Joy2key
Use a joystick/gamepad to control applications which accept keyboard commands
I use joy2key to work around issues with the Logitech Cordless RumblePad 2 "hat" (a.k.a. d-pad) in XBMC.
XBMC 10.0 or probably a recent Arch update (SDL?) broke the joystick hat functionality for me.
On XBMC startup, xbmc.log shows 0 hats and 6 - instead of 4 - axes:
17:00:36 T:3020363648 M:1703337984 NOTICE: Enabled Joystick: Logitech Logitech Cordless RumblePad 2 17:00:36 T:3020363648 M:1703337984 NOTICE: Details: Total Axis: 6 Total Hats: 0 Total Buttons: 12
My solution was to install joy2keyAUR from the AUR. Here is my config which could potentially save you hours of frustration or fun, depending on how you look at it:
# # ~/.joy2keyrc # COMMON -dev /dev/input/js0 -thresh -16383 16383 -16383 16383 -16383 16383 -16383 16383 -16383 16383 -16383 16383 #-autorepeat 5 #-deadzone 50 START xbmc -X # -axis <axis0min> <axis0max> <axis1min> <axis1max> ... # 0 = left analog stick X-axis # 1 = left analog stick Y-axis # 2 = right analog stick X-axis # 3 = right analog stick Y-axis # 4 = hat (d-pad) X-axis # 5 = hat (d-pad) Y-axis # # actions: Left/Right/Up/Down (arrow keys) - first letter capital! # plus/minus (ASCII characters) - lower case! # blank = special # more info in /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h # # .....0..........1.......2..........3..........4..........5...... #-axis Left Right Up Down minus plus plus minus Left Right Up Down -axis blank blank blank blank blank blank blank blank Left Right Up Down # EoF
joy2key needs to start after XBMC to be able to see its window. Here's my XBMC standalone system config:
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Enable Ctrl+Alt+Bksp.
setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp &
# Start joy2key after XBMC has been detected running. (Function takes arguments, some optional.)
start_joy2key()
{
for n in $(seq $4 || seq 5)
do
xwininfo -display :0 -name "$1" >/dev/null 2>&1 && joy2key "$1" -config "$2"
sleep $3 || sleep 3
done
}
# syntax: start_joy2key <window name> <config file> [wait # of sec between tries] [repeat # of times]
start_joy2key "XBMC Media Center" xbmc 3 5 &
# Start XBMC.
xbmc-standalone
# EoF
And here is my joy2key config section for controlling Boxee-source:
START boxee -X -axis blank blank Page_Up Page_Down blank blank plus minus Left Right Up Down # .......1.2......3......4.5....6.....7...........8............9.0.1.2 -buttons v Return Escape c Left Right bracketleft bracketright i z s h
Add this to ~/.xinitrc below the XBMC section to alternate between launching XBMC and Boxee:
start_joy2key Boxee boxee 3 3 & /opt/boxee/run-boxee-desktop
This gets respawned over and over from /etc/inittab:
x:5:respawn:/bin/su xbmc -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c /usr/bin/startx >/dev/null 2>&1"
References to the sources where I learned about this: