With Remote Buddy 2, you can record and send IR commands from your Mac's command line to control other devices.
What you need
- Remote Buddy 2 installed and running on your Mac (the trial version during the trial period will also work)
- a supported IR transmitter (right now: Flirc USB and many MCE IR receivers with transmitter)
- the remote of the device you want to send IR commands for
- optional: a USB extension cable to bring the IR transmitter close enough to the device to control
A look at irtool
The new irtool makes Remote Buddy's IR subsystem accessible to the command line. Assuming you installed Remote Buddy in your Mac's Applications folder, the new command line tool can be found at /Applications/Remote Buddy.app/Contents/MacOS/irtool.
Invoking it without any parameters, it prints out the available options:
$ /Applications/Remote\ Buddy.app/Contents/MacOS/irtool irtool 1.0 - send and receive IR codes through Remote Buddy (C) 2024 IOSPIRIT GmbH. All rights reserved. Arguments: -s, --send Send an IR code -m, --microtimes [times] The microsecond time intervals to send as IR code, alternating between pulse and space times, seperated by comma, f.ex. "9000,4500,0". -r, --receive Receive an IR code -t, --timeout [seconds] Timeout to wait for receiving an IR code. A value of 0 means no timeout. (default: 0) -f, --format [format] The format in which to output the received IR code. (default: microtimes) -n, --noisecheck Perform noise check before listening for IR codes. (off by default) -v, --version Print version -h, --help Show this help message
Recording an IR command from the command line
To record an IR command from the command line, run irtool with the --receive option and then press the button on your remote that you'd like to record.
This will make irtool listen for and print the raw IR timings of that button press. Example:
$ /Applications/Remote\ Buddy.app/Contents/MacOS/irtool --receive 918,814,1801,810,919,810,919,810,920,810,919,810,915,814,915,810,920,810,919,810,919,810,920,1695,915,0
Sending an IR command from the command line
To send a recorded IR command from the command line, run irtool with the --send --microtimes options and add the IR timings from the recorded button press.
Using the raw IR timings from the example above, the corresponding command is:
/Applications/Remote\ Buddy.app/Contents/MacOS/irtool --send --microtimes "918,814,1801,810,919,810,919,810,920,810,919,810,915,814,915,810,920,810,919,810,919,810,920,1695,915,0"
Other options
You can also record and send IR commands via AppleScript and directly in Remote Buddy 2.