WinLIRC

The WinLIRC server

To actually do something useful with the received remote control signals, you must have a program to connect to the WinLIRC server. This could involve a modification of an existing program, a plugin for a program such as Winamp, or a completely independent program that sends commands or keypresses to an existing application.

The WinLIRC server runs on TCP/IP port 8765. Up to 16 clients can be connected at any given time. Every time a signal is successfully decoded, the server will send a single line of ASCII text to all connected clients describing the button that was pressed. Lines are deliminated by a single newline character ('\n'). For example, a client might see the line:

0000000000eab154 00 play myremote

which represents a single keypress. If the button were to be held down for a period of time, the client might see:

0000000000eab154 00 play myremote
0000000000eab154 01 play myremote
0000000000eab154 02 play myremote
0000000000eab154 03 play myremote

The four fields are seperated by a single space and are as follows:

• 1st (0000000000eab154)
  The key code of the pressed button, in hex. Not very useful to most applications.
• 2nd (00)
  The repeat count, also in hex. This number will be incremented each time the signal is repeated while the button is held down.  Note that the rate at which a signal is repeated is completely dependent on the remote control.
• 3rd (play)
  The name of the button that was hit, from the configuration file. There are no spaces in the name.
• 4th (myremote)
  The name of the remote control that sent this signal, also from the configuration file. There are no spaces in the name.

Most applications will only find a use for the second and third fields.

Martin Kubik provided Visual Basic example code for connecting to WinLIRC. Assaf Rozenblatt has written a visual basic ActiveX control that makes it easy to connect to winlirc and receive data, without having to deal with the winsock layer. Dominik provided a Delphi example application.

Note on security: Yes, it's true that anybody can connect to your WinLIRC server without restriction.  I could have limited connections to localhost only, but I actually had a use where I wanted to remote control an application over the Internet, and hence the open nature of the server.  Also, note that a denial-of-service attack is very easy against the WinLIRC server, since only 16 clients can be connected at once.   If you make enough enemies that you actually have people doing this to you, then by all means, feel free to fix the problem

Copyright (C) 1999 Jim Paris <jim@jtan.com>.
Copyright (C) 2002 Scott Baily <baily@users.sourceforge.net>.
Last update: Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 08:28 PM
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