mpvremote - Fully-Programmable IR Receiver and Command Executor

Perform actions on your PC, such as controlling video playback in mpv, using an infrared remote control and an Arduino.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Arduino (with a USB cable)
• IR receiver (3-pin)
• Any IR remote control

Setup

Arduino:

1. Connect the IR sensor to pin 7 of your Arduino (and conect the +/- pins to 5V/GND, respectively)
2. Connect the Arduino to your PC via USB
3. From the Arduino IDE, install the Arduino-IRremote library
4. Compile and flash the arduino_receiver.ino sketch to your Arduino

PC:

1. Install the mpvremote Python package from this repository after customizing config.py below
2. Enable IPC support in mpv by adding input-ipc-server=~~/socket to your mpv config (~/.config/mpv/config)

Usage

• Ensure the Arduino is correctly wired and connected to your PC
• Run mpvremote [port] to start the IR listener, replacing [port] with the serial port/path of your Arduino device (default: /dev/ttyUSB0). Run with -h for more options
• Press buttons on your IR remote to see their IR codes printed in the console
• Add these codes to config.py and customize the action handlers as desired. See Configuration for more details
• Restart the program and test your changes

Configuration

Modify config.py to suit your needs. For example, you may want to:

• Replace the IR codes and button mappings in MyMapping with your own.
• Customize the mpv commands in MyMpvHandler with your own.
• Add your own non-mpv related actions by subclassing BaseHandler and mapping buttons to your own Python functions.
• Modify MyWebHandler to perform different actions when mpv is not active, or remove it from MyController if that behavior is not desired.

The general configuration process is as follows:

• Associate your specific IR codes with buttons like "play", "pause", etc (see MyMapping and BaseMapping)
• Define handlers which associate these buttons with actions (see MyMpvHandler, MyWebHandler, and BaseHandler)
• Combine them into a single integrated controller which can be used in cli.py (see MyController and BaseController)

Autostart

A systemd service file is provided for convenience and can be used to autostart the web server:

• Copy mpvremote.service into ~/.config/systemd/user/ and modify as needed (i.e.: to pass custom options to mpvremote)
• Run systemctl --user daemon-reload
• Run systemctl --user enable --now mpvremote to enable autostart and immediately start the service

Notes

You can also specify a list of mappings and/or handlers in a controller which will be queried in order when performing code/button/action lookups. The first mapping or handler to satisfy the lookup will stop and "consume" it, much like event bubbling.

MpvHandler is a convenience handler which transforms mpv commands (strings) into callable Python functions. This saves you the trouble of individually wrapping each mpv command in a function.

Refer to input.conf for a list of available mpv commands.

While this project was originally intended to control mpv, it can be easily adapted to run other Python code.

Why Mappings and Handlers?

Mappings and handlers decouple the configurations and provide an interface between specific IR codes generated by specific remotes and actions more commonly associated with buttons like "play" and "pause", etc. This allows you to easily mix and match a variety of IR remotes with various action handlers. For example, you can define a single action handler, then add support to it for a variety of different remotes by creating one mapping for each remote. If you then wish to use those remotes with a new handler, you can simply reuse the mappings you already created.