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

Note: You must setup a keyboard through the Emulationstation GUI prior to doing any of the below!

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. and can be installed with:

sudo pip install python-uinput
sudo apt-get install cec-utils

if python-uinput gives you a bist-wheel error, then do the following:

sudo pip uninstall python-uinput
sudo pip install wheel
sudo pip install python-uinput

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" 

If not modify/create it with:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/40-uinput.rules

and add the code from above.

To 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 tested on a pi3 with Retropie 4.4.12 with kodi 18.2 installed in the ports section of retropie

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

First download the code and make the script executable (assuming you are in the same directory as the file)

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MacGyverr/es-cec-input/master/es-cec-input.py
sudo chmod ugo+rwx 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. (If you see a lot of unsupported keys filled with gibberish, then you likely didn't already have a keyboard configured in EmulationStation as mentioned twice above)

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. (notice it's not using sudo)

crontab -e

Add the line,

@reboot nohup /home/pi/PATH/TO/THE/SCRIPT/es-cec-input.py which if you didn't switch to a different folder before downloading the script will be /home/pi/, so use the following:

@reboot nohup /home/pi/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

• If the script is not working after exiting from kodi. This is due to a setting in kodi. Solution (tested fine without but who knows)
• 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