davidrpalmer / RaspberryIRDotNet

.NET Core library for accessing infrared (/dev/lirc) devices on a Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry IR .NET

This is a .NET Core library for accessing infrared devices (found at /dev/lirc*) on a Raspberry Pi. This library is designed specifically for the gpio-ir and pwm-ir-tx/gpio-ir-tx drivers on the Raspberry Pi, however it may (at least partially) work with other IR drivers on other platforms.

This library supports both transmitting and receiving IR codes.

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2022 (or some other tools for building a .NET Core app)
• A Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS (previously called Raspbian)
• .NET 8.0 Runtime installed on the Pi
• The necessary IR drivers loaded via /boot/config.txt to create the /dev/lircX device(s)
  • For IR receiving this is gpio-ir
  • For IR sending (blasting) this is either pwm-ir-tx or gpio-ir-tx
• Some hardware connected to the GPIO on the Pi for sending and/or receiving IR

Getting Started

Get from NuGet.org

The RaspberryIRDotNetExamples console app (not in the NuGet package) contains some examples of how to use the library.

First check DemoConfig.cs in RaspberryIRDotNetExamples has the right paths to your /dev/lirc devices as per the <summary> descriptions in that file.

The solution and project files are setup for building with Visual Studio 2019. Use the RasPiDebug publish profile in the RaspberryIRDotNetExamples project to build the library and a sample console application. Copy the published output to your Raspberry Pi.

Run the RaspberryIRDotNetExamples console app (you may need to chmod u+x RaspberryIRDotNetExamples). This project will demo some of the functionality of the RaspberryIRDotNet library. Take a look at it's source code to see how the console app makes use of the library.

Supported Formats

• NEC (basic and extended)
• RC5 (basic and extended)
• RC6
  • Mode 0
  • Mode 6A - 8bit and 16bit address modes are supported. However the payload format is not defined in this standard. So you will either have to just take the payload as raw bits, or add your own class to decode it. The Xbox360Packet and Xbox360Converter classes show how this can be done.
• Kasiekyo (Panasonic only)

Room for Improvement

When decoding raw IR into a formatted message standard, such as NEC, this library does not handle repeat codes.