i want a remote control with say, 10 buttons, that will send signals to a reciever i place around my computer. the driver will be used by user space app to read the different signals and do various things, such as turn up volume or skip to next track in xmms. what i dont understand is, what can i use for this? do i have to BUILD one? what port would it plug into? USB, parallel? where can i learn more about this?

I think you can use a normal remote control and an infrared reciever.
There are an option in the kernel for enabling an IrDA-interface.
Also - have a look at http://www.lirc.org/

ATI has a remote, I got one in my all-in-wonder. It plugs into a usb abd uses rf (radio frequency), it works great dont even haveto be facing the thing. I'd say you could look into making a driver for it, although it has 34 buttons and a D-pad.

Something you might be interested in,

Nick

If you want to go for a cheap solution, don't neeed wireless, and are willing to build some (easy) electronic circuit, then have a look at this page:

http://www.mattsclearpcs.com/com/com.html

It is about a 4-button solution for winamp. It uses the serial port, which is often unused these days, but 4 buttons is the maximum you can do with this.

I once started experimenting getting it to work under Linux, see my page:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~heiky/

This is by no means a plug-in for xmms (yet), but it does read the buttons from the serial port. And it also has a bug, which I know how to fix by now. I didn't have time yet to upload a fixed version. But if you interested I'll fix the bug for you (but not before next week). Just let me know.

thanks for that first link, it seems to be what i need. hko im having a look at your source, unfortunately tho this HAS to be a kernel level device driver b/c it's for a project, but thanks tho

I know next to nothing about kernel programming, but I suppose you can use the part(s) that ioctl the serial port to wait for a button to be pressed and read the button status. However the bug I mentioned is in there..