I’m quite new to Mycroft, but I’m trying to work out how to send IR and RF signals to my devices.
I’m using IR Record and Playback. This captures the signals and records them, so it’s very simple to open a terminal and run the correct input code to send the desired signal to the devices.
Is there a streamlined Skill to do this? I’m fairly new to Raspberry Pi, Linux, etc. Or perhaps the concept of creating a simple Skill such as this isn’t too difficult? I do have various programming languages background.
I’ve taken a look at OpenHab, is this the path to choose?
The Mycroft Mark-I has an IR Receiver which is IMHO poorly supported. As far as I remember one user created a custom skill for that. Regarding sending IR codes I would use something like ESP8266-HTTP-IR-Blaster - most likely OpenHab will support this, so you can trigger it via the OpenHab-Skill…
There aren’t any Mycroft-developed or Community-developed Skills AFAIK around IR and RF signals - I’m not sure if this is the “poorly supported” that @Dominik is referring to - as always with Mycroft, you’re able to extend and develop additional functionality - and IR and RF is one of those areas.
I had a quick chat with my colleague @forslund who does a lot of advanced Skills development - and he recommended that it would be possible to use the Python subprocess.call command with IR record and playback link,
I don’t know much about OpenHAB I’m afraid so I can’t compare the two options well for you.
Hi @Dominik
Thanks for your reply. I’ve thought of adding another separate WIFI connected unit to the Home Automation System, but I’d like to try to integrate it all onto the Raspberry Pi 3 B+. I’ll check out OpenHab to see if there are options to simply write some code to a terminal - upon click of a button - which is ‘clicked’ upon asking “Hey Mycroft, click this button”
Thanks for clarifying about any current skills. I’m happy to become a useful part of the community and start creating Skills.
I’m not sure what you’re meaning about the subprocess.call. The question/difficulty I have is in getting Mycroft to enable the code to send the IR and RF signals out. I can easily do this with a terminal. Is there something that connects Mycroft to a Terminal window (doesn’t have to be viewable inferface, as long as it sends the commands). I’m assuming (I’ll look into it shortly) that the subprocess.call will do what needs doing by intiating and sending the code. But how do I get Mycroft to start the subprocess.call? Is this where I need to look into how Mycroft works and the basics on creating a Skill?
@Nathan_King,
Just to let you know support for the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ is still in development as of the moment (unstable branch) although I think it may be scheduled for stable release in the next beta milestone.
I believe the latest image for b+ is here. Give it a go, we are all testers here anyway so it may get you running before waiting for the next release. B+ download
I created a skill to send IR signals, levering LIRC: https://github.com/ChristopherRogers1991/mycroft-irsend. It’s not currently in the skill store because I never resubmitted it after the jump to 18.02 (which required all skill authors to resubmit skills), but it works well if you want to install it via git. It works especially well if you pair it with my routine skill: https://github.com/ChristopherRogers1991/mycroft_routine_skill. The demo video in the README of the routine skill shows the IR skill turning on my TV, sound system and HDMI switch via a “movie time” routine.