es-cec-input

TV CEC remote control support for Emulation Station (included in RetroPie)

Features

• It will automatically map your retroarch keyboard config to the remote control buttons. Ensure you pick a key for all available options ( See Supported Keyboard Keys Below )

• It will not act on remote button presses when kodi or retroarch is running and will act as soon as ES returns or starts.

Buttons

ES <-> TV Remote

A <-> SELECT or RED

B <-> EXIT or GREEN

UP <-> UP

DOWN <-> DOWN

LEFT <-> LEFT

RIGHT <-> RIGHT

START <-> FAST FORWARD or BLUE

SELECT <-> REWIND OR YELLOW

Dependencies

It depends on the cec-utils package and also the python-uinput package which contains the library and the udev rules at /etc/udev/rules.d/40-uinput.rules.

Both cec-utils and python-uinput are in the repositories.

The 40-uinput.rules file should look like the following

ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="event[0-9]*", ENV{ID_VENDOR_ID}=="012a", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="034b",
ENV{ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD}="1", ENV{ID_INPUT_TABLET}="1"SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="python-uinput",
ENV{ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD}="1"KERNEL=="uinput", MODE:="0666" 

Run the code as a non root user

You must first create the uinput group

sudo addgroup uinput

Then add the pi user to the uinput group

sudo adduser pi uinput

Testing before autostart

Note: It was developed and tested on a pi3 with Retropie 4.1 with kodi installed in the ports section of retropie

To make sure it will work you should run the script as a non root user.

First make the script executable (assuming your in the same directory as the file)

chmod u+x es-cec-input.py

then run it with

./es-cec-input.py

If you see no output then you can try your TV remote with the buttons in the Button section above. If it works then proceed to the next section

If you see output it will exit and tell you the key which is unsupported and a list of the supported keys.

Ensure all your keys are supported and try again until you get no output.

Autostart on boot

To start on boot, add to user's crontab.

crontab -e

Add the line,

@reboot nohup /home/pi/PATH/TO/THE/SCRIPT/es-cec-input.py

Supported Keyboard Keys

Note: You must set up your keyboard in Emulation Station first (pick a key for all options!) or the script will not work

As keys need to be mapped from retroarch.cfg supported keys to corresponding uinput supported keys not all the keys are available. However most are supported, as seen below

Letters ("a" to "z"), left, right, up, down, enter, kp_enter, tab, insert, del, end, home, rshift, shift, ctrl, alt, space, escape, kp_plus, kp_minus, f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, f9, f10, f11, f12, num0, num1, num2, num3, num4, num5, num6, num7, num8, num9, pageup, pagedown, keypad0, keypad1, keypad2, keypad3, keypad4, keypad5, keypad6, keypad7, keypad8, keypad9, period, capslock, numlock, backspace, scroll_lock, backquote, pause, comma, minus, slash, semicolon, equals, backslash, kp_period, kp_equals, rctrl, ralt

(where "kp_"# is for keypad keys)

FAQ

• The script is not working after exiting from kodi. This is due to a setting in kodi. Solution
• Using remote is not controlling menu but signal is being received (goes out of screensaver). Happens when keyboard was not configured as a controller. Solution