linux-enable-ir-emitter

Provides support for infrared cameras that are not directly enabled out-of-the box (at the very least, the kernel must recognise your infrared camera). The purpose of this repository is to activate the emitter when the infrared camera is called.

linux-enable-ir-emitter can automatically generate a lightweight driver (located in user space) for almost any (UVC) infrared emitter.

This tool was created to use Howdy, a Windows Hello for linux.

Installation

Directly refer to the manual buid section if you have an ARM architecture or your boot service manager is not Systemd but OpenRC. Stay here if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Distributions repository and package are no longer officialy supported here. For more information, please read this post.

Download the latest linux-enable-ir-emitter-x.x.x.tar.gz archive here, then execute:

sudo tar -C / --no-same-owner -h -xzf linux-enable-ir-emitter-*.tar.gz

If you are under Fedora or any system with SELinux, also execute:

semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t /usr/lib/linux-enable-ir-emitter/bin/execute-driver
semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t /usr/lib/linux-enable-ir-emitter/bin/driver-generator
restorecon -v /usr/lib64/linux-enable-ir-emitter/bin/*

It can be uninstalled by executing:

sudo rm -r /usr/lib64/linux-enable-ir-emitter
sudo rm -r /etc/linux-enable-ir-emitter
sudo rm /usr/bin/linux-enable-ir-emitter
sudo rm /usr/lib/systemd/system/linux-enable-ir-emitter.service
sudo rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/99-linux-enable-ir-emitter.rules
sudo rm /usr/share/bash-completition/completitions/linux-enable-ir-emitter

Manual build :

The following tools are needed (see wiki for further specification) : meson, cmake

Clone the git:

git clone https://github.com/EmixamPP/linux-enable-ir-emitter.git
cd linux-enable-ir-emitter

Download a tiny version of opencv that will be statically linked. If you are on ARM plateform, you have to build it yourself by executing the script here. This is not required, you can use the shared opencv library of your distro. But it is recommanded in order to do not have issues after distro updates:

curl -L https://github.com/EmixamPP/opencv-tiny/raw/main/opencv-4.7.0.tar.xz | tar -xJ
sed -i "3s@prefix=@&${PWD}/@" opencv-4.7.0/lib64/pkgconfig/opencv4.pc 

Build linux-enable-ir-emitter (remove --pkg-config-path... if you skipped the previous step, or change the path by opencv-*/build/install_dir/lib*/pkgconfig if you built it yourself):

meson setup build --pkg-config-path opencv-4.7.0/lib64/pkgconfig

Only if you do not have Systemd but OpenRC:

meson configure build -Dboot_service=openrc

Install linux-enable-ir-emitter:

sudo meson install -C build

If you are under Fedora or any system with SELinux, also execute:

semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t /usr/lib/linux-enable-ir-emitter/bin/execute-driver
semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t /usr/lib/linux-enable-ir-emitter/bin/driver-generator
restorecon -v /usr/lib64/linux-enable-ir-emitter/bin/*

You can uninstall the software by executing sudo ninja uninstall -C build.

How to enable your infrared emitter ?

1. Ensure to not use the camera during the execution.
2. Be patient, do not kill the process, and whatever the reason. (Unless the execution is stuck for more than 10 minutes.)
3. Execute sudo linux-enable-ir-emitter configure.
   • You can specify your infrared camera with the option -d, by default it is -d /dev/video2.
   • If you have many emitters on the camera, specify it using the option -e. E.g. -e 2 if you have 2 emitters.
4. Answer to the asked questions.
5. Sometimes, it can request you to shut down, then boot and retry ($\neq$ reboot)

If you like the project, do not hesitate to star the repository to support me, thank you !

Please consult the wiki before opening an issue.

The software supports the configuration of multiple devices, execute the configure command and specify each time which device to configure.