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How To: Set Up The Irreco Universal Remote on Your N900

November 22, 2009 in Featured, How To's, Maemo/MeeGo How To's, Nokia N900 How To's, Video

So you saw the YouTube video of the guy controlling his TV with the Nokia N900? But you’ve looked everywhere for that app and either can’t find it or found it and just can’t get it to work? Here’s something to help.

I. Enable More Apps on Your N900

1. First you need to do our How To Get More Apps On Your N900 Procedure then come back to this procedure.

II. Download Irreco and Start Lirc

1. Now that you have all of the repositories mentioned in our Get More Apps procedure, you can find the Irreco for the N900 app in the App. Manager > Download > Multimedia. Find it in there and download it (only download the one that says for N900 in the name).

2. Now download RootSh app from under App. Manager > Tap the Title Bar and then click Search. Search for rootsh and hit enter. Download the application.

3. Open X Terminal under Menu > More… then click X Terminal. Once open type the following, hitting an enter after each line:

sudo gainroot
/etc/init.d/lirc start

It should say that Lirc is started or that it was already running, either way were done in Terminal, you can close it out now.

*Steps 2 and 3 above are optional and are meant to stop the common error of “Cannot Open Socket” being displayed in Irreco, I highly recommend doing them either way. Also if you ever get the “Cannot Open Socket” error go and do steps 2 and 3 again and it should fix it.

III. Setting Up Device Controllers and Downloading Control Commands

1. Now open Irreco by going to Menu > More… > and click on Irreco – IR Remote

2. Push Ok on the Notification that pops up.

3. When Download Remotes comes up click out side of it to cancel it. Then click ok on the next notification.

4. Tap the title bar to open the menu and click on New Remote. Then enter a name for your new remote.

5. Tap the title bar to open the menu and click on Device Controllers, then click New.

6. Select Internal Lirc when asked What do you want to control? then click ok.

7. Check that the settings on the next dialog box match what is written below and then click Ok.

Hostname: localhost
Port: 8765

If you get an error after clicking Ok saying Cannot Open Socket, please go back and do steps 2 and 3 in the previous section.

8. Now click outside the Device Controllers section to close it.

9. Click on the title bar again and click on Download from Lirc.

10. Here is where you will choose your TV. So try to find the model that most closely represents the TV you wish to control (keep in mind it usually does not have to be exact, so long as it is close they might use the same control commands).

11. After you have found it click on download and then click ok when it says successful.

IV. Creating a Remote

1. Click the title bar then New Button.

2. Enter a name for your button, as a test I always make a power button first, so I named mine Power.

3. Then click Add and select the command you want, for a power button select On/Off, Power or something similar then click Ok.

4. You can then move your button around on the screen to place it where you want it.

5. Tap the title bar and click Save remote.

6. You can now click the power button while aimed at the TV and see if your TV turns off/on. If so congrats! Now repeat this procedure to add as many buttons as you want. Also keep in mind that you can create a button like “Food Network” and add the command for 7 and then add another after it like 4 to get to channel 74 with one button (Food Network is channel 74 where I am) :) Enjoy!

Reported Issues:

Issue: It worked the first time but now when I open Irreco it says Can Not Open Socket or some type of error and it won’t work!

Solution: For some reason Lirc stops running when the phone is restarted, so once per reboot before you use the Irreco program do Step 3 in Section II:

3. Open X Terminal under Menu > More… then click X Terminal. Once open type the following, hitting an enter after each line:

sudo gainroot
/etc/init.d/lirc start

It should say that Lirc is started or that it was already running, either way were done in Terminal, you can close it out now and restart Irreco.

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59 responses to How To: Set Up The Irreco Universal Remote on Your N900

  1. San said on March 28, 2010

    Thank you Unlockr, i followed the steps and mine works perfectly apart from the volume button changing the moving up and down through the channels instead of the volume lol..however i must say that i only came across this site today and i am totally impressed. Your instructions are so clear and concise and i am very thankful.

  2. rex said on April 25, 2010

    i have the smae prob as it was working perfect then after i restarted my phone it wasnt working so i unistalled it and reinstalled it now when i open it it closes in less than a second plz help.

  3. demari said on April 25, 2010

    when i start irreco this message pops up (cannot resolve hostname local host) what do i do

  4. eXtreme said on May 2, 2010

    I get the same thing. Everything works fine, when I download a new tv it say successfully but then when I add the button and I look for the command that it should do, there are just special commands such as wait 0.3 sec previous command, next command etc.. Thanks for sharing your knowledge anyways. I’ll give up. I’ll wait for when it come out. :(

  5. mangal said on May 8, 2010

    hey,
    same crashing problem again.
    seems to just keep crashing when i open the app.
    i had deleted the WHOLE folder a while ago. didnt work after that.
    ive even reflashed my phone, and still no success with the app.
    can some one help me download the irreco FOLDER so i can get manually put it in my phone?
    or is there any other way to get irreco running??
    ive tried
    sudo gainroot
    apt-get purge lirc
    apt-get purge qtirreco

    and manually uninstalled irreco-for-n900 through the
    application manager and reinstalled.
    no luck again :( !
    please help someone, im dying to show this off to my iphone friends!

  6. Aman said on May 10, 2010

    I’m getting a unique error not mentioned so far, after reaching till point 9> Download from Lric, i get error message Cannot resolve hostname

  7. N900 Freak said on July 17, 2010

    I can’t find my tv model

  8. N900 Freak said on July 17, 2010

    All the Tv models that are in Irreco are not even close to my one.

  9. Smith said on July 31, 2010

    How can I download to my pc all remote control files at once from the database.

  10. touchy said on September 16, 2010

    i have a problem with hostname. when i click download it has a pop-up that say “cannot resolve hostname”.
    how can i solve it

  11. Jim said on September 16, 2010

    Hi, Sorry to sound so dull, but I can’t see anything in the “Device Controllers” so unable to select anything. I’ve installed Irreco 0.8.6, rootSh 1.5. Please help

  12. alejandro said on October 4, 2010

    when i was looking for my tv model or some model close to it, there isnt any model close to my tv model, what can i do???
    my tv model is a LN-S3241D

    sorry for my bad english

  13. betty said on October 29, 2010

    i cant find search at the title bar and sooth can u helpme

  14. Rida said on November 28, 2010

    it gives me an error CANNOT RESOLVE HOST NAME

  15. Buksman said on October 12, 2011

    i have a problem with hostname. when i click download it has a pop-up that say “cannot resolve hostname”.
    how can i solve it     

  16. Roy said on February 11, 2012

    I get an error that says “Cannot connect to destination.” whenever i click download device from LircDB

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