System :: infrared beam support?



I was wondering if it is possible to get the infrared working with DSL on a Dell laptop? It's a Lattitude C610. I have a need to be able to use it to beam some info to a pda device I have lost the PC serial data cable for :(.

Thanks and if this is the wrong place for this post please move an I appologize.
You need two things - the modules, and the utilities.
Most laptops have an IrDA chip made by SMC or NSC.  DSL already has the driver modules for these (smc-ircc.o & nsc-ircc.o)
So first you need to load and configure your module ... this can be somewhat complex.  There is a good howto here -
http://tuxmobil.org/Infrared-HOWTO/Infrared-HOWTO.html

Your IrDA device is seen as a serial device (usually /dev/ttyS2 on a laptop), and a common problem is that your system may see it at the wrong IRQ.  You would need the "setserial" utility to correct this.

Now you need irda-utils from http://irda.sourceforge.net/
These utilities will start the IrDA service, and other applications (like JPilot) should then be able to interact with /dev/irda0 or /dev/ircomm0.

original here.