Use your Raspberry Pi to enable CEC Control of your Virgin Tivo box (i.e. control of Virgin box via TV remote). (c) Copyright 2015-2021 Amos Storkey, licenced under GPL2.
Updated to use libcec4 (virgintivocec-master - virgintivocec1 is the libcec3 version).
For more background see https://github.com/mkulke/cecanyway
- Virgin Tivo Box or V6 box and an always-on Raspberry Pi, Pi2 or Pi3 (Pi4 not tested) running OSMC (other OS may well work but are untested). On a V6 virgin tivo box, go to Help and Settings->Settings->Devices->Network Remote Control, and turn to "Allow".
Also, not related to virgintivocec, but it is common to have problems piping the V6 via a receiver to a TV, due to an HDCP handshake issue in the V6. The V6 is HDCP2.2. If something on your pipeline is just HDCP1, and you are losing picture, you are likely to need to add an HDCP1 (not HDCP2) rated HDMI splitter into the pipe directly after the virgin box. These cost about a tenner.
Pulse Eight USB-CEC Adapter at 30 quid. About the same as you'd save on a cheapo programmable remote.
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Network connection to tivo box and Pi.
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TV. I have set this up for a Samsung Telly. CEC is not as standard as it ought to be so you might have to hack some codes for other TVs. Note the (or my) Samsung remote does not have both a fast forward and a skip. I find the skip more useful, so have set the FF/RW buttons to do skip forward/back.
Case 1) You use an osmc pi but have a virgin tivo box. But virgin is not CEC compatible and so your osmc is constantly grabbing attention from it when you turn on the TV, which is a real pain. This adds a CEC capability to the TIVO so this no longer happens.
Case 2) You want to control the virgin box using the TV remote. But you can't, because virgin were cheapskates and didn't include any CEC hardware on their tivo box. So you're stuffed...
except...
If you have a Pi kicking around and are willing to spend out on the Pulse Eight box, we can do the following:
TV receives remote signal. Pumps signal to Pulse Eight box, which sends it via USB to PI which decodes that input to port control signals for the tivo and sends it to the tivo over the network, which then responds to the keypress.
Note this happens quick and seamlessly: you won't notice it is any different from the virgin box being CEC controlled.
This code is the worst piece of hacky code ever. But it does achieve this goal (though no promises are made), and it works without any significant problems. I just don't have time to understand all the ins and outs of libCEC, or write proper general purpose code. After all controlling my tivo box via CEC is only worth so much, and I do actually have a life, so I am afraid hacking this together was as good as it was going to get. But I suspect it will still be useful to one or two ther people out there, so up it goes.
This assumes you are using osmc stable release (currently a version later than November 2015), which contains libcec separation. Other versions may require edits for other versions of libcec.
Sometimes if you reboot the pi, the virign box no longer provides a telly signal. It provides the menu items just no picture. Putting the virgin box into standby and out returns life to normality. I assume this is a problem wrt to some hdcp (yuck) handshake issue. Note the assumption is that you will be leaving the pi always-on. If you are worried about the minsicule half a watt the pi consumes destroying the planet, then you wouldn't be running a virgin tivo... There may be ways around this, but it is not on my task list.
Again, on the reboot of the Pi, I used to notice it turn the receiver off when it shouldn't after the first selection of Kodi. Turning the receiver on manually fixes this permanently until the next pi reboot. I could never see why this was (it was dependent on libCEC version). I haven't had this for years so it seems it all fixed itself with a libCEC update somehow. Even if it is an issue, a once in a moon button press is probably not beyond even the most lethargic couch potato.
Neither of these issues have been continuing issues for me since I upgraded to a V6 box.
Ensure the pi/pi2/pi3, and virgin box are networked and the virgin box is on a fixed or reserved IP address, and you know it (the IP address that is).
Add the Pulse eight box into the hdmi line from the virgin box to wherever it goes to (TV, receiver whatever)
Plug the USB from the Pulse Eight box into a USB port on your raspberry pi, pi2 or pi3.
Install osmc onto your Pi: https://osmc.tv/. Ensure ssh is enabled (it is by default - default username osmc, password osmc). Check the IP address in settings->system info in Kodi on the osmc.
ssh into the Pi at the given IP address (ssh [email protected]).
Do
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install libcec4
Make a directory (e.g. git), cd into it and do
git clone https://github.com/amosstorkey/virgintivocec.git
Cd back out. Make another directory (e.g. src), cd into it and copy across virgintivocec. E.g.
cp -r ../git/virgintivocec/virgintivocec-master .
Then cd into it:
cd virgintivocec-master
Now you will need to go into your router and find the IP address for the virgin box. You should make sure it is on an allocated IP address so that it doesn't change.
Hard edit the IP address for the virgin box in main.cpp (default is 192.168.0.16 - told you it was hacky).
Hard edit what you want your virgin box to be labelled as in main.cpp (default is "Virgin Tivo")
Hard edit the CEC address for the Virgin Box (default HDMI port one on the receiver connected to the hdmi port one on the TV. I.e. Physical address 1100. See https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/HDMI-CEC for a bit more description on this.).
Do you use/enable kodi on the pi? Probably. If so go in to kodi, settings->input devices->peripherals and you will now see two cec controllers. Disable the one corresponding to the Pulse Eight box (how do you know which? I used trial and error, but it is probably the one with a long firmware version).
Finally we compile and install virgintivocec.
You might want to to ensure you have done a system upgrade first, but this is not entirely necessary.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
To install, do:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install make g++
make
sudo make install
sudo update-rc.d virgintivocec defaults
sudo service virgintivocec start
If you have a V6, don't forget to set (on the V6 box) Settings->Settings->Devices->Network Remote Control to "Allow".
All being well that should kick off the virgintivocec service. A reboot of the pi/pi2/pi3 and you should be away.
The code is a rehack from cecanyway, licenced under GPL2. (C) 2013 Magnus Kulke.
I've built this originally for OSMC on a Pi2. Now (April 2016) testing for OSMC on a Pi3. Your mileage may vary for other platforms.
I am now (from May 2018) testing on a Virgin V6 box. There have been no problems with getting this working for V6.
Thanks also to Adrian Callaghan for http://adriancallaghan.co.uk/remote-controlling-tivo
Tested and works on OSMC November 2015 build through to February 2022 build.