V2 Firmware is here!
Pulse-Eight is proud to announce the latest release of libCEC, version 1.6.1 is the culmination of our hard work over the last several months to implement wake-on-usb functionality to the USB-CEC Adapter, with this change, you are now able to wake (and possibly) boot your HTPC from the source menu in your TV. This now allows for the first time a full integration of your HTPC into the HDMI-CEC stack.
Along with this major update to the firmware we have also implemented a raft of new features and bug fixes
Features:
- Add support for additional user control codes (Setup Menu, Contents Menu, Favourite Menu)
- Added firmware version in XBMC’s peripherals menu and cec-client
- Respond to <Get Menu Language>
- Option to shutdown the computer when the TV is switched off
- Support more than 4 HDMI ports in a single device in XBMC peripherals menu
- Settings are now stored on the adapter so multiple applications can share the same configuration
Bug Fixes:
- XBMC Crashing when shutting down/suspending and have a CEC Adapter connected
- libCEC was always assuming it was the active source and would respond to offer messages when they were not intended for it
- Setting to not use the TV language was not being followed
To update to v2 firmware, please download the latest firmware version from
http://packages.pulse-eight.net/windows/
and install the latest version of XBMC from our website
http://packages.pulse-eight.net/
Right now our firmware updating system is only available for Windows and for Linux, we have no plans at this time for a OSX firmware updater, so please transfer your adapter to a Windows PC to perform the update.
For Linux if you have our PPA installed run (sudo apt-get install cec-firmware-upgrade)
We hope you enjoy this new feature as we now move onto our next project, Windows Media Centre support!
Filed under: CEC Adaptor, libCEC | 31 Comments
Does PulseOS update itself to support the latest firmware or do I need to reinstall that too?
If you have auto updates turned on, it will auto update itself
The firmware upgrade itself is not included in PulseOS or OpenELEC, so you’ll need a Windows or Ubuntu machine to update it.
Thank you both for quick responses.
I gathered that the firmware is not included from the original post, but thanks for pointing it out anyway
I can’t wait to get home to try it out!
I’ve noticed there is a nice flash script for updating the firmware on any Linux system – could you please provide me with a download link for the actual firmware binary itself, since I do not run Ubuntu or Windows.
Hi HC,
we only provide binary-only firmware upgrades, because the firmware that’s running on the CEC adapter is not open source (all the other software is btw, just the firmware itself isn’t). That script was used for testing earlier, and should have been removed. It could be used to flash the firmware if it were open source and publically available.
The easiest way to upgrade the firmware is to download a live CD from ubuntu.com and use that to upgrade.
Which distro are you using currently? If it’s a commonly used one, we could possibly provide a binary for it too.
I’m running Fedora, and I’ve already been fiddling around with packaging libcec as an RPM. It’s a little disappointing that Pulse-Eight seems to think that the only Linux distribution worth supporting is Ubuntu – there are actually quite a few Fedora users out there.
We support about every flavour of Linux/Unix, because we’re using autotools to build the sources, so building a binary package for any target should be fairly easy. We currently just don’t provide any binaries ourselves, because we can’t possibly do that for every distribution that’s out there.
libCEC got picked up already by various big distributions, such as Debian/Ubuntu and Gentoo, and is included in their default package repositories now. You said you were already working on creating an RPM for libCEC. We’re happy to provide support/help in doing that, so feel free to mail us or me directly with any questions about this you might have. We just don’t have any experience ourselves with creating RPM packages, but as I said, we’re using autotools and only libraries that are standard on most distributions, so it’s probably not much more than using some template for RPM packages and editing that.
Thanks for your quick reply. Configuring and compiling libcec was easy as pie, no complaints there. Packaging libcec as an RPM wasn’t much hassle either. Having to download, burn and boot Ubuntu just to upgrade the firmware seems like a lot of trouble though. I fully understand that you wish the firmware to remain closed source, but I don’t see why that is a valid reason for not distributing the compiled, binary version of it. After all, I’m guessing people who for some odd reason wants to try to reverse engineer the binary firmware could just as well download and unpack the Ubuntu deb-package.
Well, we’ve made it a bit harder than that
If you’re willing and able to maintain the Fedora package, contact us over email, and we can work on getting a (binary only) firmware upgrade package in.
Can someone point me to the linux version of the firmware updater?
See the notes, install our PPA and then run apt-get install (see above)
Hmmm, on my fedora system
I see what will work
the PPA doesn’t have packages for precise (12.04) – I know its not released yet but is it possible to be built anyway?
We won’t provide packages for unreleased software, it should work fine however to use the previous version
Will your Windows Media Center be design for Windows Embedded or the new Windows 8 RT or just for normal Windows 7 Home, etc.?
I assume that the application will still be based on XBMC PVR?
who knows, we don’t have a windows fondleslab and/or know what the development restrictions are like
Updated to v2, however although OpenELEC 2.0 Beta 1(1.95.1) [XBMC-Eden] does recognise the adapter, it does not manage to configure the adapter (error message). Pity! How can i revert back to old firmware??
You shouldn’t, switch to our builds instead of wait till the weekend when OpenELEC update their builds
Thanks for quick response! I’ll wait if it’s only a weekend since i prefer x64 builds. By the what’s the difference between OpenElec builds and the Pulse8 builds?
They should be stable, they will generally include the head version of PVR and have a few cosmetic UI enhancements and they ofcourse contain the latest CEC release
hi
I have added your ppa but get this when trying to upgrade:
root@xbmc-XS35:~# apt-get install cec-firmware-upgrade
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package cec-firmware-upgrade
OS details:
root@xbmc-XS35:~# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 11.10 – XBMCbuntu
Release: 11.10
Codename: oneiric
any suggestions?
email support@pulse-eight.com for help thanks
Links to firmware update broken,
for workaround, see forum
http://forums.pulse-eight.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3381#post3381
Hi
since I update to V2, I have a problem :
I never turn off my xbmc as it is also my home server.
When I turn off the TV, then turn it on again, it does not detect the adaptater.
It was working in V1.
Hi Mulb,
which version of libCEC are you using? The v2 firmware needs at least libCEC v.1.6.0 or it won’t initialise the adapter correctly.
We’re about to release another libCEC update, and a new revision of the v2 firmware. that fixes an issue with the wake functionality on certain systems. We’ll post here on this blog as soon as it’s been uploaded.
good, I’m waiting the new version impatiently.
I’m using libcec 1.7.2
My description was not entirely good
it does not recognize the adapter when the TV is off, xbmc asleep, and I turn on the TV.
I guess that xbmc sends a standby message to the TV after some time, and then the TV does not see xbmc/the adapter when I turn the TV on.
I just have to wake up xbmc (with constellation), then I have the message saying that the adapter is detected by xbmc, and I can use the TV remote again
Hi,
I’ve upgraded the firmware with no problems, but I’m a bit confused as to getting the rest if my PC set up. In my eyes the descriptions are a bit vague – a short blog post describing the whole setup would be much appreciated.
I would assume that what is going on is that the device is emulating a keyboard and using key presses to wake up from sleep or power off. In my motherboard doesn’t seem to wake up from power off on USB, but a write-up of the requirements would have been nice.
Br,
Martin
Hi Martin,
there’s an FAQ page that describes each of the options: http://libcec.pulse-eight.com/faq