Infrared (IR) Transmitter

Would be great to have an IR transmitter feature so that I can turn my audio system on and off thru the Volumio app or via the web page!

Hi dirtbiker1824,

IR is on the roadmap for Volumio, so it will eventually be a feature.
We may take it on very soon!
I will post on here when we start working on it so you can stay updated if you like.

Cheers,
Cris

Hi there,

I wanted to jump in and second this request. I have an array of Polk in-ceiling speakers and need a lot of power to drive them, but I don’t want to leave my receivers (located in an AV closet) powered 24/7. I need them to power up & down as needed and to adjust volume remotely from the app.

Currently I’m doing this with Logitech Squeezebox players (SB3) with the IR Blaster plugin and it works great, but the hardware is really old now and the players are starting to fail one by one. I want to get a new whole house audio solution up and running with Raspberry PIs soonish.

I’ve ticked the “notify me when a reply is posted” box so I’ll anxiously await your response, Cris.

Thank you!

Hi rpdubz,

I’m sorry for the long wait.

What exactly is your request? You would like to be able to toggle the IR receivers on/off?

Best,
Cris

I’d like to be able to send IR signals to my amplifier. Power control (on/off) and volume (up/down).

Well, the volume control should already be implemented.
As far as turning the amp on/off, that’s not really something that Volumio can do directly.
One way I could imagine that is by using a relay on the amp’s supply, and controlling that with the rpi’s GPIO.
If that’s what you want and need, I could try making a plugin for that.
You will need some electronics knowledge to set it up.

Is that it? Did I get it right? :smiley:

Let me know!

Hi Cris,

When you say the volume control has already been implemented, do you mean that Volumio can send infrared signals to my amplifier to turn the amplifier’s volume up and down? Can you point me to some documentation that would help me hook an IR transmitter up to the rpi and configure the correct IR codes within Volumio?

I do have electronics knowledge, though a relay for power control is not going to work. When these amplifiers power up, they go into a standby state. They need an infrared signal to come out of standby. If Volumio can send IR codes through an infrared emitter for volume control, it should be pretty easy to send power up/down codes too. Maybe a simple plugin where I can assign and label buttons that execute shell scripts on the client rpi? Then I can use lirc to send the correct IR command directly from within the Volumio interface?

Ok, now I understand what you mean.
No, in that sense, there is no plugin for that.
But let’s talk about it, I can make a plugin that will execute shell scripts on command. I can also make it work with the existing IR plugin so as to call a shell script when a particular button is pressed on your remote.
Is this all?

I’ll look into it as soon as I have 2 free minutes.
I will keep you updated.

I’d like to see this implemented as well. I could probably figure out a python script or something to handle the ir transmitter, but I don’t know enough about the gui to implement a page. Maybe I could figure it out, but I bet it would take someone who knows what they’re doing 1/50th of the time.

I would like to help where I can get this implemented. I am going to work to build this circuit and software. We could hopefully make an api call or script it to handle volume up and down as well as power off/on. The software and universal side should help it work for a large range of devices.

alexba.in/blog/2013/01/06/settin … spberrypi/

I finally got all the parts I needed and was able to get this setup and working this afternoon. I can now send IR commands to my amp from the pi using command line. Now if we could somehow get help implementing it into the UI we would be golden.

idea:
-add an option in settings to change volume settings to LIRC
-create fields under there to enter remote name and button name
-have volume up and down execute the commands below
-add amp power button to the UI in some location and have it execute the command below.

Here are the commands I can use to send IR

syntax is: irsend SEND_ONCE “RemoteName” “ButtonName”
irsend SEND_ONCE onkyo KEY_POWER
irsend SEND_ONCE onkyo KEY_VOLUMEUP
irsend SEND_ONCE onkyo KEY_VOLUMEDOWN

Something like this should get us started then we can work on tweaks for the other LIRC options. We may be able to implement the continuous start-stop feature.

irsend SEND_START onkyo KEY_VOLUMEUP
irsend SEND_STOP onkyo KEY_VOLUMEUP
irsend SEND_START onkyo KEY_VOLUMEDOWN
irsend SEND_STOP onkyo KEY_VOLUMEDOWN

Hi DShearon,

Has any progress been made since your last post? I’m looking for this exact solution to be implemented into Volumio.
What IR transmitter have you installed on your PI?

Thanks

Here’s a post I found from 2.5 years ago which has a nice implementation (including UI):
https://volumio.org/forum/volumio-blaster-for-amp-control-t3746.html#p49354