Raspberry PI Universal Controller - Setting up LIRC (Part 1)

Intro

This will be a series of posts on how to make an universal remote controller with a Raspberry Pi.
The main motivation of doing this is to be able to control every (?) device on my home from a web API. This way I'll be able to control this API from my phone, web or even using Jasper.

The hardware I'll use for this is a Raspberry Pi, a few IR leds and an IR sensor.

Disclaimer: My knowledge about electronics it's practically null, so apply this at your own risk, ha... 

For the software, I'll be using:
- Raspbian for the Pi OS (you can find hundreds of tutorials for setting that up)
- LIRC for handling the IR in/out
- Node, to expose an API for using the Pi as a remote controller.

Index

1. Setting up LIRC
2. Setting up IR Receiver and storing the codes
3. Setting up IR Leds and using LIRC
4. Create the Node API

Setting up LIRC

Installing LIRC on raspbian is pretty straight forward, I used most of the steps from here 

> sudo apt-get install lirc

Now we need to configure a few files.

Open /etc/modules with nano:

> sudo nano /etc/modules

and add these lines:

lirc_dev
lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=23 gpio_out_pin=22

*Notice we're using pin 23 as IN and 22 for OUT, we'll have that in mind when wiring everything up.

Open /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

> sudo nano /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

And copy this:

########################################################
# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf
#
# Arguments which will be used when launching lircd

LIRCD_ARGS="--uinput"

# Don't start lircmd even if there seems to be a good config file
# START_LIRCMD=false
# Don't start irexec, even if a good config file seems to exist.
# START_IREXEC=false

# Try to load appropriate kernel modules
LOAD_MODULES=true

# Run "lircd --driver=help" for a list of supported drivers.
DRIVER="default"

# usually /dev/lirc0 is the correct setting for systems using udev
DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"
MODULES="lirc_rpi"

# Default configuration files for your hardware if any
LIRCD_CONF=""
LIRCMD_CONF=""

########################################################

Case you're using 3.18.x or up Raspberry Pi firmware, you'll need to modify /boot/config.txt:

>sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add:

dtoverlay=lirc-rpi,gpio_in_pin=23,gpio_out_pin=22

After that, you'll need to reboot your Pi.

On the next post, we'll attach a IR receiver to the Pi and get the remote controls.

Setting up IR Receiver and storing the codes >>