
an modprobe serial first. Look for an entry like:
Serial driver version 4.25 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A #first serial port /dev/ttyS0
ttyS01 at 0x3000 (irq = 10) is a 16550A #e.g. infrared port
ttyS02 at 0x0300 (irq = 3) is a 16550A #e.g. PCMCIA modem port
If this is not the case, you either don't have infrared support enabled
in the BIOS or the SIR mode of your infrared device is not detected by
the kernel. Currently I know only two laptop models with this effect, the
HP OmniBook 800 and the Toshiba Libretto models. I am not sure whether
PnP support effects the detection of the IR port. If you are unsure try
it out and let me know the results. Maybe you can use FIR mode if SIR
doesn't work.
* In some situations you may have to use setserial /dev/ttyS<0-2> port
0xNNNN irq M to set the values for your infrared serial port, especially
if the infrared port is a separate serial line. You usually don't need to
change the values! For further information look into the FAQ section
below.
* If you don't use kerneld or kmod insert the irda module with modprobe
irda.
* Do lsmod. It should show the modules irda and irtty now.
* A look into /var/log/messages should show the entry "Serial connection
established" now.
* Give irattach some time, e.g. seven seconds, to detect other IR
devices. Then watch the output from the kernel that you will hopefully
get in /var/log/messages. It should look like the following (I removed
some lines, which were not related to Linux/IrDA):
Jan 2 12:57:26 japh kernel: ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Jan 2 12:57:26 japh kernel: ttyS02 at 0x03e8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Jan 2 12:57:26 japh kernel: Linux Support for the IrDA (tm) protocols (Dag Bra
ttli)
Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: executing: 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery'
Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: Setting discovery to 1 exited with status 1
Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: + 0.1 Fri Jul 25 11:45:26 1997 Dag Brattli
Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: + 0.1 Fri Jul 25 11:45:26 1997 Dag Brattli
Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: Serial connection established.
Jan 2 12:59:09 japh kernel: IrDA irda_device irda0 registered.
Jan 2 13:01:22 japh syslog: executing: './drivers start '
Jan 2 13:01:22 japh syslog: Serial connection established.
Jan 2 13:01:42 japh syslogd: Printing partial message
Jan 2 13:01:42 japh 0.1 Fri Jul 25 11:45:26 1997 Dag Brattli
Jan 2 13:02:49 japh kernel: IrDA Discovered: japh
Jan 2 13:02:49 japh kernel: Services: Computer
* Even more information you can get with cat /proc/net/irda/discovery .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1.2. Fast InfraRed - FIR
The IrDA(TM) standard knows three kinds of speeds:
* SIR = Standard IrDA, up to 115kbps IrDA,
* MIR = Medium Speed IrDA,
* FIR = Fast IrDA (4Mbps),
* VFIR = Very Fast IrDA(16Mbps), seems to become a future standard
Up to 115.200bps (SIR) many (probably all) infrared controllers work like a
serial port and use a RZI (return to zero, inverted) modulation. Not every
infrared controller supports 4Mps (FIR), up to 4Mbps they have to use 4PPM (4
pulse position) modulation technique. A list of supported FIR chips is
included in /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/irda/Kconfig. You may start the FIR
service by loading the according module. Linux/IrDA will probe your hardware
then. More drivers are under development.
So what speeds can you expect? Using SIR, you should be able to get about
10 Kbytes/s. Using FIR (4Mbps) you can get over 300 Kbytes/s (if you are
lucky).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1.3. Dongle Connection - Infrared Adapters for the Serial Port
A survey of supported dongles is included in /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/
irda/Kconfig.
Dag Brattli wrote (modified by wh): "To use dongles you have to do
something like this:
modprobe tekram # or esi or actisys
irattach -d tekram # or -d esi or -d actisys
modprobe is not necessary, if /etc/modules.conf is correct. As you can see,
you must still use the -d option with irattach since it is possible to have
two serial ports using different dongles at the same time (so the tty you are
binding must know which dongle it is supposed to use). So if you have two
dongles and two serial ports, you could do something like this:
modprobe tekram
modprobe esi
irattach /dev/ttyS0 -d esi &
irattach /dev/ttyS1 -d tekram &
PS: I would not try to turn the two dongles against each other, since I
really don't know how the stack would react :-) ... Since I don't have any of
these new ACTiSYS 220L+ dongles, I'm not able to test it. Since the new
dongle has support for one extra speed (38400bps), you must specify the
dongles differently with irattach so that the kernel knows which dongle you
are using (and what QoS can be used):
irattach /dev/ttyS0 -d actisys # for the 220L dongle
irattach /dev/ttyS0 -d actisys+ # for the 220L+ dongle
The current implementation of dongle support does not have any state
associated with it, so its not possible to use both ACTiSYS dongles (220L and
220L+) at the same time (connected to two serial ports) for now. If someone
needs to be able to do so, please mail me (Dag Brattli) and I will think
about it!"
Note: When I tried to use an infrared modem (Swissmod 56Ki, manufactured by
Telelink AG) connected to my laptop (IrDA works with Microsoft-Window$95
only, due to non-standard hardware) I had to remove the infrared support in
the BIOS to get it working!
Dag Brattli: "It is now possible to use irport instead of irtty! I have
moved all the dongle stuff out of irtty and into irda_device, so it will also
be possible to attach dongles to irport. Need however to make a small
user-space utility dongle_attach that can be used to attach dongles to a
specific driver instance. BTW: irattach is still working as before, and you
will not notice the difference even when attaching dongles to irtty (I've
just redirected the dongle ioctl to irda_device). Irport may be interesting
since you avoid one software interrupt (bh) level, and it's also forced to
work in half duplex mode so you don't get any echo if the irda port itself
don't have echo-cancellation (Girbil dongle and HP-4000 etc) ... To use it,
you must supply the parameters to modprobe like this: modprobe irport io=
0x3f8 irq=4, or whichever values you use. You can also add these parameters
to /etc/modprobe.conf (kernel 2.6) or /etc/modules.conf (kernel 2.4) like
this: options irport io=0x3f8 irq=4, but then you must remember to do a
depmod -a and use modprobe irport instead of modprobe."
Alvin Loh: "Anyone with a ESI 9680C can use both parallax's and ESI's
signalling scheme, meaning they can use Parallax's driver with ESI9680C to
work. "
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1.4. Dongle Connection - Infrared Adapters for the USB Port
Not every USB dongle does work. For details see the dedicated chapter below
IrDA and USB.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1.5. Dongle Connection - Infrared Motherboard Adapter
Support for e.g. the ACTiSYS IR2000 dongle has been implemented.
From James I have this description about setting up the hardware: There are
two configurations, a five pin in line connector and a 6 pin DIL (at the end
of a 18 pin DIL header). Basically any IrDA compatible transceiver will work
(I have a stack of old IRM3001 these are now obselete) you need to hook a
capacitor (use a tantalum about ~1uF) between 5V and 0V near the transceiver
and then connect everthing else up (RX->RX, TX->TX, 5V->5V, and 0V-0V). If
you don't like soldering irons, lots of companies do sell IR modules for the
5 pin connectors that fit into a hole in your case.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2. Printer Connection
Prepare Linux/IrDA as described above. Especially check for the existence
of /dev/irlpt* (if it doesn't exists do as root mknod /dev/irlpt0 c 161 16).
Now you may perform a first and simple test. Try to write a small file to /
dev/irlpt0 by cat FILE >/dev/irlpt0. Do not wonder about a bad format (the
lines form sort of steps) this is just a first check. If this doesn't work
please check the permissions of /dev/irlpt0. Watch whether the connection
indicator of your printer shows activity, e.g. the green light above the
InfraRed port of a HP 6P/MP comes on (lower left hand corner, near the paper
tray).
The cat command will not produce formatted output, but is useful for
testing. If it works, you may set up an IrDA capable printer depending on
your printer system. See the documentation, e.g. the Printing-HOWTO from
[http://www.linuxprinting.org] LinuxPrinting.org for detailed information.
With the [http://www.cups.org] Common Unix Printing System - CUPS use for
example with a HP LaserJet 2100:
lpadmin -p IRDA_PRINTER_NAME -v parallel:/dev/irlpt0 -E -m de/hp2100_6.ppd.gz
To get a list of paths to your ppd files use lpinfo -m.
Of course other printing systems will also work, e.g. you may edit /etc/
printcap and include irlpt0 as the printer device.
The better way is to change your /etc/printcap to use /dev/irlpt0 in
addition or instead of /dev/lp1.
For easy printer setup you may use a printing software like APSFILTER,
MagicFilter EZ-Magic (with RedHat there should also be a GUI for this
purpose). Make a copy of /etc/printcap before.
Example for APSFILTER with a HP 6P (non-postscript, HP 6MP is with
postscript). The two relevant questions are: "Do you have a (s)serial or a
(p)arallel printer interface?" Answer "p" "What's the device name for your
parallel printer interface?" Answer "/dev/irlpt0"
Restart the print daemon with kill -HUP <PID of lpd>. If you use another
print daemon choose the according command.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.3. LAN Connection - IrLAN
You might connect your Linux box using IrLAN to another network device such
as a Linux box with IrLAN, a HP NetBeamer or a Microsoft-Windows95 box with
Infrared Network Device support. But this protocol is no longer maintained by
the Linux/IrDA core team.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.4. HP NetBeamer Connection
As far as I know this device uses IrLAN. But currently this protocol is no
longer maintained by the Linux/IrDA core team.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.5. Palm III Connection - IrCOMM
* PPP Rui Oliveira wrote: "This is just to let you know that with the
latest IrCOMM patch (050998) of Takahide Higuchi, I managed to HotSync
and establish a PPP connection between my Palm III and my Linux box. I'm
using IRLink (from IsComplete) to redirect the serial port to ir.
Communication with pilot-xfer (available from the "pilot-link" package at
[http://www.slac.com/pilone/kpilot_home/] kpilot ) works flawlessly.
Although I was able to establish a PPP connection, I'm still unable to
fetch mail and do Web browsing. This is probably due to connection
time-outs. I am checking this out. Please see the [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/
PPP-HOWTO/] PPP-HOWTO for further information about PPP. I managed to
establish an apparently robust connection between my Linux box and a Palm
III. The pppd invocation I use is as follows:
/usr/sbin/pppd /dev/ircomm0 57600 192.168.2.10:192.168.2.11
proxyarp passive silent persist noauth local nodetach
Over the PPP connection I used ping, ssh, and HTTP. Strange is however
the fact that discovery must be enabled (maybe obsolete) . Otherwise,
even with an active IrCOMM connection, the link goes down due to a IrLAP
disconnect. The pilot-link tools (used for Linux/Palm synchronization)
also ran flawlessly over IrCOMM via /dev/ircomm0." There are also reports
about kpilot, though not working as flawlessly as pilot-xfer.
* IrCOMM Jon Howell wrote: "I thought I'd try IrCOMM, since the Palm III
can be made to reroute serial info to the IR port (using IrLink from IS/
Complete, available at [http://www.palmcentral.com] PalmCentral , and
then you can run a terminal program (like PalmTelnet in serial mode) over
IrDA. I can only assume it's using the IrCOMM protocol. I've tested this
configuration between two Palm Pilots, but of course I can't know what
the protocol running over the IR is." (1) Start HotSync on your Palm. You
need the [http://www.palm.com/support/downloads/irenhanc.html] IrDA
upgrade for the Palm to have IrCOMM support (2) Place the Palm in front
of the dongle. (3) Start pilot-xfer -p /dev/ircomm0 -s <sync-dir> . And
if you are lucky it will start syncing. If you start pilot-xfer before
you start HotSync on the Pilot, you will _not_ be lucky! Maybe a terminal
program like PalmTerm or [http://pamupamu.tripod.co.jp/soft/mterm/
mterm_E.htm] MiniTerm (a former version of this HOWTO referred to it as
MTerm) is also useful.
Wessel de Roode wrote: The Palmpilot is default locked on 57k. You can
however if you write your own software for the Pilot, use the 115k line
settings. I quote a part from the irlib.h:
---------- irlib.h from the SDK 3.0 from palmpilot -----
// Options values for IrOpen
#define irOpenOptBackground 0x80000000 // Unsupported background task use
#define irOpenOptSpeed115200 0x0000003F // sets max negotiated baud rate
#define irOpenOptSpeed57600 0x0000001F // default is 57600
#define irOpenOptSpeed9600 0x00000003
Peter Pregler reported: If the Palm enters the range of the irda-device a
popup appears with the text "Transmission: waiting for sender"
Ron Choy answered: There is a software called [http://hp.vector.co.jp/
authors/VA005810/irda/shutup10.zip] ShutupIR that is supposed to help with
this problem of annoying popup I haven't tried it but it looks like it would
fix your problem.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.6. Linux Terminal on Palm (Handspring Visor) via IR
by Chris Morris on Linux/IrDA list: In addition to using IrDA to hotsync my
Handspring Visor I got my Handspring visor to work as a Linux text terminal
via infrared last night. My computer is a Dell Inspiron 3800 (BTW I wracked
my brains for weeks trying to get IR to work. The whole problem was caused by
Linux looking at the wrong IRQ for ttyS3 . ). I am using Beam Sync for Visor
V1.0b2 by [http://muchy.com/index.html] Hacker Dude-san (in Japanese) and
[http://pamupamu.tripod.co.jp/soft/mterm/mterm_E.htm] MiniTerm (a former
version of this HOWTO referred to it as MTerm) by Shigeyuki Seko . On the
laptop I have IrDA set to SIR mode and COM 3 via BIOS. I have to set /dev/
ttyS3 to IRQ3 via setserial /dev/ttyS3 irq 3 on boot up. After boot up I do
a:
/sbin/modprobe irda
/sbin/modprobe irtty
/sbin/modprobe ircomm
/sbin/ircomm-tty
/usr/sbin/irattach /dev/ttyS3 -s
cat /proc/net/irda/discovery shows the visor as IrComm Now /etc/mgetty+fax/
mgetty.conf has to have these options: port ttyS3 direct y speed 9600 ,
faster maybe possible but only 9600 worked for me so far toggle-dtr n Then in
/etc/inittab: palm:235:respawn: /sbin/mgetty ircomm0 After all of this I can
start MiniTerm, issue a '/sbin/init q' then send a few <CR> from the Visor
and I get a text termianl login. While composing this email I found a
previously undiscovered website that seems most helpful: [http://abgruen.de/
palm/palm-ppp-mini.txt] palm-ppp-mini
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.7. Psion 5 Connection
Andrew Chadwick wrote: A nifty way to check that the baud rates for SIR are
set up properly (if you have a Psion Series 5) is to point the S5 at your
Linux box's IR window and try to beam a file. While the beamer dialog's on
the screen, the S5 will try to make an IrDA connection (even when it claims
it can't find another IR machine). You should be able to do a cat > /dev/
ttyS3 and if the serial parameters are right on both machines, you should see
the words "Symbian EPOC" (machine ident) scroll past amidst the spew.
Fons Botman wrote: " Maybe someone with a Psion 5 would like to test this
program. It emulates the protocol for the Psion 5 IR send and receive command
for files on linux. You can now exchange files with simple commands. The
transfer rate is 9.7 KBytes/sec on a 115KB SIR link for big files which is
not bad methinks. It is beta, so be sure to backup the Psion first, I did get
a soft reset once (no data loss). ;-)" I have put the source into the
appendix.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.8. Connecting from Linux to WinCE 2.11
Submitted by Arthur Tyde and Bryan Abshier of Linuxcare Inc.
This will tell you how to set up a masqueraded PPP connection via. IrDA
from WinCE to a Linux based notebook computer. Once you are IP connected, the
rest is up to you. We put this together as a guide for Sony notebook users
with Casio E-100/105 PDA's, though the procedure should work for any WinCE
2.11 device with infrared capabilities talking to any notebook. Do all the
Linux side testing signed on as root, standard warnings apply.
Configure WinCE Configure a network connection for your WinCE device. Go
into "Connections" and create a "Direct Connection" Name it something
meaningful, for device select "Infrared Port". Go into settings and change
the baud rate to 115200, this is the max for WinCE. Go to TCP/IP settings and
check "Use server-assigned IP address," and "Use software compression," and
"Use IP header compression" Make sure "Use Slip," is unchecked. For Name
Servers, make sure "Use server-assigned addresses" is checked. Go to Start,
Settings, Communications, Identification and enter something for the Device
Name. (I used "cetoy") You most likely already have these values set if you
have synced with a Win9x desktop using Activesynch.
Configure Linux/IrDA Set up IrDA support on your notebook (described
elsewhere) and get to the point where your notebook will discover an IrDA
compliant device. A good sign is the irda0 device will show up when you
execute ifconfig. It will not have an IP address, this is ok.
Setup the Connection Test the discovery by setting an IrDA device in range
of your IR port, wait 5 seconds, and;
cat /proc/net/irda/discovery
For example, the Ericsson I888 World Phone with IR port enabled should
immediately show something like this;
"name:I 888 WORLD ,hint:0x9104,saddr:0x838470e5,daddr:0x152dceaa"
Your WinCE machine will not be discovered unless it's actively looking for a
connection. So, if you want to test with WinCE position your device and
double tap on the network icon you created in step 2, you should see
something like this:
"name:mytoy,hint:0x8204,saddr:0x838470e5,daddr:0x00000b72"
The name displayed will be whatever value you have entered into the Start,
Settings, Communications, Identification as the Device Name. At this point,
with basic IrDA functioning- we can move on to establishing a PPP connection
for WinCE. These scripts can also be used for serial cable connects. Create
the following files and copy them into the directory indicated.
/usr/sbin/cebox.sh - make it executable
#!/bin/sh
pppd call cebox
Because Microsoft likes to break standards, you need the following chat
script. This will feed WinCE the proper ASCII keywords it wants before
allowing a PPP connection.
/etc/ppp/cebox.chat
TIMEOUT 3600
"CLIENT" "CLIENT\c"
"" "SERVER\c"
The following file will allow you to specify the IP addresses, IR (or serial
port if using a cable) device, DNS and so forth. I do not recommend you
change the 192.IP addresses below. WinCE really has an affection for
192.168.55.100 because all the MS synch tools seem to have it hardcoded. DNS
can be whatever you normally use.
/etc/ppp/peers/cebox
/dev/ircomm0 115200 crtscts
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/cebox.chat'
noauth
local
192.168.55.101:192.168.55.100
ms-dns 10.2.0.1
Testing the connection Ok, now you can test the connection to make sure it
all works. Reboot your machine, run irattach /dev/ttyS2 -s (/dev/ttyS2 being
the serial port your BIOS sees the IR device as, if irattach is not running,
start it) Align the IR ports, at the Linux command prompt type /usr/sbin/
cebox.sh, and simultaneously press return to start cebox and double tap your
connection icon in WinCE. You should get a happy message from WinCE reporting
Connecting to Host, Device Connected, Authenticating User, User Authenticated
and finally Connected. You should see something like this when you are
connected:
irda0 Link encap:IrLAP HWaddr 06:89:d0:58
UP RUNNING NOARP MTU:2048 Metric:1
RX packets:246 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:251 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:8
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:192.168.55.101 P-t-P:192.168.55.100 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
The following script sets up IrDA, establishes a ppp connection with WinCE,
and then sets up IP masquerading. It is provided as an example of how you can
tie this all together. This is more or less a manual approach. You can get
creative, start irattach at boot and stick a line in inittab to constantly
look for a WinCE connection on the IR port. This will however, run down your
batteries and limit your ability to access other IR gadgets. I just use the
script below. Position the device, run wince and start communications on your
PDA when the script tells you to.
/usr/local/bin/wince - make this executable
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
#
# Enable IrDA, start ppp0 and set up WinCE masquerading
# A. Tyde - Linuxcare Inc.
#
print "\n-> Setting up IR infrastructure...\n";
system("killall irattach 2>/dev/null");
sleep 1;
system("/usr/sbin/cebox.sh");
print " Start WinCE Serial or IR networking now!\n";
open(ECHO,">/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward") or die "Can not open /proc/sys/net/
ipv4/ip_forward";
print ECHO "1";
close (ECHO);
print " Serving 192.168.55.100 to WinCE device...\n\n";
system("ipchains -F");
sleep 5;
system("ipchains -P forward DENY");
system("ipchains -A forward -s 192.168.55.100/32 -j MASQ");
exit 0;
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.9. Connecting from Linux to WinCE 3.0 (aka PocketPC)
This chapter is a courtesy of Stanislav Sokolov.
This section covers how to connect a PocketPC device to a Linux box. The
information provided in section "Connecting from Linux to WinCE" (found also
at [http://www.cewindows.net/wce/linux-serial.htm] CEwindows ) does not apply
to PocketPC as Microsoft in one of there brighter moments removed support for
direct IrDA connections from version 3.0 of WinCE. I used the document "Linux
to Windows CE Connection" (found at [http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/
linux_ce.html] The Gadgeteer ) as a starting point, but had to modify and
simplify several aspects. This section will go as far as ping between
PocketPC and Linux. You should be able to find many networking applications
at [http://www.pdacentral.com/wince/ftp.htm] PDAcentral, [http://www.cam.com]
CAM or [http://www.wincecity.com] WinCEcity .
Here is the system I used:
* Compaq iPAQ with PocketPC Version 3.0.9348 (I don't know if this would
work for PocketPC 2002 as Microsoft likes changing standards from version
to version).
* On the Linux side was a Compaq LTE5250 laptop with Slackware Linux 7.1.
* Kernel 2.4.19
* PPP 2.4.1 (PPP must not be older than 2.4.0 when used with kernel
2.4.x)
On the PocketPC side go to Start -> Settings -> Connection -> Modem. Make a
new connection, call it something meaningful (I use Linux-m), choose "Generic
IrDA modem", set baud rate to 115200. Tap "Advanced". In "Port Settings"
select 8-N-1-Hardware and check "Enter dialing commands manually". This is
done so as PocketPC would not try to dial a phone number as we do not want
it. The other two boxes should remain unchecked. In TCP/IP select "Use
server-assigned IP address" uncheck "Use Slip", but check "Use software
compression" and "Use IP header compression". In "name Servers" select "Use
server-assigned addresses". Tap "ok" and "Next". You should not be asked for
telephone number (if you are, just enter 1 and doublecheck that you actually
selected manual dialing commands box in advanced section). Make sure that
"Cancel call..." and "Wait for dial tone..." boxes are unchecked. We are now
done with the PocketPC part.
On Linux we must first make sure that all the necessary modules are loaded.
Here are the modules that were loaded and in use during a successful
communication session:
Module Size Used by Not tainted
ircomm-tty 31040 2
ircomm 13448 0 [ircomm-tty]
irtty 7616 2
ppp_async 6688 1
ppp_generic 15740 3 [ppp_async]
slhc 4592 1 [ppp_generic]
Make sure that ls -la /dev/ircomm* produces a similar output:
crw------- 1 root root 161, 0 Nov 25 15:09 /dev/ircomm0
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 161, 1 Nov 22 19:30 /dev/ircomm1
Start irattach irattach /dev/ttyS2 -s
Now we have to enable a login terminal on the IrDA port. I used agetty (or
your favorite getty variant) for that purpose. Add the following line to your
/etc/inittab:
s3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ircomm0 115200 vt100
save the file and activate it by restarting init:
init 2; sleep 3 ; init 3
Also prepare the following shell script that will perform the second phase of
connection:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/pppd -detach noauth local lock 192.168.55.1:192.168.55.2 ircomm0 115200 &
Now the connection itself: Align the IR ports and on the PocketPC go to
Start -> Programs -> Connections and tap the connection that you created
(Linux-m). In the "Connect To" dialog that shows up leave everything unfilled
and just tap on "Connect". "Manual Dialing Terminal" will show up. There you
should see the login prompt for your Linux-box (If the login prompt does not
show up at once, bring up the virtual keyboard and tap 'enter'). You do not
need to login (though it is a bonus - speaking of the ultimate remote
controller :)
On the Linux-box execute the pppd command as soon as some "garbage" shows
up in the PocketPC's terminal, tap "File" -> "Continue". pppd should come
with the following message:
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ircomm0
Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
local IP address 192.168.55.1
remote IP address 192.168.55.2
And PocketPC should show a dialog with "Status: Connected". You can run
ifconfig to check that ppp0 interface is up and running. ping 192.168.55.2
should produce something like that:
PING 192.168.55.2 (192.168.55.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.55.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=32 time=62.5 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.55.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=32 time=310.0 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.55.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=32 time=59.9 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.55.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=32 time=59.8 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.55.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=32 time=60.0 ms
--- 192.168.55.2 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 59.8/110.4/310.0 ms
RTT will depend on the distance and lighting conditions. When you tap
"Disconnect" something like that will show up:
LCP terminated by peer
Modem hangup
Connection terminated.
Connect time 2.6 minutes.
Sent 1336 bytes, received 1274 bytes.
Now, if not all went that well, check the following:
* getty is started. It will not start if /dev/ircomm0 is not configured.
That is modprobe ircomm-tty should come up before getty is invoked.
* "Enter dialing commands manually" is checked. PocketPC should not
attempt to dial any number!
* You have async PPP support in kernel. modprobe ppp_async loads
successfully or you don't have PPP async compiled into kernel. Otherwise
you will get the "Couldn't set tty to PPP discipline: Invalid argument"
error message.
* pppd should be setuid root: chmod u+s /usr/sbin/pppd.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10. Cellular Phone Connection
As far as I know some cellular phones use the IrCOMM standard, e.g.
Ericsson SH888 and NOKIA 6110 (I'm not sure about the NOKIA 8110). Some
cellular phones (Ericsson T68) use the IrOBEX standard or IrMC. For more and
general information about Linux and cell phones see [http://tuxmobil.org/
phones_linux.html] TuxMobil . You may use IrCOMM to set up a PPP modem
connection and OpenOBEX to send or retrieve files (e.g. addressbook entries,
logo, ringtones).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.1. Generic Instructions
This chapter describes how to connect your mobile phone via IrDA with your
Linux box. It is based on a report by Matthias Schmidt. It was tested with
the following mobiles:
* Ericsson T39m
* Siemens S25
* Siemens S35i
* Siemens ME45
* Nokia 6110
* Nokia 6210
Configure the IrDA basics as described above (kernel configuration, /etc/
modules.conf, irattach, PPP) (for detailed information about PPP see also the
[http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO/] PPP-HOWTO. Now check whether your mobile
phone was found:
# irdadump
xid:rsp be1eb736 > 08666644 S=6 s=4 SIEMENS S35 hint=9024 [ Modem IrCOMM IrOBEX ] (28)
# irdadump
xid:rsp be1eb736 > 35450000 S=6 s=4 Nokia 6100 hint=8101 [ PnP Telephony ] (28)
# irdadump
xid:rsp be1eb736 > 04489982 S=6 s=5 SIEMENS ME45 hint=b124 [ PnP Modem Fax IrCOMM IrOBEX ] (29)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.1.1. PPP dial-up Software
3.10.1.1.1. minicom
There are several ways to connect to your ISP. The easiest (and sometimes
the only) way is to use a terminal program like minicom.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.1.1.2. wvdial
If you prefer more comfort, you can use [http://www.worldvisions.ca/wvdial
/] wvdial. It's easy to configure and it works with a lot of roaming
providers and the german Tante T. gh0st and me did some testing yesterday and
we weren't able to connect to the dial-in server of the HRZ with wvdial.
wvdial always failed with "Bad password", because the server respondend
faster that the mobile softmodem could send the login and password strings.
See the standard ppp config below. /etc/wvdial.conf:
[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ircomm0
Baud = 9600
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Password = internet
Username = internet
Phone = 00393492002800
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
[Dialer shh]
Init3 = ATM0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.1.1.3. PPP Tools
Problems with wvdial (see explanation above)? IMHO the best way is to use
the standard [ftp://ftp.linuxcare.com.au/pub/ppp/] PPP tools . You can
configure them via pppconfig, start with pon and stop connection with poff.
Example files for PPP with a connection named irda: /etc/ppp/pap-secrets
# username connection-name password
test irda test
/etc/ppp/peers/irda
hide-password
noauth
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/irda"
debug
/dev/ircomm0
9600
defaultroute
noipdefault
user test
remotename irda
ipparam irda
usepeerdns
/etc/chatscripts/irda
ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT VOICE ABORT 'NO DIALTONE'
ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED
'' ATZ
# dial-in number of the ISP
OK-AT-OK ATDT<YOUR_ISP_PHONE_NUMBER>
CONNECT \d\c
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.1.2. Logos, Sounds, SMS, ...
If you get your mobile working via infrared, you can do some nice stuff
with it. You can save your phonebook or your SMS, send SMS, put new logos
(BMP format) on it, save the old logo to your harddisk and do the same with
your ringtones (MIDI). To do all this nice things, you'll need the following:
* a OBEX capable mobile phone, e.g. a Siemens mobile-phone
* a working infrared connection
* the [http://www.hendrik-sattler.de/scmxx/] scmxx tool
* gscmxx (optional)
Bind your mobile phone to IrDA services
# irattach /dev/ttyS1 -s
IrDA: Registered device irda0
Check the connection
# irdadump
xid:cmd 9d5dcefa < ffffffff S=6 s=3 (14)
xid:cmd 9d5dcefa < ffffffff S=6 s=4 (14)
xid:rsp 9d5dcefa > 08666644 S=6 s=3 SIEMENS S35 hint=9024 [ Modem IrCOMM IrOBEX ] (28)
Show general information about your mobile phone
# scmxx -i
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Vendor: SIEMENS
Model: S35i
Revision: 20
Serial (Phone): xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Serial (SIM): xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
SIM-ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Operator: D2
SMS Server: +491722270333
Charset: GSM
Battery: 40%
Signal/BER: -79 dBm/?
Time: 02/10/07,11:48:49
Readable Slots: bmp: 0-1, mid: 0, vcs: 1-30
Phonebooks: FD, SM, ON, ME, LD, MC, RC, OW, MS, CD, BL, RD, CS
SMS storages: SM
Save your phonebook to disk
# scmxx -g -PSM -f phonebook
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Detected SIEMENS S35i
phonebook created.
Receiving: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [...]
Received all gettable entries
Show your SMS (here in slot 3)
# scmxx -g -S3 -f -
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Detected SIEMENS S35i
Looking for SMS of specified type...
Receiving incoming, read SMS from slot 3.
Slot: 3
From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: 2002-10-03 23:11:47 (GMT+0)
SMSC number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PDU type: SMS-DELIVER MMS
Data Coding Scheme: 7bit-GSM
Message length: 160
Message:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Save your current logo to disk
# scmxx -g -B0 -f logo.bmp
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Detected SIEMENS S35i
Slot 0...
Receiving packet 1 of 5...
logo.bmp created.
Receiving packet 2 of 5...
Receiving packet 3 of 5...
Receiving packet 4 of 5...
Receiving packet 5 of 5...
File transfer complete.
Save your current ringtone to disk
# scmxx -g -M0 -f sound.mid
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Detected SIEMENS S35i
Slot 0...
Receiving packet 1 of 1...
sound.mid created.
File transfer complete.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.2. OBEX Connection
See the OpenOBEX chapter below. Detailed information about OBEX connections
to mobile phones will follow soon hopefully. See also the Palm III section
for information about setting up a connection.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3. Specific Mobile Phones
3.10.3.1. Motorola
Michael McConnell has posted an initial version of a guide to get the
Motorola Timeport GSM phone and Linux-IrDA talking on [http://
www.eridani.co.uk/docs/linux-timeport/] his website.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3.2. Ericsson
Note for T39 users (maybe for T300, too). Please check the web page of
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html] Jean
Tourrilhes , you will need to apply kernel patches and tweak /proc/sys/net/
irda/max_tx_window
1. Configuration To start a communication session with /dev/ircomm0 , for
instance, say:
dip -t
> port ircomm0
> term
Probably you may use cu or xc instead of dip, too cu -l /dev/ircomm0 or xc -l
/dev/ircomm0. There are also reports about some efforts with the Ericsson
GF768 and IR Modem DI 27.
Benny Amorsen wrote: The SH888 emulates an IRDA-port when you connect it
using the serial cable. Why someone would think up something weird like that
is beyond me, but that is the way you get it to work in Windows. Not that I
ever managed to make it work in Windows, though.
Ales Dryak has send this survey (looks like a Debian/GNU Linux
distribution, please modify your configuration accordingly). Mobile Ericsson
SH888 ati1 = 980408 1035 PRGCXC125101:
mknod /dev/ircomm0 c 161 0
mknod /dev/ircomm1 c 161 1
2. /etc/conf.modules:
alias tty-ldisc-11 irtty
alias char-major-161 ircomm-tty
3. /etc/irda/drivers: irattach /dev/ttyS0 -s # (IrDA port in SIR mode) 4. /
etc/chatscripts/sh888
<ABORT stuff>
"" \d\d\d\d\d\dATZE0
OK ATD<phone number to call)
CONNECT \d\c
5. /etc/ppp/peers/sh888
noauth
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/sh888"
/dev/ircomm
115200
defaultroute
noipdefault
user <your username> # don't forget to add your password to chap secrets or chat script
A few seconds (app. 30) after executing pppd call sh888 I get connected to
our Intranet/Internet having full IP connectivity (telnet, ftp, www, icmp
tested). Futhermore I can connect to /dev/ircomm using minicom and play with
AT command. Great! And looks stable!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3.2.1. Tools
Gerhard Gonter reported: Several members of the list are successfully using
the Ericsson mobile phone SH888 with the Linux-IrDA software, usually to use
it as a modem. The software is also quite useful to access other parts of the
phone using AT commands. The built-in phonebook is an interesting target.
After A quick research on the Internet (FreshMeat, Deja, YAHOO), I did not
find any phonebook tool for Linux (or another Unix). To solve that problem, I
wrote a small Perl script and a related module. Since this now works
acceptably well for me, I decided to wrap that up and release it at this
early stage of development. The tarball can be retrieved [http://
falbala.wu-wien.ac.at:8684/pub/english.cgi/0/172903] here .
In the mailing list gsmlib was also recommended, though ... there was no
way for me to use this over infrared, no connection with my sh888. Florian
Lohoff reported: Works (kind of) with the S25. I needed to change a ifdef as
it seems the S25 does not respond with CR LF. But setting a link from /dev/
mobilephone -> /dev/ircomm lets me send SMS via the S25 without a problem.
Phonebook backup does NOT work because the S25 does some silly responses to
probably empty phonebooks.
The specifications for SMS messages and phone books can be downloaded free
(of charge, not FSF free ;-) from ETSI. Search for GSM 07.07 (you might also
want GSM 07.05). You have to register before downloading it. The standards
are in Acrobat PDF format. The S25 supported commands are available on the
Siemens websites as a PDF for free.
A survey of the AT commands for the SH888 is at [http://
mobileinternet.ericsson.se/emi_download/sh888/888_R1D.pdf] Ericsson .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3.3. NOKIA
Carlos Vidal wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Nokia
telephones do not contain a genuine hardware modem, but something which is
similar in principle to WinModems for PC. Whenever Nokia writes about modem
communication, they use the name "Windows software modem" (or something
similar). Which is actually backed up by the need to use special Nokia
software for Windows (called Nokia Cellular Data Suite).
Joonas Lehtinen wrote: This is true with 61xx models. Models: 8810, 9000(i)
and 9110 should work fine. (They have inbuilt modem). My Nokia 9000 reports
IrCOMM with linux.
Some suggestion by Carlos Vidal carlos_at_tarkus.se : "I'm doing some tests
trying to see how far can I get with my Nokia 6110 on Linux. I've just
compiled gnokii-0.2.4 [ [http://www.gnokii.org/] gnokii is a tool set for
Nokia mobile phones connected via serial cable for Linux and *BSD , WH], but
it doesn't work [please check current gnokii , the behaviour should have been
improved, there is also useful documentation about IrDA connections to
phones, WH]. As I have Nokia Data Suite I did the following connection:
Nokia 6110 <-- Nokia Cable --> PC/Linux <-- Null-modem cable --> PC/W95
In the PC/Linux I run the program snooper (by Jun-ichiro itojun Itoh ,
sorry couldn't find an URL maybe some other sniffer will do it also, e.g.
sniffit, see also appendix about serial sniffers, WH) with small
modifications in order to configure the serial port correctly.
Normally, if snooper has the correct baud rate, the phone and the PC/W95
should communicate as if there was no snooper in between. This worked pretty
well when I cracked the protocol of my Minolta camera. The problem here is
that the phone doesn't answer or hangs after a while.
It seems that the timing is quite important during the initial phase of the
communication. The log I obtain is:
0>1: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
line 0: LE *DTR *RTS ST SR CTS CD RI *DSR
line 1: LE *DTR *RTS ST SR CTS CD RI *DSR
0>1: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU\x1e\x00\x0c\x02\x00\x09\x00\x01\x00\x0d\x00\x00\x02\x01@\x00P\x
06
1>0: \x18\x00\x00\x00\xfc\x18\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc0\xf0
0>1: \x1e\x00\x0c\x02\x00\x09\x00\x01\x00\x0d\x00\x00\x02\x01@\x00P\x06
1>0: \x18\x00\x00\x00\x18\x00\x00\xc0\xf0\x18\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc0\xf0
0>1: \x1e\x00\x0cd\x00\x06\x00\x01\x00\x10\x01`\x13\x13
1>0: \x18\x00\x00\xf0\x00\x00\xfc
0>1: \x1e\x00\x0cd\x00\x06\x00\x01\x00\x10\x01`\x13\x13
0 is the PC/95 and 1 is the phone. The communication starts with a stream of
'U' (0x55) and with DSR/DTR on. The phone answers with '0x18 0x00 ...'. This
dialog continues for a while as if both were deaf and finally the phone
crashes and the only way to reset it is to remove the batteries!
I guess that what happens is that the phone is trying to find the correct
baud-rate and fails because of the delays introduced by snooper. This
probably has to do with some IrDA protocol used with also with the infrared
connection."
Wessel de Roode "I managed to get the Discovery IR hint bits (with my Palm
Pilot):
Discover:
0:xxxxxxxx:81.01
01 IR_HINT_PNP 01 IR_HINT_TELEPHONY (IrMC ?)
80 IR_HINT_EXT
Device info query:
\006Device\012DeviceName
4e 6f 6b 69 61 20 36 31 30 30 Nokia 6100
I also managed to query the PNP device of the Nokia. It has one PNP device.
It's PNPC100 which equalt a 9600 baud modem. I deleted the query, if somene
can send me a hint to restore it. was somthing like IrDA:<dunno>:PNP:Comp#01
The same query with IrDA:<dunno>:PNP:CompCnt gives the number of PNP-devices
are available in the Nokia. Which is here only one."
There are also reports about gsmlib for sending and receiving sms messages,
updating address books etc). These functions are working, except for minor
charset problems.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3.3.1. Recommended Tools
[http://www.gnokii.org] gnokii is a Linux/Unix tool suite and soon to be
modem/fax driver for Nokia (GSM) mobile phones. Phones supported include
3110, 3810, 8110, 5110, 6110 and their derivatives.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3.4. Siemens
Configuration By Florian Lohoff: "Do it step by step - Get your irda working
irattach /dev/ttySx etc. Then have a look at the /proc/net/irda/discovery
whether you find something like this:
(flo@paradigm)~# cat /proc/net/irda/discovery
IrLMP: Discovery log:
nickname: SIEMENS S25, hint: 0x9024, saddr: 0x4286ce23, daddr: 0x04295741
Now load ircomm and ircomm-tty and normally(tm) you should be able to connect
to the correct /dev/ircomm and you can easily dial and load/backup the
phonebook etc ...", e.g. with minicom.
Timo Felbinger describes the connection between a Toshiba and a Siemens
S25:
* kernel 2.2.12 and patch-2.2.12-irda3, IrDA support in the kernel,
ircomm and ircomm-tty as a module
* mknod /dev/ircomm0 c 161 0
* modprobe ircomm, modprobe ircomm-tty
* start irattach with modprobe toshoboe in the start section of /etc/irda
/drivers . Note: don't load toshoboe before the irattach, this may cause
device or resource busy
* after dip -t and the command port ircomm0 the S25 shows a connection.
Note: the IR port of the S25 has to be activated of course, the distance
between the two devices seems not critical.
* After term the S25 behaves like the usual Hayes modem and can be used
with the AT commands.
* dial-out with pppd works out of the box.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.3.4.1. Recommended Tools
[http://www.hendrik-sattler.de/scmxx] SCMxx can copy files to and from a
Siemens mobile phone and also delete stored files. Files can read from a
given file or through stdin and stored to a given file or stdout. SMS can
also be directly sent or received without storing in the mobile phone. SCMxx
was tested with several mobile phones manufactured by Siemens (only S25 and
later).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10.4. German e-plus
A note to German e-plus users:
Every e-plus contract (except Free&Easy) contains a PPP conncetion to the
WWW (no separate registration necessary). This service is available around
Germany under the phone number 123100. This worked also out of the box.
pppd configuration:
/dev/ircomm0
defaultroute
netmask 255.255.255.0
debug
mtu 552
crtscts
noauth
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/eplus.chat'
chat script /etc/ppp/eplus.chat:
ABORT "BUSY"
ABORT "ERROR"
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
ABORT "NO ANSWER"
SAY "initializing modem..."
"" "AT"
"OK" "ATZ"
SAY "dialing..."
"OK" "ATDT123100"
SAY "waiting for CONNECT..."
"CONNECT" ""
SAY "connected!"
SAY ""
For the nameserver you may use 192.76.144.66 . Username or password are not
necessary.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.11. Digital Camera Connection
Markus Schill wrote: "Great that there are also other people who are
interested in using the SONY DSC-F1 IR adapter under linux. Up to now I have
only toyed around with the linux-irda software and the serial IR adapter from
PuMa Technologies that came with the camera. This is the status. I am using
linux 2.0.33 and the latest linux-irda... If I use:
modprobe irda
modprobe irtty
irattach /dev/ircomm0
the adapter starts talking to the camera. /var/log/messages says that
SONY-DSC-F1 was found, but no service is started. (Please note, this probably
doesn't apply to the 2.2.x kernel versions of Linux/IrDA, [WH]).
There are two programs for linux available that can be used for the
communication with the camera via cable: (1) chotplay and (2) stillgrab. They
both take a tty as commandline option, so I guess that they should work if
the irtty layer of the protocol stack works correctly ... I have not looked
at anything in the linux-irda code, yet!). I am not sure whether I understand
the stack but shouldn't the irtty make the thing look like a normal tty? What
service should be started. "
Dag Brattli wrote: "I'm not sure which application level protocol the
camera uses, but it is possible that it implements the IrDA(TM) Infrared
Transfer Picture Specification (IrTran-P). If you take a look at [http://
www.irda.org/standards/pubs/IrTran-P_10.pdf] IrTran protocol , you will see
that it is a protocol which is implemented above IrCOMM (not IrTTY!). IrTTY
is something we use just to be able to talk to the Linux serial driver. "
The Kodak-Digital-Camera-HOWTO by David Burley now describes how to get
IrDA working and implemented to get communications and to use the DigitalOS
camera's with Linux and IrDA.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.12. Microsoft-Windows and Linux/IrDA
3.12.1. Introduction
Why this? Unfortunately Linux users are not always supplied with the
necessary hardware information. Sometimes it is possible to look at this
information in Microsoft-Windows. Sometimes its even useful to connect the
two. Linux could also provide occasional access point services to a
Microsoft-Windows laptop of a friend dropping by.
Where to get it from? At [http://www.microsoft.com] MicroSoft in the
directory /Windows95/downloads/contents/WURecommended/S_WUCommunications/
W95IrDA/ you will find a support pack Infrared Transfer 2.0. It is a
self-extracting archive W95IR.EXE with 331KB. Note: Microsoft seems to change
the location of this file (and others) at random, the former URL is Microsoft
Windows95 IrDA - Old
Microsoft(tm) has three versions of IrDA support for Windows95. The version
number can be found in the "Software" icon in the Control Panel and the file
infrared.inf.
Version 1.0 is still delivered with some hardware.
Version 2.0 is the version they currently offer at their web site. It is in
the self-extracting file W95IR.EXE. The last time I looked (1999-02-21) it
was 434KB and was found at [http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/
mslfiles/W95IR.EXE] W95IR.EXE . Their website is frequently changing, so do
not be surprised to find the file (also) in another location or not at all.
Version 3.0 can/could be found in their downloadable Infrared development
kit IRDDK30, but is mostly useful for developers. It is internally different
from 2.0, it is based on "miniport" network drivers, just like the Linux
version. It exists for some time and has some support for NT, but it clearly
did not make it into the mainstream NT4.0 distributions. For 95 you are
probably better off with 2.0. The choice may depend on the documentation of
the drivers you get with your specific hardware.
The Microsoft website also used to contain a nice utility IrXfer, contained
in the archive IRXFER.EXE, This is the Infrared Transfer utility, which uses
an IrOBEX variant I think, it is referenced in the IrOBEX protocol
description. The utility was freely downloadable, but I could not find it the
last time. It is a nice graphical utility which can be used to transfer files
over IrDA between computers.
With some machines, e.g. a HP Omnibook 800 it is necessary to use a vendor
specific version of this package (for the HP Omnibook 800 you may find it on
the recovery CD).
Especially the ..\windows\inf\*.inf files and the device manager are of
interest to look for configuration details.
As far as I know Window$NT doesn't support IrDA(TM). About Window$98 I have
heard there is no IrDA(TM) support yet. [http://www.countersys.com]
Countersys claims to sell an IrDA solution for NT4.0 to support their JetBeam
product, Microsoft refers to them for it.
AFAIK:
* Windows95 : use 2.0
* Windows98 : delivered with 3.0 and IrXfer (works with Linux/IrDA,
IrOBEX?)
* WindowsNT4.0: no IrDA support directly by the system
* Windows2000 : 3.0(+?) [http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/infrared/]
MicroSoft
There are also some non M$ products available. Note: Some of them use
proprietary infrared protocols:
* CounterPoint: QuickBeam 1.15 (works with Linux/IrDA, IrOBEX?)
* LapLink 7.5
* CarbonCopy 32 4.0
* pc ANYWHERE 7.5
* Puma Technology: TRANXIT pro 4.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.12.2. Connection between Linux/IrDA and MS-Windows95 IrDA(TM)
You may use [http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/
index.html] IrNET .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.12.3. Communication between MS-Windows98 and Linux
Ha Duong Minh: Today I am delighted to report that ircp from the [http://
sourceforge.net/projects/openobex/] OpenOBEX project , works like a charm to
transfer files between my Linux box and its Microsoft-Windows98 cousin. It
can't be simpler: ircp file1, file2, ... to send or ircp -r [DEST] to receive
files over IrDA.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.12.4. Communication between MS-Windows2000/XP and Linux
[http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~kiszka/IrCOMM2k/English/] IrCOMM2k is a
driver by Jan Kiszka for Windows 2000 and XP. It emulates a serial port which
can be used to exchange data with mobile devices. For example, some cellular
phones are able to act as modems or fax devices. PDAs with infrared interface
can be synchronized with the PC. IrCOMM2k is an Open Source project according
to the terms of the GPL.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.13. Linux to Linux Connection
3.13.1. Connection Methods
There should be four ways to get two Linux machines connected via Linux/
IrDA.
* Dag Brattli wrote about the IrOBEX support: "The awakened reader may
wonder what prevents the beaming of files from Linux to Linux? Well,
nothing!! (but I haven't tried that yet). This means that we now have a
"simple" way of beaming files between Linux laptops. I think that this
may be the "killer app" we all have been waiting for!" Try to "load_misc
irobex at both ends, and then try irobex_app get on one of the machines
and irobex_app put <file> on the other.".
* Via Linux/IrDA network connection. But the IrLAN protocol is no longer
maintained by the Linux/IrDA core team.
* With IrCOMM support, in other words over a serial line, which could
mean minicom, pppd, etc. If you want just now to use IrCOMM between Linux
boxes, please add this line to /etc/conf.modules of _one_ box:
# set ircomm protocol engine to client-only mode
options ircomm ircomm_cs=1
Note: Don't add it to both boxes, or they cannot accept incoming
connection each other! But since 2.2.7 there's no need to add options
ircomm ircomm_cs=1 to /etc/conf.modules anymore. Please remove it if you
are using it.
* [http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html] IrNET
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.13.2. Compression
Please note this feature is still quite experimental! Dag Brattli wrote:
"Just wanted you to know I have just added COMPRESSION support to IrLAP! As
you may know, this is _not_ part of the IrDA(TM) standard, but Linux can now
negotiate with its peer and check if it has the same compression
capabilities). So obviously if you are talking to Win95, Palm III or
whatever, you will _not_ get compression!!! This is something which is
exclusive for Linux as far as I know! The IrDA(TM) standard says that devices
should ignore unknown field in the negotiation header, so we are still
"compatible" with IrDA(TM) (have just borrowed an unused header value).
If you want to try using the compression code (Linux <-> Linux) you will
have to insert the irda_deflate module some time before you actually make the
connection. I do it before irattach.
The compression standard I have added is the deflate format used by the
zlib library which is described by RFCs (Request for Comments) 1950 to 1952
in the files ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1950.txt (zlib format), rfc1951.txt
(deflate format) and rfc1952.txt (gzip format).
The compression interface is similar to PPP, so you can add as many
different compressors as you want. Currently there is only support for GZIP,
but BSD compression will be added later. ... Have just tested GZIP
compression at 4Mbps. It was a really bad idea! Compressing the frames takes
so much time that the performance is actually worse than when not using
compression at all. The conclusion is that compression should only be used
for SIR speeds, ..."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.14. Multiple Instances
Dag Brattli wrote: "The IrLAP layer has been enhanced to allow more than
one instance (so I can use IrLAN on my built-in ir-port, and communicate with
the Pilot over the IrDA dongle at the same time) ... So how do you make two
Linux/IrDA connections? Well, you just fire up irattach for each of the IrDA
ports you have like this:
irattach /dev/ttyS0 # (my ESI dongle)
irattach /dev/ttyS2 # (my builtin IrDA port)
Also work with FIR devices like this :
irattach irda0 -s
irattach irda1 -s
They will not see each other if you run them on the same machine, since they
will initiate discovery exactly at the same time. You should however be able
to use them against two other laptops. I can run a dongle, builtin IrDA port
and a IrDA PCMCIA card at the same time with three other IrDA devices without
any problems.
You should notice that if the devices can interfere with each other then it
might be difficult to obtain a connection, since a device is not allowed to
transmit if the media is busy. I sometimes have to put a book between them."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.15. Connection to Docking Station
Dag Brattli: "Connection to the [http://www.tekram.com/Hot_Products.asp?
Product=IR-660] Tekram IRDocking IR-660 . This device is a docking station
with LAN access, printer, mouse and keyboard. You can also use them at the
same time as the internal mouse and keyboard! Just fire up gpm -t ps2 /dev/
irkbd and the laptop will make a keyboard/mouse connection to the IR-660. Now
I just have to make gpm read both /dev/psaux and /dev/irkbd, and then make
X11 read /dev/gpmdata, and I should have the thing configured!
... one problem: gpm can handle multiple mice, but Linux cannot handle
multiple different keyboards. So if you have one norwegian keyboard and one
remote US keyboard like I have, then things will be a little bit confusing. I
got a hint from Alan Cox about a project that is implementing real support
for multiple keyboards, so I'll check that out.
... OK, I sort of worked it out. By using TIOCSTI on /dev/console, you can
insert scancodes directly into the tty queue. This can be a problem for
virtual consoles that expect to receive some translated and cooked keycodes,
but X happens to like raw scancodes, so this will work quite nice when using
X but not for other virtual consoles. Anyway this is good enough for me, so I
will not use a lot of time converting the scancodes to keycodes and index
them with some keymap just to make it work with text only virtual consoles.
As I see it the irkbd driver has now been successfully been ported to
user-space :-)
... the Tekram IR-660 device can, in addition to attach a keyboard and
mouse, also print using IrTTP (it can print using IrLPT, but that is not so
funny since it requires exclusive use of IrLMP, and you don't wan't to stop
the network, mouse and keyboard just to print a document). I'll try and see
if I can get IrTTP printing working using a fifo as well.
... Tekram has added a control channel in addition to the data channel so
that you can get some status information about what is going on. The name of
their own protocol is P1248. It's published through the "P1248" class and
"IrDA:TinyTP:LsapSel" LM-IAS entry, so you can try to find it.
... Canon is using the P1248 protocol, and their printer monitor program
BrintBuddy2 (Japanese version) is using this protocol now. I don't know what
they use for the data channel. Maybe they support TinyTP directly in addition
to the other methods. You can try and look up the "IrLPT" class with the
"IrDA:TinyTP:LsapSel" in the LM-IAS and see if you can find it."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.16. Connection to Keyboard
The Linux/IrDA keyboard driver is now in user-space. Please see chapter
Connection to Docking Station above.
Lichen Wang: "The so called IrDA-D standard is designed to transfer Data.
It is not suitable for IR Keyboard. IrDA-D is what Dag ported to Linux OS and
what MS ported to Windows OS.
The so called IrDA-C (Control) is designed for Keyboard, Joy-stick, etc. I
am not aware that there is any product in the market that is using it yet.
IrDA-D cannot talk to IrDA-C. IrDA-C cannot talk to IrDA-D either. Both the
physical encoding/decoding and the software protocol are very different.
It is possible to implement both IrDA-D and IrDA-C in the same device.
Sharp says that IrDA-D and IrDA-C can coexist -- as long as both of them are
not used at the same time in the same IR space. This sounds rather funny to
me. According to this definition, anything can co-exist with anything as long
as you do not destroy the universe permanently in the process ;-)
Seriously, what SHARP says is that they can tailor the IrDA-D so that there
are some unused time between the negotiated maximum turnaround time and the
actual transmission. They then squeeze the IrDA-C frames in those unused
time. The IrDA-D Primary and IrDA-C Master must be implemented in the same
device. The keyboards will work, but mice and joysticks may be sluggish at
times."
For details about using external keyboards with Linux PDAs, see the PDA
chapter below.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.17. Connection via Serial Cable
For some reasons it may be useful to connect via serial cable instead of
using a real infrared link. Bjorn Hanson wrote: "Using a cable, I managed to
get a PPP connection through my Ericsson SH888. I did the following (maybe
some steps are wrong but they worked for me :-)
* added alias tty-ldisc-11 irtty to /etc/conf.modules
* edited /etc/irda/drivers to irattach /dev/ttyS0
* manually inserted the irda and irtty modules using modprobe
* start irattach
* run kppp using /dev/ircomm0 (through symlink /dev/modem)
* executed stty < /dev/ircomm0
* ping the host
* ifconfig irda0 down
Everything worked fine for ping and ssh (doing ls -l a couple of times) but
the computer hang when I tried to mail (Netscape) this through that PPP.
After reboot I tried both Netscape and lynx. Both were able to establish
contact but none got any data."
Another way by Claudiu Costin:
* Linux 2.2.5 with IrDA compiled as modules
* Because irattach don't make kernel to load automatically IrDA stack,
let's type modprobe actisys .
* Now, irattach /dev/ttyS1 -d actisys where COM2 is used for null link
* ping <address> works very good!
This has to be done for both machines.
Please note this is not the recommended way to connect two machines. Use
PPP instead. Though I cannot see how this approach is useful I have included
it beause it was asked sometimes in the mailing list.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.18. Null Modem Cable Connection
You may set up a connection without IrDA capable hardware, using a serial
null modem cable. Just attach the IrDA ports to the serial ports, .e.g.
irattach /dev/ttyS0 -s on both machines.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.19. Peer-to-Peer Mode / Direct Mode
IrCOMM and IrLAN work in both modes, but currently I don't have further
information about the differences between these modes and how to set them up.
Also currently the IrLAN protocol is no longer maintained by the Linux/IrDA
core team.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.20. Linux/IrDA with Toshiba Notebooks
Guenther Wieser has written a [http://www.creative-it.com/linux/irda/
toshiba_irda_howto.html] HOWTO about Toshiba and IrDA . These notebooks need
the toshoboe Linux/IrDA driver.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.21. IrDA Card in a Desktop Computer
Some recent motherboards are equipped with IrDA chips, in some cases you
need IrDA LEDs additionally. You may find a working example described by
[http://bogmog.sourceforge.net/document_show.php3?doc_id=13] Andreas Gohr.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 4. Hardware Supported by Linux/IrDA
4.1. Obtaining Information about the Infrared Port in Laptops
To get the IrDA port of your laptop working with Linux/IrDA you may use
StandardInfraRed (SIR) or FastInfraRed (FIR).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.1. SIR
Up to 115.200bps, the infrared port emulates a serial port like the 16550A
UART. This will be detected by the kernel serial driver at boot time, or when
you load the serial module. If infrared support is enabled in the BIOS, for
most laptops you will get a kernel message like:
Serial driver version 4.25 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A #first serial port /dev/ttyS0
ttyS01 at 0x3000 (irq = 10) is a 16550A #e.g. infrared port
ttyS02 at 0x0300 (irq = 3) is a 16550A #e.g. PCMCIA modem port
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.2. FIR
If you want to use up to 4Mbps, your machine has to be equipped with a
certain FIR chip. You need a certain Linux/IrDA driver to support this chip.
Therefore you need exact information about the FIR chip. You may get this
information in one of the following ways:
1. Read the specification of the machine, though it is very rare that you
will find enough and reliable information there.
2. Try to find out whether the FIR chip is a PCI device. Do a cat /proc/
pci . The appropriate files for 2.2.x kernels are in /proc/bus/pci .
Though often the PCI information is incomplete. You may find the latest
information about PCI devices and vendor numbers in the kernel
documentation usually in /usr/src/linux/Documentation or at the page of
[http://members.datafast.net.au/~dft0802/] Craig Hart. From kernel 2.1.82
on, you may use lspci from the pci-utils package, too.
3. Use the DOS tool CTPCI330.EXE provided in ZIP format by the German
computer magazine CT [ftp://www.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/ctpci330.zip]
CTPCI330.ZIP . The information provided by this program is sometimes
better than that provided by the Linux tools.
4. Try to get information about Plug-and-Play (PnP) devices. Though I
didn't use them for this purpose yet, the isapnp tools, could be useful.
5. If you have installed the Linux/IrDA® software load the FIR modules and
watch the output of dmesg, whether FIR is detected or not.
6. Another way how to figure it out explained by Thomas Davis (modified by
WH): "Dig through the FTP site of the vendor, find the Windows9x FIR
drivers, and they have (for a SMC chip):
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 743 Apr 3 1997 smcirlap.inf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 17021 Mar 24 1997 smcirlap.vxd
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 1903 Jul 18 1997 smcser.inf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 31350 Jun 7 1997 smcser.vxd
If in doubt, always look for the .inf/.vxd drivers for Windows95.
Windows95 doesn't ship with _ANY_ FIR drivers. (they are all third party,
mostly from Counterpoint, who was assimilated by ESI)."
7. Also Thomas Davis found a package of small DOS utilities made by SMSC.
Look at [http://www.smsc.com/main/tools/appsoftware/ir_utils.zip]
IR_UTILS.ZIP (note this link is no longer valid, but I haven't found out
whether this tool is still available somewhere else). The package
contains FINDCHIP.EXE. And includes a FIRSETUP.EXE utility that is
supposed to be able to set all values except the chip address.
Furthermore it contains BIOSDUMP.EXE, which produces this output:
Example 1 (from a COMPAQ Armada 1592DT)
In current devNode:
Size = 78
Handle = 14
ID = 0x1105D041 = 'PNP0511' -- Generic IrDA SIR
Types: Base = 0x07, Sub = 0x00, Interface = 0x02
Comm. Device, RS-232, 16550-compatible
Attribute = 0x80
CAN be disabled
CAN be configured
BOTH Static & Dynamic configuration
Allocated Resource Descriptor Block TAG's:
TAG=0x47, Length=7 I/O Tag, 16-bit Decode
Min=0x03E8, Max=0x03E8
Align=0x00, Range=0x08
TAG=0x22, Length=2 IRQ Tag, Mask=0x0010
TAG=0x79, Length=1 END Tag, Data=0x2F
Result 1:
Irq Tag, Mask (bit mapped - ) = 0x0010 = 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 so,
it's IRQ 4. (start at 0, count up ..), so this is a SIR only device, at
IRQ=4, IO=x03e8.
Example 2 (from an unknown machine)
In current devNode:
Size = 529
Handle = 14
ID = 0x10F0A34D = 'SMCF010' -- SMC IrCC
Types: Base = 0x07, Sub = 0x00, Interface = 0x02
Comm. Device, RS-232, 16550-compatible
Attribute = 0x80
CAN be disabled
CAN be configured
BOTH Static & Dynamic configuration
Allocated Resource Descriptor Block TAG's:
TAG=0x47, Length=7 I/O Tag, 16-bit Decode
Min=0x02F8, Max=0x02F8
Align=0x00, Range=0x08
TAG=0x22, Length=2 IRQ Tag, Mask=0x0008
TAG=0x47, Length=7 I/O Tag, 16-bit Decode
Min=0x02E8, Max=0x02E8
Align=0x00, Range=0x08
TAG=0x2A, Length=2 DMA Tag, Mask=0x02, Info=0x08
TAG=0x79, Length=1 END Tag, Data=0x00
Result 2:
a) it's a SMC IrCC chip
b) one portion is at 0x02f8, has an io-extent of 8 bytes; irq = 3
c) another portion is at 0x02e8, io-extent of 8 bytes; dma = 1 (0x02 =
0000 0010)
Warning The package is not intended for the end user, and some of the
utilities could be harmful. The only documentation in the package
is in Microsoft Word format.
8. Use the Device Manager of the MicroSoft Windows9x/NT operating system.
9. You may also use the hardware surveys mentioned below.
10. And as a last resort, you may even open the laptop and look at the
inscriptions at the chips themselfs. Here is a probably incomplete list
of manufacturers: Chrystal, Hewlett Packard (HP, chipsets are marked
HSDL), Hitachi, IBM, National Semi Conductor (NSC), NEC, Philips, Sharp,
Standard Micro Systems Corporation (SMC/SMSC), Texas Instruments (TI),
VLSI, Winbond. As an example of application circuits the HSDL-7001 (from
a HP brochure, modified by WH):
LEDs Encode/Decode SIR/FIR
HSDL-1001 HSDL-7001 UART 16550/
MicroController
______ ______________ ____________
| | | | | |
(|| TXD|<---|IR_TXD TXD|<---|SOUT |
| | | | | |
| | | RCV|--->|SIN |
| | | | | |
(|| RCV|--->|IR_RCV 16XCLK|<---|BAUDOUT |
| | | NRST|-+ | |
------ -------------- | ------------
V
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2. Hardware Surveys
There are some surveys about Linux and infrared capable devices in the WWW:
* The [http://irda.sourceforge.net/] Linux/IrDA Project - Hardware
Survey.
* I have set up a [http://tuxmobil.org/ir_misc.html] IrDA hardware survey
at TuxMobil . This list also contains information about infrared capable
devices which are not mentioned here (mice, printers, remote control,
transceivers, etc.). To make this hardware survey more valuable it is
necessary to collect more information about the infrared devices in
different hardware. You can help by sending me a short e-mail containing
the exact name of the hardware you have and which type of infrared
controller is used. Please let me also know how well Linux/IrDA worked,
at which tty, port and interrupt it works and the corresponding infrared
device (e.g. printer, cellular phone) you use. You can also help by
contributing detailed technological information about some infrared
devices, which is necessary to develope an according driver for Linux.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3. Big Endian
Though there have been some problems with big endian machines, Linux/IrDA
now works successfully. For example I have got a report about an Apple
PowerBook G4 (AlBook 2. generation) working with a STir USB dongle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4. SMP
Jean Tourrilhes: "Tested IrSock, IrNET and OpenObex with multiple dongles
on a SMP box. Works fine. However, the code is not fully SMP safe yet, so you
never know..."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.5. IrDA Hardware
* SIR
* FIR
* serial dongle
* USB dongle
* PCMCIA cards
* PCI cards
You may find a survey of Linux/IrDA capable devices at [http://tuxmobil.org
/ir_misc.html] TuxMobil.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6. IrDA and USB
The IrDA USB driver is included in recent 2.4 kernels. It's not as
efficient as other FIR hardware, but at least is supported and is relatively
easy to get working. Also, all the current products are based on the same
hardware, and we know most of its bugs.
As far as I know the Actisys 2000U and Extended System ESI-9685 dongles
seem to be based on the same hardware. Both USB dongles work fine with the
Linux driver. It's possible to have multiple USB dongles in a box (for now,
only up to 4).
The latest version of the driver has been tested with usb-uhci and usb-ohci
. see also driver infos in src e.g. USB 2.0
There is an USB IrDA Bridge Device spec at Rev 0.9B , it's being adopted as
an USB class specification. You can find it at under 0.9 Class Specification
header at [http://www.usb.org] USB.org .
Recently a new type of USB dongle from SigmaTel has appeared on the market
which is _not_ compliant with the IrDA-USB specification, and therefore
doesn't work with this driver. On the other hand, SigmaTel has made available
the [http://www.sigmatel.com/technical_docs.htm#wireless] full technical
specification , so writing a driver for it is possible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.1. Environment
I have checked this chapter with this environment: [http://www.actisys.com]
ACTiSYS ACT-IR2000U FIR-USB Adapter (but it should work for any other USB
dongle except the one mentioned above), Kernel 2.4.19, irda-utils 0.9.14 and
[http://www.debian.org] Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 Woody.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.2. Prerequisites
You need a kernel with appropriate IrDA and USB support and the standard
entries in /etc/modprobe.conf (kernel 2.6) /etc/modules.conf (kernel 2.4) and
devices in /dev/ir* as described in the chapters above. And a second IrDA
device whether with Linux inside or not, e.g. a laptop, a printer or a cell
phone with IrDA port.
You need a working USB controller. Check whether the appropriate module is
already inserted with lsmod. If not you may insert it with modprobe usb-uhci
(for Intel/Via USB controllers) or modprobe usb-ohci (for other USB
controllers)
Note: this driver has NOT been tested with the usb-ehci driver (for USB 2.0
controllers). This driver WON'T WORK with the uhci driver (alternate/JE
driver for Intel/Via USB controllers).
Warning Note that there is another USB IrDA driver ( provided by the [http://
www.linux-usb.org] Linux USB Project) for those devices called ir-usb
. This module is NOT compatible with the IrDA stack and conflicts
with irda-usb. Because it always loads first, you have to remove
ir-usb completely.
If you are not familiar with routing issues, I dare to recommend to shut
down all external network interfaces with ifconfig during the first set up.
Then check with route -n. Also netfiltering (iptables) may cause problems, so
if you are not connected to a network you may disable it.
I have described the process in every detail, to make every caveat as clear
as possible. The actual configuration is much shorter and easier. During
configuration I will choose to open three different terminal windows to watch
the log messages from different programs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.3. Plugging in the Dongle
Now plug the dongle in and check the Kernel messages with dmesg:
hub.c: USB new device connect on bus1/1, assigned device number 2
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x50f/0x180) is not claimed by any active driver.
usb.c: registered new driver irda-usb
IRDA-USB found at address 2, Vendor: 50f, Product: 180
irda_usb_parse_endpoints(), And our endpoints are : in=02, out=01 (64), int=03
irda_usb_init_qos(), dongle says speed=0x13E, size=0x20, window=0x2, bofs=0x4, turn=0x2
IrDA: Registered device irda1
USB IrDA support registered
If you have already some other IrDA hardware configured on the PC, the
driver won't load as irda0, so to check the message log as shown above is
important (the driver can manage up to 4 IrDA-USB dongles per PC, that can be
increased in the source).
In this example the device is irda1. You may check this with ifconfig, too:
irda1 Link encap:IrLAP HWaddr 2c:52:61:ec
EtherTalk Phase 2 addr:140/191
UP RUNNING NOARP MTU:2048 Metric:1
RX packets:2278 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:844 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:33848 (33.0 KiB) TX bytes:15116 (14.7 KiB)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.4. Attaching the Driver
Now you are ready to attach the Linux/IrDA service to the dongle With
irattach irda1 -s (note the device name from the step before).
The green LED on the adapter should blink now, approximately every three
seconds. And with dmesg you may see this message:
irlap_change_speed(), setting speed to 9600
irlap_recv_discovery_xid_cmd(), discovery frame to short!
Now start irdadump, you should see all IrDA devices in range. Or at least
this one, here "japh" (the other IrDA device in this example is named
"Olga"). For diagnostic purposes leave irdadump running in this terminal
window and switch to another window for the next steps.
07:58:40.889590 xid:cmd ffffffff < 4fe026d8 S=6 s=3 (14)
07:58:40.979575 xid:cmd ffffffff < 4fe026d8 S=6 s=4 (14)
07:58:40.979679 xid:rsp 2c5261ec > 4fe026d8 S=6 s=4 japh hint=0400 [ Computer ] (20)
07:58:41.069571 xid:cmd ffffffff < 4fe026d8 S=6 s=5 (14)
07:58:41.166552 xid:cmd ffffffff < 4fe026d8 S=6 s=* Olga hint=0400 [ Computer ] (20)
07:58:43.620104 xid:cmd ffffffff < 4fe026d8 S=6 s=0 (14)
07:58:43.709078 xid:cmd ffffffff < 4fe026d8 S=6 s=1 (14)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.5. Loading the IrCOMM Modules
Now load the IrCOMM modules (note this is usually done automagically by the
kernel daemon kmod if you start PPP or printing via IrDA, but for the first
time we do things by hand). So do modprobe ircomm and modprobe ircomm-tty .
The dmesg will show now:
IrCOMM protocol (Dag Brattli)
ircomm_open_lsap()
ircomm_tty_attach_cable()
ircomm_tty_ias_register()
ircomm_tty_close()
ircomm_tty_shutdown()
ircomm_tty_detach_cable()
ircomm_close()
And with lsmod you may see:
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
ircomm-tty 30080 0 (autoclean)
ircomm 13164 0 (autoclean) [ircomm-tty]
irda-usb 13776 1
...
irtty 7264 0 (autoclean)
irda 141648 1 (autoclean) [ircomm-tty ircomm irda-usb irtty]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.6. Setting up a Network (PPP)
You may start pppd with commandline options, but for me it's more
convenient to have a configuration file /etc/ppp/peers/irda.
connect /bin/true
noauth
persist
debug
kdebug 7
nodetach
115200
local
/dev/ircomm0
192.168.0.2:192.168.0.3
Some note about the configuration: Yes the device name is correct, don't
choose an USB device here. If the other IrDA device is a Linux laptop you may
use the same configuration file and the same PPP options, without the last
line, which sets the LOCAL and REMOTE IP address. The following entries are
for debugging purposes and can be commented out when everything works fine:
persist
debug
kdebug 7
nodetach
Now start PPP with pppd call irda. For diagnostic purposes leave the
messages running in this terminal window and switch to another window for the
next steps.
Serial connection established.
using channel 3
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ircomm0
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x4592a46e> <pcomp> <accomp>]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x4592a46e> <pcomp> <accomp>]
...
Now start PPP on the remote IrDA device and you should see:
sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x3c8803b1]
sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <addr 192.168.0.2> <compress VJ 0f 01>]
sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 <deflate 15> <deflate(old#) 15> <bsd v1 15>]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x3c8803b1> <pcomp> <accomp>]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x3c8803b1> <pcomp> <accomp>]
rcvd [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0xa922f0e8]
sent [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0x3c8803b1]
rcvd [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <addr 0.0.0.0> <compress VJ 0f 01>]
sent [IPCP ConfNak id=0x1 <addr 192.168.0.3>]
rcvd [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 <deflate 15> <deflate(old#) 15> <bsd v1 15>]
sent [CCP ConfAck id=0x1 <deflate 15> <deflate(old#) 15> <bsd v1 15>]
rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0xa922f0e8]
rcvd [IPCP ConfAck id=0x1 <addr 192.168.0.2> <compress VJ 0f 01>]
rcvd [CCP ConfAck id=0x1 <deflate 15> <deflate(old#) 15> <bsd v1 15>]
Deflate (15) compression enabled
rcvd [IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 <addr 192.168.0.3> <compress VJ 0f 01>]
sent [IPCP ConfAck id=0x2 <addr 192.168.0.3> <compress VJ 0f 01>]
Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
local IP address 192.168.0.2
remote IP address 192.168.0.3
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 3975)
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 3975), status = 0x1
And in the window running irdadump you see the IrDA traffic:
08:17:11.179260 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=1 ns=2 LM slsap=00 dlsap=19 CONN_RSP (6)
08:17:11.199127 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=3 ns=1 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1d CONN_RSP (6)
08:17:11.199226 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=2 ns=3 LM slsap=1d dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "IrLPT" "IrDA:IrLMP:LsapSel" (30)
08:17:11.219123 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=4 ns=2 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1c CONN_RSP (6)
08:17:11.219207 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=3 ns=4 LM slsap=1c dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "IrDA:IrCOMM" "Parameters" (28)
08:17:11.241117 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=5 ns=3 LM slsap=19 dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "IrDA:IrCOMM" "Parameters" (28)
08:17:11.241213 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=4 ns=5 LM slsap=00 dlsap=19 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: Success N/A (19)
08:17:11.259114 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=6 ns=4 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1d GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: No such class (11)
08:17:11.259216 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=5 ns=6 LM slsap=1d dlsap=00 DISC (6)
08:17:11.280107 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=7 ns=5 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1c GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: Success N/A (19)
08:17:11.280281 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=0 nr=6 ns=7 LM slsap=1c dlsap=00 DISC (6)
08:17:11.282124 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=6 ns=0 LM slsap=1e dlsap=00 CONN_CMD (6)
08:17:11.299104 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=1 ns=6 LM slsap=19 dlsap=00 DISC (6)
08:17:11.299204 rr:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=7 (2)
08:17:11.319102 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=1 ns=7 LM slsap=1a dlsap=00 CONN_CMD (6)
08:17:11.319209 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=0 ns=1 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1a CONN_RSP (6)
08:17:11.339100 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=2 ns=0 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1e CONN_RSP (6)
08:17:11.339197 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=1 ns=2 LM slsap=1e dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "IrDA:IrCOMM" "IrDA:TinyTP:LsapSel" (37)
08:17:11.361096 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=3 ns=1 LM slsap=1a dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "IrDA:IrCOMM" "IrDA:TinyTP:LsapSel" (37)
08:17:11.361191 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=2 ns=3 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1a GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: Success Integer: 14 (15)
08:17:11.380092 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=4 ns=2 LM slsap=00 dlsap=1e GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: Success Integer: 14 (15)
08:17:11.380214 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=0 nr=3 ns=4 LM slsap=1e dlsap=00 DISC (6)
08:17:11.382104 i:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=3 ns=5 LM slsap=14 dlsap=14 CONN_CMD TTP credits=0(7)
08:17:11.399090 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=6 ns=3 LM slsap=1a dlsap=00 DISC (6)
08:17:11.399190 rr:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=4 (2)
08:17:11.419082 i:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=6 ns=4 LM slsap=14 dlsap=14 CONN_CMD TTP credits=0(7)
08:17:11.419159 rr:rsp > ca=08 pf=1 nr=5 (2)
08:17:11.438080 rr:cmd < ca=08 pf=1 nr=6 (2)
Switch to another terminal and check the PPP device with ifconfig :
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:192.168.0.2 P-t-P:192.168.0.3 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:9 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:318 (318.0 b) TX bytes:708 (708.0 b)
With ps aux | grep irda you should now see these Processes:
root 3534 0.0 0.2 1272 464 ? S 06:51 0:00 irattach irda1 -s
root 3579 0.3 0.2 1400 476 tty1 S 06:55 0:06 irdadump
root 4312 0.1 0.4 2088 948 tty2 S 07:18 0:00 pppd call irda
With route -n you may now see this PPP devices:
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.3 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.3 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0
And it should be possible to do a ping 192.168.0.3 to the remote host:
PING 192.168.0.3 (192.168.0.3): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=290.7 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=146.6 ms
Now you may use TCP/IP applications. For example ssh (note it will take
some time to establish the connection be patient):
ssh -v USER@192.168.0.3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.7. Setting up a Printer Connection (IrLPT)
Instead of using TCP/IP connections the dongle works for printer
connections, too. The device name is /dev/irlpt0. For details about IrDA
printer connections see the appropriate chapter above.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.8. Cleaning Up
You may now finetune your settings, e.g. to solve routing issues. It may
also possible to set up higher speeds, but I haven't tried that yet. If
everything works fine, you may now choose to make the configuration
permanent. You may edit /etc/irda.conf and configure the system V init
scripts (for IrDA, network, ..). But the way to do it right depends on your
Linux distribution.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6.9. Remaining Problems
I encountered a strange problem. When inserting the IrDA-USB dongle, I got
a slight and constant noise from the beeper.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7. Linux PDAs: Agenda, iPAQ, Yopy, Zaurus
The most known Linux PDAs in these days are the [http://tuxmobil.org/
pda_linux_agenda.html] Agenda VR3 by AgendaComputing (out-of-production), the
[http://tuxmobil.org/pda_linux_ipaq.html] iPAQ by COMPAQ, the [http://
tuxmobil.org/pda_linux_sharp_sl5000.html] Zaurus SL-5000/5500 by SHARP, and
the [http://tuxmobil.org/pda_yopy.html] Yopy by Samsung. All of these have an
infrared port. There are different Linux distributions for Linux PDAs
available, e.g.: [http://www.trolltech.com] QT Embedded (pre-installed on the
SHARP Zaurus), [http://opie.handhelds.org] Opie, [http://
familiar.handhelds.org] Familiar and more. Software IPK packages mentioned
below you may find at [http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/] Zaurus Software Index
- ZSI or [http://ipkgfind.handhelds.org] ipkgfind. See [http://tuxmobil.org/
pda_linux.html] TuxMobil for further information about Linux on and with PDAs
in general.
The following is based on my experience with the [http://www.sharp.com]
SHARP Zaurus SL-5500G, with the original SHARP romimage 2.38G and Kernel
2.4.6-rmk1-np2-embedix#1, but may be applied mutatis mutandis to other Linux
PDAs. The Zaurus comes with a written manual, where beaming files and PPP
connections are explained using the GUI (e.g. FileManager, Settings). Here I
will try to cover what can be done from the command line and topics neither
included in the official SHARP manual nor the [http://opie.handhelds.org/
usermanual/book1.htm] Opie User Manual . The infrared functions seem to be
part of the StrongARM SA1110 CPU, the IrDA driver module is named sa1110_ir
(on the stock Zaurus IrDA support seems to be built into the Kernel). From
the irda-utils only irattach is available. IrDA support is attached via
irattach /dev/ttyS2 -s 1 (note "-s 1" will be replaced by "-s" with newer
versions). So it looks like SIR is used, I don't have information about FIR
support yet. To get some of the functionality of irdadump and detect other
IrDA devices in range or debug IrDA you may use cat /proc/net/irda/discovery
and the other files in the /proc filesystem or compile the irda-utils for the
ARM archictecture by yourself, also pre-compiled binaries are available. From
the device files only /dev/ircomm (note it's not /dev/ircomm0) is created by
default. The file modules.conf doesn't seem to exist. With irrecv you may
start the infrared GUI settings. IrOBEX support is available, but the
appropriate tools from [http://sourceforge.net/projects/openobex/] OpenOBEX
are missing, but you may beam files to a Palm PDA, cell phone or another
Linux box or a Microsoft-Windows machine from the GUI. The IrDA startup
scripts lives in /home/etc/rc.d/init.d/irda. For infrared remote control
support see below. With irdadump from another Linux box the Zaurus identifies
as (look at the second line):
10:56:48.652982 xid:cmd b03cbbb9 > ffffffff S=6 s=5 (14)
10:56:48.652963 xid:rsp b03cbbb9 < b7960e8f S=6 s=4 localhost hint=8420 [ Computer IrOBEX ] (26)
10:56:48.742992 xid:cmd b03cbbb9 > ffffffff S=6 s=* japh hint=0400 [ Computer ] (20)
10:56:51.203002 xid:cmd b03cbbb9 > ffffffff S=6 s=0 (14)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.1. PPP
With PPP you may get a network connection through your cell phone or with
another computer. See the [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO/] PPP-HOWTO for
details. For fowarding packages via NAT through another Linux box see the
[http://iptables-tutorial.haringstad.com/] IPTABLES-Tutorial .
You may start pppd with commandline options, but for me it's more
convenient to have a configuration file /etc/ppp/peers/irda. Here is an
example for a first test:
connect /bin/true
noauth
persist
debug
kdebug 7
nodetach
115200
local
/dev/ircomm
192.168.0.2:192.168.0.3
If the other IrDA device is a Linux laptop you may use the same
configuration file name and the same PPP options without the last line, which
sets the LOCAL and REMOTE IP address. Also take care of the correct device
name, e.g. /dev/ircomm0. The following entries are for debugging purposes and
can be commented out when everything works fine:
persist
debug
kdebug 7
nodetach
Now start PPP with pppd call irda on both machines. For diagnostic purposes
leave the messages running in this terminal window and switch to another
window for the next steps. You may now check the network connectivity with
ifconfig and ping. For connections to a cell phone see the Cellular Phone
Connection chapter above.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.2. Beaming Files - OpenOBEX
The advantage of OBEX is usually the integration. Send an appointement
event over OBEX, and most likely the Zaurus will integrate that in the
built-in calendar automagically, like the Palm does. Same for business cards.
The IrOBEX protocol offers an easy way to beam files via infrared to another
PDA, a cell phone or computer. The Linux tools are provided by [http://
sourceforge.net/projects/openobex/] OpenOBEX . Beaming via the GUI between
two Zaurus PDAs or to a Palm PDA might work. But currently I couldn't send or
receive files from my Linux laptop. When trying to send a file per ircp FILE,
I get this irdadump message:
11:11:03.943005 i:cmd > ca=8a pf=1 nr=0 ns=0 LM slsap=12 dlsap=00 CONN_CMD (6)
11:11:03.972964 i:rsp < ca=8a pf=1 nr=1 ns=0 LM slsap=00 dlsap=12 CONN_RSP (6)
11:11:03.973010 i:cmd > ca=8a pf=1 nr=1 ns=1 LM slsap=12 dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "OBEX:IrXfer" "IrDA:TinyTP:LsapSel" (37)
11:11:04.002973 i:rsp < ca=8a pf=1 nr=2 ns=1 LM slsap=00 dlsap=12 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: No such class (11)
11:11:04.003015 i:cmd > ca=8a pf=1 nr=2 ns=2 LM slsap=12 dlsap=00 DISC (6)
When trying to receive a file per ircp -r, I get this irdadump message:
11:15:08.682979 i:cmd < ca=8a pf=1 nr=4 ns=5 LM slsap=53 dlsap=00 CONN_CMD (6)
11:15:08.683063 i:rsp > ca=8a pf=1 nr=6 ns=4 LM slsap=00 dlsap=53 CONN_RSP (6)
11:15:08.712970 i:cmd < ca=8a pf=1 nr=5 ns=6 LM slsap=53 dlsap=00 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: "OBEX" "IrDA:TinyTP:LsapSel" (30)
11:15:08.713035 i:rsp > ca=8a pf=1 nr=7 ns=5 LM slsap=00 dlsap=53 GET_VALUE_BY_CLASS: No such class (11)
11:15:08.732976 i:cmd < ca=8a pf=1 nr=6 ns=7 LM slsap=53 dlsap=00 DISC (6)
Jean Tourrilhes suggests this solution: "The Zaurus doesn't support the
"OBEX:IrXfer" service, it probably only supports the "OBEX" service use cat /
proc/net/irda/irias to verify. So, either you start a server on "OBEX:IrXfer"
on the Zaurus, (ircp_server - cross compiled for Zaurus), or you use a client
using "OBEX" on the laptop (irobex_palm3)."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.2.1. Tools
Beamster is a little Gtk/python utility to help with IrDA transfers
especially from and to Linux PDAs (ftp://ftp.handhelds.org/pub/linux/dists/
familiar/feeds/unstable/packages/armv4l/). It can talk to most handhelds/
laptops/printers which use the IrDA Object Exchange protocol (OBEX), in fact
any device which already works with the openobex package will work with this.
It should be fairly intuitive to use. Make sure that IrDA is 'On', position
the two devices, wait for the status bar to show that a new peer has been
discovered, choose the transfer mode (use 'Palm3' for PalmOS peers and
'Windows' for everything else) then press 'beam' or 'receive' as appropriate.
Note that 'receive' toggles on and off. Tested transfers to and from this
IrDA devices: an old Palm3, a Psion 5MX, a Windows 98 ThinkPad and a Linux
desktop with an Actisys L220+ dongle.
The ObexFTP implementation [http://triq.net/obexftp] flexmem accesses the
Flex.Memory directly. I piped a S45 data explorer (windows) session through
sersniff. The log looks roughly like OBEX over cable. In fact old Open OBEX
is working with the Siemens S45 mobile phone. It is confirmed to work well
with Siemens S45/ME45 and similar mobile phones. You may access the Flex
Memory on Siemens mobile equipment via IrDA or serial connection.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.3. Printing
To print directly to an IrDA capable printer you need the device file /dev/
irlpt0. If it's not available, use mknod /dev/irlpt0 c 161 16 to create it.
Now you may perform a first and simple test. Try to write a small file to /
dev/irlpt0 by cat FILE >/dev/irlpt0. With the stock Kernel from SHARP this
didn't work, but with a custom kernel it worked fine. Do not wonder about a
bad format (the lines form sort of steps) this is just a first check. To get
a pretty print format you may have to write a filter as described in the
Printing-HOWTO from [http://www.linuxprinting.org] LinuxPrinting.org . More
about printing from mobile Linux devices you may find in the [http://
tuxmobil.org/howto_linux_laptop.html] Linux-Mobile-Guide .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.4. Remote Control - LIRC
Consumer InfraRed - CIR aka remote control via infrared can be had on a
Linux PDA by installing lirc-modules-KERNEL for the appropriate Kernel
version, and [http://www.lirc.org/] LIRC. For more details see the [http://
handhelds.org/z/wiki/ConsumerIR] HandHelds.org-WiKi and the [http://
www.rit.edu/~tfs1812/] Opie-Remote page. Opie-Remote is a remote control
emulator for the Compaq iPAQ and the SHARP Zaurus.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.5. Programing QT Embedded for IrDA
At the SHARP Zaurus Developer Site you may find the [http://
www.zauruszone.com/howtos/irda_howto.shtml] Zaurus-IrDA-HOWTO , which
explains how to utilize the IrDA port on the Zaurus. The [http://www.uv-ac.de
/ipaqhelp/] iPAQ Help - iPAQ and Zaurus development using QPE by Werner
Schulte desribes how to develope Qtopia applications in general.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.7.6. Keyboards and Scanners
For the iPAQ there is module h3600_microkbd, which supports the
MicroInnovations IR keyboard. There seem to be optical barcode readers
available, which use sort of a red light to read the data. But I doubt that
this has anything to do with IrDA or Consumer InfraRed - CIR.
[http://195.184.237.106/~zaurus/] IRK allows you to use external infrared
keyboards with the Zaurus. It interfaces the LIRC driver to the Qtopia
environment. Currently only the Chicony KB-9820 keyboard (German version) is
supported.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 5. Advanced Topics
5.1. Troubleshooting
5.1.1. General Information
If you encounter problems. Try the following:
* Read the FAQ section below.
* Look at /var/log/messages and/or /var/log/kern.
* Do a dmesg.
* Look at the different files in /proc/irda.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.2. Known Bugs
If you find a bug, please send a bug report to the mailing list, including
dmesg output, and which Linux version, and hardware you are using. Thank you!
Sometimes IrCOMM fails to connect, especially when both devices discover
each other. You can disable discovering with echo 0 >/proc/sys/net/irda/
discovery.
A CR (carriage return) character cannot be transfered between two linux
boxes via IrCOMM with cat file >/dev/ircomm0 and cat /dev/ircomm0. It causes
a strange thing and freezes your Linux box.
IrOBEX may eat some data on receive. The bug is most probably in the
user-space side of IrOBEX.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.3. Troubleshooting Techniques
Although I'm not much of a hacker I collected some tricks to track errors
or bugs in the Linux/IrDA software.
* You may set the debug level in /proc/sys/net/irda/debug to 1, 2, 3, 4.
* Use the files in /proc/sys/net/irda to try different parameters like
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery. The /proc/*/irda files are:
root@duckman:~# ls /proc/sys/net/irda/* /proc/net/irda/*
/proc/net/irda/discovery
/proc/net/irda/irlmp
/proc/net/irda/irda_device
/proc/net/irda/irttp
/proc/net/irda/irias
/proc/net/irda/irlap
/proc/sys/net/irda/devname
/proc/sys/net/irda/discovery
/proc/sys/net/irda/compression
/proc/sys/net/irda/debug
* It is also possible to debug the code. But I don't know how to do this.
If you want to use SKB debug code, you may edit irda.h and change /
include/linux/skbuff.h (see revision history of snapshot 10-2-98).
* For problems with the irda module a utility from the modules package
kdstat might be helpful. But I was not able to try this.
* "You can now alter the number of discovery packets used (1, 6, 8 or 16)
and the timeout between sending them (2-8 * 10 ms) in /proc/sys/net/irda.
Please experiment if you have problems discovering your device. My Palm
III seems to like 16 discovery_slots and 8 (*10 ms) for slot_timeout. "
... "The absolute minimum for reliable discovery of the IR-610 seems to
be 9." Another statement: ... the Palm III does not like 8 discovery
frames in a row, but 6 is OK. With 8 it will answer 1 out of 6-10 times,
with 6 it answers every time. I really don't know if this is a problem
with Linux-IrDA or the Palm III. One solution to this problem, is to
cycle though some different discovery methods for each discovery like
this: Disocvery 1: send 8 xid frames with 80 ms separation If answer,
keep the same config, if no answer, try next config Discovery 2: send 6
xid frames with 80 ms separation Discovery 3: send 8 xid frames with 90
ms separation Discovery 4: send 6 xid frames with 90 ms separation
Discovery 5. Go back to 1. or some other pattern and maybe more
combinations. Maybe this is sometimes implemented, so it would be enabled
if /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery_slots is set to 0 .
* If anybody gets a kernel Oops, then please feed it to the ../linux/
scripts/ksymoops/ksymoops program, so that we can find out where it went
wrong. Just cut out the Oops lines from the syslog, save them to a file,
and then run ksymoops <file>.
* Dag Brattli wrote: I found out that the cs4232 sound card was giving me
several hundred interrupts per second! I removed the sound stuff from my
kernel, and the machine is now generally about 4 times faster! Linux/IrDA
may get problems if you are running the esound server (esd) on your
machine. Both my machines, a 166Mhz Pentium laptop and a 200Mhz Pentium
Pro cannot run Linux/IrDA when esd is running. The reason is that esd
makes the soundcard give interrups over 300 times/second which makes the
serial driver overrun when receiving. This is because the serial driver
now uses slow interrupts in Linux-2.2 (everything is slow interrupts in
2.2), so the interrupt-handler schedules on its way out. The good thing
about slow interrupts is that packets are delivered much faster, since
you don't need to wait for the next timer-tick. The only exception for
this is the pc87108 driver which works fine since it uses DMA and will
only give a couple of interrupts per packet.
* There are also some userspace tools irdaping and irdadump to check
Linux/IrDA connections.
* AFAIK it is possible to use IrCOMM either with an infrared device or
via serial cable. Maybe this give some debugging possibilities, too.
* 1) You may edit /etc/conf.modules, adding the following lines: option
irda irda_debug=3 2) Make sure the irda modules have been totally
removed. 3) Edit /etc/syslog.conf, adding the following lines:
*/* -/var/log/all
4) Do killall -1 syslogd . 5) Print, or do whatever causes problems with
irlpt . 6) Check all the files in /var/log/ .
For some ThinkPad models you have to reboot to the preinstalled M$ OS and
activate the IrDA port using the Thinkpad tools. There is currently no Linux
tool to achieve that. This will disable your internal serial port (ttyS0)!.
The DOS tool is PS2.EXE, as far as I know tpctl doesn't achieve this. It is
really important to use this DOS program to enable IrDA. Using the
Microsoft-Windows tools does not work. Without that the driver loads
correctly and everythings seems OK, but the LED does not light bright enough.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.4. PCI Device Numbers
Daniel R. Risacher magnus_at_alum.mit.edu wrote: To syncronize my Palm III
with my Tecra 8100 running 2.2.17, I needed to edit /usr/src/linux/include/
net/irda/toshoboe.h I changed "#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_FIR701 0x0701" to "#
define PCI_DEVICE_ID_FIR701 0x0D01"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.5. scanport
scanport can be used to get the correct device ID for a chip. It's part of
the hwtools package (on Debian, probably same elsewhere). You just type it in
and it scans the I/O ports from 0x100 to 0x400 - the usual ISA range. Above
0x400 there are shadows of below 0x400 devices, and beyond that there are PCI
devices, so the default is not to scan above 0x400. "Anyway, I had to
manually scan using inb to find my chip's I/O. Fortunately I didn't have to
go far to find it. (Newer sound cards often sit at 0x530ish, with 0x220
reserved for legacy compatibility modes) Normally, if you know where some
device is located you just point the driver at it and the driver probes to
see if it's the device the driver is expecting. Not entirely safe, but much
safer than every driver probing every I/O port looking for something it
thinks it can understand. scanport only does reads, which are usually safe."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2. Mailing List
You are welcome to use the Linux-IrDA mailing list for posting questions,
answers, bug-reports, patches, suggestions and comments about Linux-IrDA.
Please note that mailinglist doesn't accept mail from non-subscribers. This
is to provide high signal-noise ratio and avoid spam. For subscribing and
unsubscribing point your browser to [http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/
listinfo/irda-users] irda-users and here you will find Linux-IrDA mailing
list control page. Read on "Subscribing to Linux-IrDA" section and fill email
address field and password field (twice). Then press "Subscribe" button.
To post a message to all the list members, send email to <
irda-users@lists.sourceforge.net>. Before asking questions consider this as a
last resort after reading the documentation and searching [http://
www.google.com/] Google or the search engine of your choice. Please check the
archive for answers to your questions also. It will be much easier quicker to
help you, if you provide some information. Please include the output of:
uname -a
cat /proc/net/irda/discovery
setserial -g -a /dev/ttyS*
findchip
irdadump
and of course any error messages, and the relevant parts of dmesg. Please
make also sure you provide some information about IrDA support in the BIOS
and the Linux distribution you are using.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.3. GUIs: Gnome, KDE
The [http://sourceforge.net/projects/girda/] Gnome IrDA applet is a GNOME
IrDA applet for monitoring IrDA devices.
Beamster is a little Gtk/python utility to help with IrDA transfers
especially from and to Linux PDAs (ftp://ftp.handhelds.org/pub/linux/dists/
familiar/feeds/unstable/packages/armv4l/). It can talk to most handhelds/
laptops/printers which use the IrDA Object Exchange protocol (OBEX), in fact
any device which already works with the openobex package will work with this.
It should be fairly intuitive to use. Make sure that IrDA is 'On', position
the two devices, wait for the status bar to show that a new peer has been
discovered, choose the transfer mode (use 'Palm3' for PalmOS peers and
'Windows' for everything else) then press 'beam' or 'receive' as appropriate.
Note that 'receive' toggles on and off. Tested transfers to and from this
IrDA devices: an old Palm3, a Psion 5MX, a Windows 98 ThinkPad and a Linux
desktop with an Actisys L220+ dongle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.4. How to Make Infrared Light Visible
What you don't see gets you.
Unknown AuthorEss
If you have an IrDA aware printer, you can point your phone at it and you
should see a light near the IR port light up or flash. If you have a Palm
organizer w/ IR, point it at the phone. If the IR on the phone is in
discovery mode, you should see the "Waiting for Sender" dialog box pop up on
the Palm.
There is a program for the Palm called "IRMonitor" which measures IR
emissions. You can get this off EuroCool or PilotZone. You run the program,
point your Palm at where you think the IR beam should be coming from and if
there are any emissions from that port, they will show up as a spike on the
IrMonitor scrolling graph. I would highly recommend this program to anybody
out there who plays with or works with IR devices.
You may also use a video camera to detect infrared light. But I couldn't
check this yet.
Most of this section is taken from a posting to the Linux/IrDA list by "The
Armadillo with the Mask".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.5. Power Saving
In the specifications of my HP OmniBook 800 it is recommended to turn off
the IR port, if it is not in use, because it may consume up to 10 percent of
the battery time.
If necessary, you may also try to disable the Fast RRs feature in the IrDA
section of the kernel. This option will give you much better latencies but
will consume more power.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.6. Beyond IrDA
5.6.1. Extending Transmission Distance
According to the IrDA specification the range is up to 1 meter. From the
"IrDA Data Link Design Guide" p. 20 by [http://www.hp.com/go/ir]
Hewlett-Packard : " In some cases it may be desired to increase link distance
beyond the 1 meter guaranteed by IrDA. The two ways to do this are to
increase transmitted light intensity, or to increase receiver sensitivity. In
order to extend the link distance, both sensitivity and intensity must be
increased for both ends of the IR link. If it is desired to communicate with
a standard IrDA device that may have minimum transmitter intensity, the
receiver intensity must be increased. The standard IrDA device may also have
minimum receiver sensitivity, so transmitter intensity must also be
increased."
Andreas Butz wrote: "This might be a silly question, but has anyone an idea
whether the whole IrDA stack really relies on a two-way connection, or
whether there are some parts of it that could be abused for a one-way
connection, ideally for unreliable data? We're trying to modify some IR
dongles to broadcast information to palm pilots over several meters distance
(cover a whole room), and since we don't want to modify the pilots
themselves, and increasing the sensitivity on the receiver side seems
unlikely to work, we're stuck with a one way link.". Please see the mailing
list archive for details of the discussion.
Sent by Marc Bury " .. just heard about some Philips new scheme for remote
controls: they call it IRDA - Control. This is supposed to be bi-directional,
75 kbps data rate, multiple simultaneous devices (up to 8) and with a minimum
6 meter range!" More information at [http://www.irda.org/] IrDA.org .
The German magazine ELEKTOR issued a guide to build a Long Distance IrDA
Dongle (20m, RS232, IrDA 1.0), [http://www.elektor.de] ELEKTOR 5/97 p.
"The main problem is that you generally have to make the receiver more
sensitive. Basic physics has the inverse square law: the intensity drops with
the SQUARE of the distance, so going from 1 to 5 meters requires 25x the
power (and battery drain on a portable device), or 25x the sensitivity (and
dynamic range - it still has to be able to work at 3 inches). And if you want
to do it on the other end, it doesn't simply have to be 25x more sensitive,
it must pick up the tiny IrDA pulse needle in a haystack of florescent
lights, screen savers, moving shadows ..."
Also laser diodes (pulsable) were recommended by K-H. Eischer: But they are
more expensive. And the laser diodes are also dangerous if they have more
than 1 mW. A better solution would be to use lenses to focus the beam. There
is a minimum of absorbtion in the air (I don't know the right frequency) and
you should use IR diodes with this frequency.
James wrote: " Who ever it was wanting to do long distance with IrDA, we've
tried this before. The best approaches are:
* wavelan - buy the cards but not the antennas you can make your own with
equaly good gain as the $9000 type they sell here.
* microwave - you can pick up X-band doppler radar modules, tune them
slightly apart and use the your local TX as the LO for the incomming RX,
the whole thing behaves like ethernet and you can hook it onto an AUI
port, this may now be illegal.
* ir - Many people sell kits which transmit video over Ir, they come
complete with the large fresnel lense you need, they manage about 4MHz b/
w over 100m.
* laser diodes - when we looked at these they were a pain, I think
elantec make decent drivers but modulating them was a big pain, Steve
Carcia had a series on articles on modulating He-Ne lasers but be careful
they have lots of volts in them that want to get out and kill you.
Whatever you choose IrDA might very well be a good choice for a protocol,
given it's one of the few that sensibly copes with simplex."
Here are some links to [http://repair4laptop.org/
notebook_irda_selfmade.html] do-it-yourself InfraRed (IrDA) devices to use
with your laptop, notebook, PDA or mobile phone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.6.2. Upcoming Standards (Bluetooth and IrDA)
"More and more people now think that IrDA and Bluetooth will live happily
side by side, and the idea of Bluetooth as the IrDA killer just don't work
anymore. IrDA is still unbeatable in price/performance and with the new
additions to the standards family like AIR and VFIR, it's really good to see
that IrDA is moving in the right direction."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.7. IrDA Network Neighborhood
5.7.1. Laptop-Printer-PDA
You can take a little peek at [http://irda.sourceforge.net] Drag-n-drop
stuff , so you will be able to drop files to your PDA (uses IrOBEX) or drop
files to your printer (uses IrLPT) etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.7.2. Bridging/Routing
James wrote: " ... there is a much better way of doing the bridging which
is routing. This is entirely user land and requires no kernel patches. But
the IrLAN protocol is no longer maintained by the Linux/IrDA core team.
It's in two parts (you may only need one your milage may vary...) the first
called irdaipcfg does the following:
1) First part is executed as irdaipcfg ifeth ifirlan daemonizes, then looks
for ARP packets on ifirlan, checks that the arp was not generated by the
machine on which it is running. The arp contains the ip address of the
machine on the other end of the irlan (it was generated by the gratuatous arp
in the irlan code). The program then sets up a host route to this ip address
via ifirlan, adds a proxy arp to ifeth for it and generates a gratuatous arp
on ifeth. It writes the ip address of the client in /var/run/host.ifirlan so
you can easily undo all of this from a script.
2) Second part is executed as gratarp ifirlan. Sometimes the gratuatous arp
seems to get lost in the pipe work, gratarp daemonizes and spits out a whole
stream of the things...
I use them as follows: (you can use them to do whatever you like)
On my host (the machine bolted to my local net) irlanx is brought up as
10.192.0.1 with a netmask of 255.255.255.255 and a broadcast of 10.192.0.1 by
my ifup script from /etc/irda/network by irattach. /etc/irda/network then
runs irdaipcfg eth0 irlanx and this does the routing.
From /etc/irda/network
"start")
echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/forwarding
./ifup ifcfg-${device}
/sbin/irdaipcfg ${localnet} ${device}
;;
"stop")
host=`cat /var/run/host.${device}`
if [ .$host != . ]; then
/sbin/arp -d ${host} dev ${localnet}
/sbin/route delete ${host} dev ${device}
fi
./ifdown ifcfg-${device}
/sbin/ifconfig ${device} down
;;
on the client I set up IrLAN to use an address on my normal subnet
10.32.32.51 but with netmask 255.255.255.255 (not my usual netmask) I have
some static routes which are host 10.192.0.1 dev irlan, and net default gw
10.192.0.1 dev irlan. I run gratarp from the /etc/irda/network, and I can
wander arround my house and not lose telnet and ssh sessions ..."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.7.3. IPv6
As far as I know IPv6 has neighbor discovery mechanism, but I don't have
information about Linux/IrDA used with IPv6. Please see the mailing list
archive for a discussion of this topic under the subject :
"patch-2.2.7-ac1-irda4".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.7.4. DHCP
I have got reports that it is possible to use dhcpcd with IrLAN. Please use
latest DHCP software. But currently the IrLAN protocol is no longer
maintained by the Linux/IrDA core team.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.8. Linux/IrDA and APM
Fons Botman wrote: "When I hibernate my HP OmniBook 2000CT, (Fn-12
diskimage is written to disk, machine turns off completely) with irtty active
and turn it on again, irda does not work. I can see it trying to reply to
discovery frames it receives from a windows box, using irdadump on the
OmniBook. but the windows PC does not see the replies. If I just kill
irattach and remove irtty and serial, and start irattach again, it starts
working again. Does this occur with other linux laptops also? Is it a problem
in the serial device driver? " Also Pedro Figueiredo reported this problem
for a Fujitsu LifeBook 735DX.
Answer by Dag Brattli: "Could you all check if the same thing is happening
when your're using PPP (and not using IrDA). I guess the APM stuff shuts down
the serial port, so that the driver will need to reinitialize it when waking
up again. This is properly implemented by some of the PCMCIA drivers I know
about, but I really don't think the serial driver gets any events from the
APM system.
So here you have your own little kernel project. Start adding APM support
to irport which will be the easiest thing (and also to the FIR drivers), then
you can start adding a patch to the serial driver (if needed). Again I think
the PCMCIA subsystem may be a good source on how to fix it properly."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.9. Performance Testing
netperf is a benchmark that can be used to measure the performance of many
different types of networking including Unix Domain Sockets and TCP and UDP
via BSD Sockets. It provides tests for both unidirectional throughput and
end-to-end latency. [http://www.netperf.org/netperf/NetperfPage.html] Netperf
page.
bing by Pierre Beyssac determines bandwidth on a point-to-point link by
sending ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets and measuring their roundtrip times for
different packet sizes on each end of the link.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.10. IrDA Protocols
5.10.1. IrDA Stack
Figure 5-1. IrDA Stack
[irda_stack]
IrDA Stack.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.10.2. Existing IrDA Protocol Implementations
From Lichen Wang I have taken these remarks:
IrLAP, IrLMP, and TinyTP are pretty stable now. But various individual
implementations may still have quirks.
IrCOMM is widely used, but Microsoft vowed to drop it and use IrSocket
only.
IrObex, IrMC, IrTran-P, etc. are showing up in various devices. The
supports on PC are segmented and sometimes very poor.
New IrDA Protocol Development AIR is pushed mainly by IBM. You get wider
angle and longer distance (10M?) but may be at lower data rate. You can also
time-multiplex this already slow channel. In my opinion the benefit to the
user is very little. AIR hardware and software changes are costly. I think
you will have to wait for a long time, if ever, to see any product using AIR.
IrBUS is pushed mainly by Sharp. It is aimed at remote control, IR
keyboard, etc., not for data communication. I think if Sharp succeed, you may
see IrBUS in set-top boxes, web-tv, etc. If and when these devices reaches a
critical mass, some PC may incorporate IrBUS in order to control these
devices.
VFIR is the latest. The benefit is higher data rate (16 Mbps). Unlike AIR
and IrBUS, the software changes for VFIR are minimum. The changes are mainly
in hardware.
In summary, I do not think we need to wait in anticipation of new IrDA
protocols. A easy to install and solid implementation of the existing IrDA
protocols is the cutting edge!.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.11. FAQ
* Q0 - Question: What is the difference between irport and irtty?
* Answer: I never used irport because irtty works for me, but it should
not matter which low level driver you use. I used successfully irtty,
nsc-ircc and irda-usb (depending on my hardware).
* Q1 - Question: I do not know anything about ports and irqs. What should
I do?
* Answer: PART A: Hardware settings - 1 Have a look at your hardware
specs!!! If not available look at the support page of your vendor, or
contact the support hotline. You might also find the information in one
of the hardware surveys mentioned above. PART B: How to tell the kernel
about the hardware settings -4 cat /proc/ioports to see which ports are
already in use. -5 cat /proc/interrupts to see which interrupts are
already in use. -6 Make ports and interrupts available for use with the
IR device, e.g. stop the PCMCIA service or include a line like this in /
etc/sysconfig/pcmcia: PCIC_OPTS="irq_list=3,4,5,7,9,10,12,14,15" -7 Now
try to guess what the right interrupt and port is. Use setserial /dev/
ttySx irq M port 0xNNNN to tell the kernel. If there is more then one
possible chance try them all (Note: As mentioned in the Serial-HOWTO you
should not try irq 0, 1, 6, 8, 13, 14). -8 If you were successful please
send these parameters to the author, because I would like to include them
in the Infrared Hardware Survey. -9 Good luck. It might also be necessary
to fine tune the IR serial port with setserial, e.g., setserial /dev/
ttyS0 spd_vhi (speed rate 115200).
* Q3 - Question: I get a message like tcsetattr read/write error in /var/
log/messages.
* Answer: Caused probably by wrong /dev/ttyS* or wrong irq or port.
* Q4 - Question: Every setting seems alright, because I get the
appropriate messages. But it still does not work.
* Answer: Move the devices to within 0.5 meter (1.5 feet). Check that only
one application is using the infrared port. Check that both devices are
using the same protocol, such as IrOBEX or IrCOMM.
* Q7 - Question by Ho Chin Keong: Is there other way of setting up
communication between the 2 laptops besides setting up a LAN route
between the two?
* Answer by Dag Brattli: Yes and no! One of the IrDA standard, IrCOMM
permits you to emulate a serial cable between two laptops, so you can use
any application written for serial ports (terminals, PPP, slip, etc.).
This is however not yet implemented in Linux/IrDA. The IrLPT (printer)
support is actually a subset of IrCOMM, so some of it is working!
* Q8 - Question by Ho Chin Keong: If I block the infrared path
deliberately for more than 10 seconds, the connection could not
re-establish. I have to kill the irattach and restart the whole procedure
to start the infrared route. The connection could be maintained, however,
if the blocking is less than 10 seconds. Is this part of the design or a
bug? Is there any way whereby we can lengthen this time limit from 10 s
to longer or infinitely?
* Answer by Thomas Davis: This seems to be a bug in the primary side of
the IrLAP/IrLMP code. It appears not to send the reset/disconnect notice
all the way back up the stack. You'll notice it when IrLPT gets stuck in
the query mode while you were trying to talk to a printer, and
disconnected/interrupted it when it was handshaking. (and now, it shows
up in the IrLAN portion)
* Q11 - Is there any IrDA support for BSD?
* Answer: Linux/IrDA seems to be the only available GPL source yet.
* Q12 - By Rui Oliveira: I am having a problem connecting a PalmIII to a
Linux box with an Actisys 220L adapter. With a motherboard adapter (no
brand but, I think, similar to the Actisys 210L) I simply redirect a
pilot syncronization tool (pilot-xfer) to /dev/ttyS1 which has the ir
adapter attached and, using IrLink in SIR mode, I can get the Linux box
to talk with the PalmIII. Trying the above through a serial port with a
serial-irda Actisys 220L adapter I can't get this to work. My question is
:What happens if one just throws data into a serial port with a irda
adapter?
* Answer by Lichen Wang: In terms of hardware, IrDA SIR needs a
serializer- deserializer, an encoder-decoder, and a transceiver. The UART
that drives the COM port of any PC is a serializer-deserializer. In some
PC, there is also an encoder-decoder which can be enabled or disabled by
the BIOS. When it is disabled, the COM port is usable as an old COM port.
When the encoder-decoder is enabled, usually the COM port is no longer
usable but an IrDA port is now usable instead. Actisys IR-210 is a SIR
transceiver and thus can be used if the PC has this kind of UART with an
IrDA encoder-decoder and the BIOS has enabled it. Under this hardware
configuration, you need to tell the Windows setup program that you have
"standard infrared devices" and with "Built-in Infrared port on laptop or
desktop". Actisys IR-220, on the other hand, includes both the
encoder-decoder and the transceiver. It is designed to be used with a
regular UART. If the UART in the PC has also the encoder-decoder
built-in, you must use BIOS to disable that. Under either of this
hardware configuration, you need to tell the Windows setup program that
you have an "ACTiSYS" manufactured "ACT-IR220L Infrared Wireless
Interface". To answer your question: In addition to throwing data at the
serial port, you need to tell the UART and the encoder-decoder what data
rate to use. In the case of a built-in encoder-decoder, when you set the
data rate of the UART, the encoder-decode also get set correctly. In the
case a separate encoder-decoder, you need to tell both of them the data
rate separatly.
* Q13 - If I try to make a connection, say telnet, it takes an incredibly
long time for the login prompt to appear.
* Answers by Renaud Baldura, Dag Brattli and Hee Thong: ... it's a DNS
problem. The resolver times out trying to reverse-resolve the IP address
of your incoming connection. I think just renaming /etc/resolv.conf to
something else takes care of it. ... or add some static bindings in /etc/
hosts for the machines you want to access in your ad-hoc network. That
should avoid the DNS lookups. ... If both machines are in a private test
environment, put the following line in the /etc/host.conf, order hosts,
bind. This will make the machine check the /etc/host file before doing a
DNS lookup. Remember to update the host file on both machines to reflect
the IP and host names of the 2 machines.
* Q14 - Question by David LaPorte: I was wondering if anyone has had any
success getting the irda port on the Toshiba Tecra 740cdt working. ...
I've read that it should show up at IRQ 11, ttyS2. Well, I have a PCMCIA
modem which steals ttyS2 and the PCMCIA controller steals IRQ 11. Does
anyone have any suggestions?
* Answer by Dag Brattli: If you still have Win95 on your machine, you
should go to the device manager and change the PnP setup for the IrDA
port (something else than the stuff your're already using). You could for
example move away ttyS1 (in Win95), so that it uses the values that the
PCMCIA card is going to steal, and then use the settings from ttyS1 for
ttyS2.
dagbnb ~/linux/test/ > cat /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia
PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=i82365
PCIC_OPTS="irq_list=7,9,10"
CORE_OPTS=
... should make sure the PCMCIA controller stays away from irq 11. Also
make sure that the IrDA port is enabled in Win95 since it's disabled by
default.
II. Infrared Remote Control
Table of Contents
6. Introduction
7. Linux Infrared Remote Control - LIRC
8. Lego Mindstorm
9. Serial Infrared Remote Controller
10. Infrared Tools for the COREL Netwinder PC
11. ir
12. irmctl
13. IRManager
14. irXxD
15. XR3
16. IR File Chooser
17. IControl
18. jlirc
19. lircemu
20. tonto
21. Infrared Remote Control ./. IrDA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 6. Introduction
Remote control via infrared is not the aim of the Linux/IrDA project but is
included in this HOWTO to cover "Linux and Infrared" more completely. I found
some projects which are working on this topic. You may find some links to
current information at [http://tuxmobil.org] TuxMobil.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 7. Linux Infrared Remote Control - LIRC
[http://www.lirc.org] LIRC is a package that supports receiving and sending
IR signals of the most common IR remote controls. It contains a device driver
for hardware connected to the serial port, a daemon that decodes and sends IR
signals using this device driver, a mouse daemon that translates IR signals
to mouse movements and a couple of user programs that allow to control your
computer with a remote control. The IR hardware can be either selfmade or
choosen from a variety of commercial solutions. Takahide Higuchi wrote about
LIRC: "It's great, and it seems almost complete solution, but it seems there
is almost nothing supporting hardware on the market (or need to solder some
special circuit ... it is hard work for many people to do so). I believe that
LIRC will be more popular if consumer IR support is implemented in FastIR
drivers and some common API (for example, a raw IrSocket and common ioctls)
is made!".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 8. Lego Mindstorm
Quoting the [http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Lego/] Lego Mindstorm with Linux
Mini-HOWTO by Luis Villa:" In case you don't know, the Lego Mindstorms Kit is
a robotics kit from The Lego Group that retails for about 200 US dollars. For
that, you get a lot of Lego pieces, a large brick containing a CPU, an LCD,
and some connectors (known as the RCX), a couple of motors, and some light
and touch sensors that allow you to interact with the outside world. ..."
"All communication to the RCX is done via the IR tower, which is connected
to the machine via a serial port. As a result, if you have no serial port
connection, you will be unable to use the RCX unless you can buy an adapter.
Furthermore, under certain circumstances, there may be problems with IRQs or
serial port conflicts. This is particularly likely if your modem uses /dev/
ttyS0."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 9. Serial Infrared Remote Controller
This is a simple, cheap device that can be connected to any serial port to
control most components that have infrared remote controls. It was designed
and built on a solderless breadboard and is finally designed as a PC board.
You may find this package [http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/remote/remote.html]
here .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 10. Infrared Tools for the COREL Netwinder PC
Ryan Shillington wrote some tools to control the COREL Netwinder via
infrared, for example:
Server Side for the Corel Palm Administrator (daemon). It depends on having
ir-simple installed and up and running. With this you can check and change IP
addresses, Gateway addresses, setup eth1, etc. You can also run simple
commands AND you can check the Temperature, Memory, Load averages, etc.
Client Side for the Corel Palm Administrator. You can also run simple
commands AND you can check the Temperature, Memory, Load averages, etc.
A very basic infrared device driver. This does not support IrDA (only
unreliable transfers). It looks specifically for Remote Control signals (and
Keyboard, etc.). It blocks and passes data up very differently.
You should get the tools at the [http://www.netwinder.org/] Netwinder
project.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 11. ir
ir is an interface program to [http://www.redrat.co.uk/] Chris Dodge's
RedRat 2 infrared controller to send and receive infrared signals to/from
consumer devices like TV's, VCR's, cable boxes, and stereos. It is written in
Perl. It uses only the basic Perl constructs and no external packages, so it
should work on any platform that supports Perl and serial communications. It
can be accessed via the command line or cron, as an email handler (through
aliases), or as a cgi script which will automatically generate a form with
all possible codes. It has macro capability so one command can send a series
of IR signals. With an X-10's IR543, it can be used to control X10 devices,
too. Download it [http://thekramers.net/ir/] here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 12. irmctl
[http://irmctl.sourceforge.net/] irmctl is a utility daemon to control your
favorite non-IRDA infrared receiver. For the moment, only irman (through
libirman) is supported.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 13. IRManager
[http://home.student.utwente.nl/f.c.vanviegen/releases/irmanager/]
IRManager is a Linux daemon to make advanced use of an [http://
www.evation.com/irman/] IRMan infrared receiver. It forwards IR signals to
(multiple) native IRMan applications, and can be used with your own scripts
and applications. It also has a mapping system and its advanced configuration
options make it the most flexible and easy way to remote control your
computer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 14. irXxD
[http://www.noomore.org/irXxD/] irXxD is a library for sending/receiving
infrared remote control codes. It includes kernel 2.0 and 2.2 modules for
receiving/sending IR codes under Linux, and various support for other
operating systems.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 15. XR3
[http://www.orbit2orbit.com/gmd/RedRat/index.html] Xr3 is package of Linux
tools for the [http://www.redrat.co.uk/index.html] RedRat2 serial port based
Learning IR Remote Control. It was initially developed for use with a [http:/
/www.replaytv.com] ReplayTV Personal Video Recorder(PVR) but has now been
expanded to handle any kind of IR controlled A/V equipment.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 16. IR File Chooser
[http://www.splitbrain.org/index.php?x
=.%2FProgramming%2FPerl%2FIR+File+Chooser] Infra Red (IR) File Chooser is a
remote-controlled menu for selecting files and loading them by an assigned
program. You can add as many filetypes and associated programs as you wish.
The functionality of InfraRed (IR) File Chooser may be extended using Perl or
Shell scripts. The GUI was created with Perl::GTK and it uses RCU::Lirc to
fetch the remote controller commands.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 17. IControl
[http://icontrol.sourceforge.net] IControl interprets signals from
Creative's RM-900 remote control and the accompanying IR LiveDrive! receiver
unit. It is currently capable of sending input to various programs (including
XMMS, Xine, XawTV, and XScreensaver), as well as circulating window stacking
order (sending windows to the background), and changing input focus. It is
completely configurable, allowing the user to map any key to any action the
daemon supports. Support for other remote controls is planned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 18. jlirc
[http://jlirc.sourceforge.net/] jlirc is a Java client API for the LIRC and
WINLirc programs. It lets enables IR remote control support for Java
applications.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 19. lircemu
[http://www.fi.muni.cz/~xkutale1/en/lircemu/] lircemu is a small tool for
developers of LIRC applications. It emulates the LIRC daemon so you can test,
develop, and use programs with LIRC support. It provides a graphical virtual
remote control so you can send buttons an easy way. On the other side. Also a
simple version for console is included.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 20. tonto
[http://giantlaser.com/tonto/] Tonto is a developer-oriented companion to
the popular Pronto line of programable remotes made by Philips. Tonto
provides both an IDE and a Java API for editing CCF files.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 21. Infrared Remote Control ./. IrDA
Two of the above mentioned projects use some kind of selfmade dongle for
infrared remote control. There is also a description to build a serial IrDA
dongle by yourself in the German [http://www.elektor.de] ELEKTOR 5/97 p. 28
magazine. Maybe someone can merge these two kind of dongles together.
For a discussion of the relation between Infrared Remote Control and IrDA I
quote from the Linux/IrDA mailing list (shortend and modified by WH):
Ryan Shillington wrote: "ConsumerIR - CIR, Remote IR and ASK-IR are very
different from IrDA (FIR, MIR, SIR).
Remote IR and ASK-IR are very low speed and low frequency (but very long
range) uses for IR. They operate around 2400 baud.
SIR operates at higher rates, and is meant for long range transmission
where you need more than a few characters pass through (unlike a remote
control).
MIR is a little faster (less range), but with speeds up to 1.15 Mbps, and
FIR (where the devices have to be practically touching) is 4Mbps. The range
is inversely proportional to the speed you can send data at.
I'm working on drivers for Remote-IR, but you should know that your IR
stuff has to support it. Look for protocols like NEC, RC-5 or RC-0 (those are
the most common ones).
You can use SIR to receive Remote Control signals. Set your baud rate nice
and low and data will come through. BUT, from my experience, it's not the
RIGHT data. It's not being analyzed in the right way, and as such, you can't
compute the checksums or check it with its complement.
I have managed to get data in (using SIR) with remote controls. I have been
told that SIR will read the remote control stuff differently depending on
temperature (although I have never had that experience). "
Lichen Wang wrote in response: "The so-called ASKIR in most laptops etc. is
not meant for remote IR devices. ASKIR is meant for Sharp Wizard and Zaurus
PDAs and some of Sharp's notebook PCs. Sharp stated this long before IrDA was
established and is still supporting it to maintain backward compatibility.
Apple's Newton had this capability at one time, too.
Briefly, ASKIR uses 9.6 Kbps (19.2 and 38.4 Kbps are also possible)
asynchronous data format of 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and odd parity. The
start bit as well as all 0 bit in data/parity are transmitted as IR square
wave at 500 KHz (DASK sub-carrier). The stop bit as well as all 1 bit in data
/parity are represented by the absence of any IR transmission.
As you can see, this is totally incompatible with existing IR remote
control. [..]
True. Not only can you use SIR hardware to receive, you can transmit, too.
Of course, there are some limitations.
Most IR remote controls use 38 KHz sub-carrier. 3 times 38 is 114, very
close to 115.2. You can set the UART to operate at 115.2 Kbps, 7 data bits,
no parity, and 1 stop bit - a total of 9 bits. Each 3 cycles of the 38 KHz
sub-carrier can be received or transmitted as a byte of 0x5B.
There are some physical limitations in addition to the fact that the
sub-carrier must be 38 KHz. The SIR receiver is not as sensitive to 38 KHz as
the IR remote receiver designed for that. The SIR transmitter has a much
lower duty cycle and thus can not emit a strong sub-carrier either.
IR remote encodes the control signal by turning on and off the sub-carrier
at certain specific patterns. Now that you can transmit and receive the
sub-carrier, what remains is all in timing.
For transmit, you have to know how many consecutive bytes of 0x5B to send
for each burst of the sub-carrier, and how long to be quiet between the
bursts.
For receive, you have to know how many of the 0x5Bs you received are
consecutive, and how long the gaps were between these groups of consecutive
bytes. [..]
My experience with the IrDA link distance of SIR, MIR and FIR is somewhat
different from what Ryan said. [..]
SIR, MIR and FIR should all work from 0 to 100 cm but in practice:
(a) Some devices may have problems at LONG distances.
When possible, place the two communicating devices no more than 50 cm
apart. Low power devices, such as pagers, phones, etc. may have even shorter
ranges despite the fact that they use SIR instead of MIR or FIR.
(b) Some devices may have problems at SHORT distances.
Place the two devices at least a few cm apart. Putting the two devices too
close to each other can cause troubles.
It is somewhat intuitive that when the link is not reliable we put the two
devices closer together. But it is counterintuitive that too close is not
good either. The reason is that the light intensity at 1 cm is 10.000 times
brighter than that at 100 cm. At 0.5 cm, it is 40.000 times, etc. The IR
receiver manufacturers have difficulties to cover this huge dynamic range. We
all have problems reading under a 10 W light bulb, but imagine how it feels
under a 100.000 W light!
The IrDA Physical Layer is totally incompatible with the DASK modulation
used in IR remote controls. Thus it is not possible to use the same
controller function for both FIR and remote control. However, practically all
FIR controller chips do include some additional functions to support remote
control. National, SMC, and Winbond (just to name a few) all have such I/O
chips.
The IR transmitter for FIR and remote control are very similar. I have
tried a standard FIR transmitter. It can reach 10 meters for remote control
purpose. Thus it performs just as good as transmitters designed for remote
control.
The IR receiver for FIR and remote control are somewhat different. A FIR
receiver can receive remote control signals but can reach only 1 meter
whereas receivers designed for remote control typically can reach 10 meters.
I have an ISA bus adapter with a National I/O chip that supports both FIR
and remote control. I also have IR Dongles that include both FIR and remote
control receivers. (Plus a transmitter for both modes.) I cannot find any
software to support remote control functions. I did my own experiments in DOS
(I cannot run Linux yet.) Anybody interest in this? "
Benny Amorsen wrote: "I have a laptop that is supposed to support ASKIR.
The mode of the infrared port can be switched to ASKIR in the BIOS. Having to
reboot to switch the mode in the BIOS makes it useless, though, so someone
would have to find a way to switch on the fly. "
Dag Brattli wrote: It should be possible to use IrControl (formerly IrBus)
for IrDA compliant remote controls. I currently don't know about any remote
controls using IrControl standard, but there should be some out there (anyone
else who knows better?). You should go to the [http://www.irda.org/] IrDA
site and get the physical layer standard (which includes IrControl I think).
"Normal" IrDA (using IrLAP) is _not_ well suited for remote control because
of the connection oriented nature (and just supports 9600bps for
connectionless use). The reason for the limited range is eye-safety they say
(but I currently don't know why CIR works better using the same power). I
have however seen laptops connect at 4-5 meters (but I don't think that any
high speed communication would be possible).
Most IrDA chipsets are capable of CIR operation, and it is quite easy to
modify the drivers so they talk CIR. Takahide Higuchi has started to look at
IrSockets and it would be great if we could open a "raw" Ir(DA) socket which
then could send and receive CIR packets. Then all the CIR applications could
live in userspace.
I know that Corel is interested in using CIR for controlling the NetWinder
(and they actually have running code). Take a look at [http://
www.slashdot.org/articles/98/12/05/0916216.shtml] this article or [http://
www.netwinder.org/~ryansh] Ryans page .
From the "IrDA Data Link Design Guide" p. 21 by [http://www.hp.com/go/ir]
Hewlett-Packard : " It is possible to transmit and receive signals other than
IrDA signals with Hewlett-Packard IR transceivers. For implementation
details, please refer to the Application Note, Transceiver Performance with
ASK and TV Remote Signals."
From the [http://www.usuarios.com/ib308564/irda.html] IR-MAN page:
Fortunately, many IrDA devices are compatible with the 38-kbps ASK
modulation used in TV remotes. This means that they can work with such kind
of infrared type signals. ... However, it seems that there are still many
portable computers that can't receive TV infrared stuff.
For desktop computers, there exist two options, depending on the
motherboard you have. Usually a Pentium MoBo has an I/O chipset ready for
infrared communication. There is a special connector where you can connect
the transducer. The other option is buying a serial type transceiver that
connects to the standard serial port (RS-232) of the computer. ... PC Remote
Control has been tested with success using both type of IrDA devices:
1) IRmate IR-210 Serial Port Infrared Adapter. ... The serial port speed at
wich the device sends recognizable data values is 2400 bps. I don't know if
this speed will be the same for all the adapters of this type or is an unique
characteristic of this model.
Look at the examples of data values received to see how similar are them.
There are some infrared commands that change a lot every time, difficulting
the recognition. In such cases, a great tolerance in the comparison could be
used, but the risk of confusion between different commands will be increased.
An apropiate tolerance value for almost all cases is 20.
2) Actisys IR2000L connected to an Asus P2B motherboard. ... There are
several serial port speeds that work well, although 4800 bps seems to be the
best one. Other adapters of this same type work also well using this speed.
Take a look at the samples of data sequences received using this device. Some
remote buttons send exactly the same sequence and it's impossible to
distinguish between them at all.
3) Asus IR-eye connected to the same MoBo as above. It works as well as the
Actisys device.
TV remotes send commands only one way, in a low-speed burst for distances
of up to 30 feet. They use directed IR with LEDs that have a moderate cone
angle to improve ease-of-use characteristics. Cordless connectivity via IrDA
transfers files, point-to-point and bidirectionally, in a high-speed burst
for short distances using directed IR with LEDs having a narrow cone angle.
IrDA transmissions require relatively careful aiming, and they're easy to
block. For this reason, don't expect a great distance while working with the
remote unit.
Alessio Massaro : wrote: " IrDA doesn't talk to tv-remotes, but it does
have the IrCOMM layer to emulate a serial i/f. My guess is that to get LIRC
working with it, you should just need ... to read from the IrCOMM virtual
serial device (as you would with a /dev/cua or whatever) and use a remote
that can be seen by your dongle+IrDAheader pair."
Answer by Dag Brattli: "You are talking about being normal serial ports,
but that is something at least I have choosen IrDA not to be. I have
implemented all the device drivers as network device drivers, so things are a
bit different (more frame oriented). The device drivers deliver IrDA frames
and currently nothing else.
But I don't think that we must have a tty interface to the IrDA device
drivers in order to support more RAW reads and writes. And btw. forget about
IrCOMM, it has nothing to do with this issue.
I have actually already implemented support for raw reads and writes for
the device drivers, since some of the dongles require this."
III. Appendix
Table of Contents
A. Credits
B. Revision History
C. Serial Infrared Port Sniffers
C.1. Sniffer by Gerd Knorr
C.2. sersniff
D. Infrared Light and Eye Safety
E. Copyrights, Disclaimer, Trademarks
E.1. Disclaimer and Trademarks
E.2. Copyrights
E.3. GNU Free Documentation License - GFDL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix A. Credits
Thanks to:
* The members of the Linux-IrDA mailing list. * The writers of the other
HOWTOs which gave me many inspirations. * The developers of the SGML-Tools
which provided some means to write a HOWTO. * Benny Amorsen * The Armadillo
with the Mask * Mathieu Arnold * Fons Botman * Philip Blundell * Dag Brattli
- Linux/IrDA core team * David Burley * Andreas Butz * Edgardo Calabrese > *
Andrew Chadwick * Ho Chin Keong * Claudiu Costin * Stefan Dahlke * Thomas
Davis - Linux/IrDA core team * Colin DeWitt * Richard Donkin * Ha Duong Minh
* Ales Dryak * K-H. Eischer * Ove Ewerlid * Timo Felbinger * Tollef Fog Heen
* Christian Gennerat * Gerhard Gonter * Mike Groeneweg * Bjoern Hansson *
Sebastian Henschel * Takahide Higuchi - Linux/IrDA core team * Jon Howell *
Gerd Knorr * Hannes Kurth * Arthur Tyde and Bryan Abshier from [http://
www.linuxcare.com] Linuxcare Inc. * Joonas Lehtinen * Mark Lewis * Florian
Lohoff * George MacDonald * Pawel Machek * James McKenzie * Alessio Massaro *
Harald Milz * Bjoern Mork * Tang Ning * Rui Oliveira * Igor Pesando * Kurt
Pfeifle * Raj Rijhwani * Christian Rishoej * Wessel de Roode * Matthias
Schmidt * Markus Schill * Ryan Shillington * Stanislav Sokolov * Richard
Titmuss * Jean Tourrilhes * [http://frost.feig.at/~oftl] Christian "oftl"
Veigl * Carlos Vidal * Lichen Wang * Guenther Wieser * Toni van de Wiel *
Ralf Zabka * Christian Zoz
Sorry I didn't start to follow the credits when starting the HOWTO, so
probably I forgot somebody.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix B. Revision History
* v0.1 to v0.4a, 19 March 1998 to 4 August 1998, drafts, not included in
the LDP
* v1.0, 14 August 1998, release to the LDP
* v1.1, 18 August 1998, added info about IrCOMM patch by Takahide Higuchi,
minor changes
* v1.2, 24 August 1998, updated to linux-irda-1998-08-20 snapshot, added
FIR section and revision history, minor changes
* v1.3, 27 September 1998, added sections about multiple instances,
cellular phones, digital cameras,Linux to Linux connection, the cutting
edge - CVS, power saving; some changes in general configuration section,
changes in hardware survey section, minor changes
* v1.4, 11 October 1998, better description of IrCOMM support, changes in
dongle connection section, changes in Palm III section, minor changes
* v1.5, 12 October 1998, minor changes
* v1.6, 26 October 1998, section about IrManager added, updated to the
linux-irda-1998-10-21 snapshot, changed dongle connection section, minor
changes
* v1.7, 1 November 1998, added remote control section, changed dongle
connection section, minor changes
* v2.0, 9 January 1999, nearly complete rewrite and rearrangement
according to the new structure of Linux/IR which is included into the
kernel since 2.1.131, added info about BIOS support into dongle
connection section, configuration tool section and CVS section removed
* v2.1, 13 January 1999, minor changes
* v2.2, 26 January 1999, project name changed from Linux/IR to Linux/IrDA,
extended the Troubleshooting chapter, changed the order of the Known Bugs
chapter after the Troubleshooting chapter, removed some lint
* v2.3, 4 February 1999, added chapter about Eye Safety written by Andreas
Butz; spell checking, reworking of Kernel Parameters chapter and
additional information by Andreas Butz; minor changes
* v2.4, 9 February 1999, changed information about applying a patch file
* v2.5, 12 March 1999; new URL for Linux/IrDA; added chapters about Big
Endian support, irdaping, irdadump and Beyond IrDA - Extending
Transmission Distance; chapter Obtaining Information about the Infrared
Port in Laptops improved; added many information provided by Fons Botman
to Windows chapter; added SMP chapter; information about Ericsson SH888
added; removed obsolete FAQs; minor changes
* v2.6, 6 April 1999, added chapters Connection to Docking Station,
Connection to Keyboard and Connection via Serial Cable, minor changes
* v2.7, 11 June 1999 started chapter Upcoming Standards (Bluetooth and
IrDA), added annotations about CORBA to GUI chapter, minor information
about Nokia cellular phones added, added appendix Serial Infrared Port
Sniffer, started IrDA Network Neighborhood section, started Connection to
Psion 5 chapter and appendix C, minor additions to LIRC chapter, minor
changes
* v2.8, 20 September 1999, added LiRC mailing list, changed <htmlurl ... >
tag to <url ...>, changed format of conf.modules entries, addition to
hardware detection (PCMCIA), added IrDA mailing list, changed address of
Linux-IrDA mailing list, minor additions to multiple instances section,
added URL of French translation, added new sersniff to Appendix B, added
section about precompiled packages, added Palm III Connection to Thinkpad
600 chapter, minor changes
* v2.9, 21 September 1999, changes in Printer Connection chapter,
spellchecking, added connection to Siemens S25, minor changes
* v2.10, 2 November 1999, minor changes
* v2.11, 9 March 2000, added links to the 'irctl' and 'IRManager' infrared
control programs, new base URL of the document, new chapter Connecting
from Linux to WinCE courtesy from Arthur Tyde and Bryan Abshier of
Linuxcare Inc., link to IrDA-Java interface added, link to HOWTO about
Toshiba and IrDA added courtesy from Guenther Wieser, more information
about a connection to S25 courtesy by Timo Felbinger, links to AT
commands for cellular phones added, new chapter Code History, link to
SH888 phone book tool, a short survey of IrDA protocols courtesy from
Lichen Wang, minor changes
* v3.0, 5 November 2000, format changed to DocBook , license changed to
GNU Free Documentation License - GFDL, title changed from IR-HOWTO to
Infrared-HOWTO, new document URL, links to Linux/IrDA updated
* v3.1, 8 November 2000, links updated, changed to DocBook 3.1
* v3.2, 21 March 2001, obsolete references to irmanager, /dev/irnine and
wrong device numbers removed, changes according to kernel 2.4.x applied,
extensive proof-reading and testing, new links to e-Squirt added, new
chapter about module options, new chapter about null modem connection,
sections reordered and cleaned up, other links updated
* v3.3, 22 April 2001, included docs from 2.4.3 kernel, removed references
to obsolete stuff, minor changes
* v3.4, 04 September 2002, improved the Linux PDA chapter with
information about PPP, OpenOBEX, printing and more, worked the new syntax
for -s option of irattach into the appropriate sections, reworked and
improved the IrDA and USB chapter, reworked printing stuff, removed
obsolete hints to irlpt_server and IrLPT, described how to use the Common
Unix Printing System - CUPS, added the new irda-users mailing list
address as well as of the new archive, added links to Gnome IrDA applet
and Beamster GTK/Python into the new GUI section, added link to Japanese
translation, added information about some LIRC programs (IR Chooser,
IControl, jlirc), changed all references to URLs into hyperlinks, changed
all @s in mail addresses to _at_ to help prevent spam (at least a
little), URL corrections (LDP, ..), minor changes
* v3.5a, 29 March 2003, added new dongles to /etc/modules.conf, added
link to IrCOMM2k, added links to LIRC progs (lircemu, tonto), added some
more infos about OBEX, removed a misleading reference to setserial,
removed obsolete IrLAN stuff (irlan_client, irlan_server modules), added
warning about IrLAN currently unmaintainded, corrected wrong issue date
of v3.4, changed all URLs from mobilix.org to tuxmobil.org and other URL
corrections, converted whole document to XML 4.1.2 (all tags are now
lowercase, some closing tags added), rearranged the order of some
chapters (SIR, FIR, dongles), chapter about cell phone connection
rewritten (added link to scmxx, added generic instructions, thanks to
Matthias Schmidt), added chapter about connections to PocketPC (thanks to
Stanislav Sokolov), minor changes
* v3.6, 15 June 2003, abstract mentions PDAs, minor changes
* v3.7, 08 October 2005, A technical and a language review have been
achieved by Sebastian Henschel. Numerous bugs have been fixed and many
URLs have been updated. Some obsolete stuff has been removed. Some
documentation about Linux/IrDA with kernel 2.6 has been added (but there
is still work to do).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix C. Serial Infrared Port Sniffers
C.1. Sniffer by Gerd Knorr
This program by courtesy of Gerd Knorr. You may use it to sniff the traffic
which is going trough your IrDA port for details of the protocol (change the
default ttyS1 in the source if necessary):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <termios.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#define BUFSIZE 1024
int
read_and_print(int fd, int sec, int usec)
{
int rc,l,i;
char buf[BUFSIZE+1];
fd_set set;
struct timeval tv;
if (sec || usec) {
FD_ZERO(&set);
FD_SET(fd,&set);
tv.tv_sec = sec;
tv.tv_usec = usec;
if (0 == select(fd+1,&set,NULL,NULL,&tv))
return -1;
}
switch (rc = read(fd,buf,BUFSIZE)) {
case 0:
printf("EOF");
exit(0);
break;
case -1:
perror("read");
exit(1);
default:
for (l = 0; l < rc; l+= 16) {
printf("%04x ",l);
for (i = l; i < l+16; i++) {
if (i < rc)
printf("%02x ",buf[i]);
else
printf("-- ");
if ((i%4) == 3)
printf(" ");
}
for (i = l; i < l+16; i++) {
if (i < rc)
printf("%c",isalnum(buf[i]) ? buf[i] : '.');
}
printf("\n");
}
break;
}
return rc;
}
void
setlines(int fd, int rts, int dtr)
{
int lines = 0;
if (rts) lines |= TIOCM_RTS;
if (dtr) lines |= TIOCM_DTR;
ioctl(fd,TIOCMSET,&lines);
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int ser,i;
struct termios saved_attributes,tattr;
struct winsize win;
char buf[16];
if (-1 == (ser = open("/dev/ttyS1",O_RDWR))) {
perror("open /dev/ttyS1");
exit(1);
}
/* Set the terminal mode */
tcgetattr (ser, &tattr);
cfmakeraw (&tattr);
cfsetospeed (&tattr,B9600);
cfsetispeed (&tattr,B9600);
tcsetattr (ser, 0, &tattr);
setlines(ser,0,0);
#if 0
tcsendbreak(ser,0);
#endif
/* main loop */
fprintf(stderr,"setup done\n");
while (-1 != read_and_print(ser,30,0)) {
usleep(100000);
}
return 0;
}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
C.2. sersniff
Written by Jonathan McDowell [http://www.earth.li/projectpurple/progs/
sersniff.html] sersniff is a simple program to tunnel/sniff between 2 serial
ports. The program was written to aid with the decoding of the protocol used
by the Nokia 9000i Communicator to talk to the NServer software Nokia
provides, which only runs under Windows.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix D. Infrared Light and Eye Safety
This section summarizes some ideas and thoughts that were exchanged on the
Linux/IrDA mailing list. It is not medically well-founded, and whoever has
better evidence or some more well-founded source of information is encouraged
to contribute it to this HOWTO.
The IrDA spec says that the range of IrDA devices has been limited to 1m
for reasons of eye safety. Another plausible assumption is that power
consumption and IR pollution/crosstalk were reasons for this limitation. In
principle there could be danger for the eye, because infrared light is not
registered by the eye, and thus the pupil won't close in order to protect the
retina from bright IR light sources. This is the same situation as with UV
light, which will cause snow blindness eventually, but in contrast to UV
light, IR light contains much less harmful energy due to its longer
wavelength.
The only legal restrictions and medical advices we were able to find on the
web were concerned with infrared emissions of heat lamps or in the welding
process and IEC 825-1 (CENELEC EN60825-1). This suggests that IR light as
emitted by IrDA devices will be harmless, since even the peak power emitted
by strong IR LEDs (ca. 300mW) is several orders of magnitude below the power
emitted by medical IR heat lamps (up to 500W). For these, however, you are
supposed to wear protective goggles, so maybe if you are looking straight
into 1.000 infrared LEDs flashing at once, you should do so, too. The effect
of infrared light is mostly heat, though, and not an alteration or
destruction of the biological cell structure, such as caused by UV light.
Though in the specs for the HP OmniBook 800 Hewlett-Packard recommends not to
look directly into the IR LED.
As stated above, this discussion is only based on guesswork and common
sense assumptions about the data found in IR LED and heat lamp specs. If
anybody with a better medical knowledge can comment on this, please do so!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix E. Copyrights, Disclaimer, Trademarks
E.1. Disclaimer and Trademarks
This is free documentation. It is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but without any warranty. The information in this document is correct
to the best of my knowledge, but there's a always a chance I've made some
mistakes, so don't follow everything too blindly, especially if it seems
wrong. Nothing here should have a detrimental effect on your computer, but
just in case I take no responsibility for any damages incurred from the use
of the information contained herein.
Though I hope trademarks will be superfluous sometimes (you may see what I
mean at [http://www.opensource.org/osd.html] Open Source Definition ), I
declare: If certain words are trademarks, the context should make it clear to
whom they belong. For example "MS Windows NT" implies that "Windows NT"
belongs to Microsoft (MS). "Mac" is a trademark by Apple Computer. Many of
the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their
products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this
book, and I was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been
printed in caps or initial caps. All trademarks belong to their respective
owners.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
E.2. Copyrights
For all chapters permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify
this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version
1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being "Preface" and "Credits", with the Front-Cover Texts
being "Linux Infrared HOWTO", and with the Back-Cover Texts being the section
"About the Document and the Author". A copy of the license is included in the
section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
E.3. GNU Free Documentation License - GFDL
Version 1.1, March 2000
Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite
330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute
verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
E.3.1. 0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written
document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective
freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either
commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the
author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being
considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of
the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the
GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free
software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free
software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program
should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does.
But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any
textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a
printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose
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E.3.2. 1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice
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Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document
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E.3.3. 2. VERBATIM COPYING
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially
or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and
the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced
in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of
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reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you
may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large
enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you
may publicly display copies.
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If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and
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If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly,
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If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more
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It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the
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E.3.5. 4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the
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You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a
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E.3.6. 5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
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all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant
Sections of your combined work in its license notice.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple
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In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History" in the
various original documents, forming one section entitled "History"; likewise
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"Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled "Endorsements."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
E.3.7. 6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents
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You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it
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the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of
the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire
aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround
only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers
around the whole aggregate.
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E.3.9. 8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute
translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing
Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their
copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant
Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections.
You may include a translation of this License provided that you also include
the original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement
between the translation and the original English version of this License, the
original English version will prevail.
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E.3.10. 9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically
terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received
copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
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E.3.11. 10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU
Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be
similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address
new problems or concerns. See [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/] copyleft .
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any
later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and
conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has
been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the
Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose
any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
