UPDATED: 2010/07/30, confirmed that these steps are required for 10.04 Lucid as well as 9.10 Karmic.

This is a nice little remote but unfortunately doesn’t work on Ubuntu out of the box.  Pretty easy to do though.

Before we start, here’s the specific details on the MG-IR01BK.  Make sure you’re looking at the same thing or you’re wasting your time.  Most important item is the USB ID 147a:e03e which appears on the first line.

# lsusb -v
Bus 002 Device 007: ID 147a:e03e Formosa Industrial Computing, Inc.
Device Descriptor:
bLength                18
bDescriptorType         1
bcdUSB               2.00
bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
bDeviceSubClass         0
bDeviceProtocol         0
bMaxPacketSize0         8
idVendor           0x147a Formosa Industrial Computing, Inc.
idProduct          0xe03e
bcdDevice           10.01
iManufacturer           1 Formosa21
iProduct                2 eHome Infrared Transceiver
iSerial                 3 001039EE
bNumConfigurations      1
<snip>

Depending on your configuration, you may need to ‘sudo’ all of the following commands.

Open a Console

# apt-get install lirc-modules-source

# nano -cw /usr/src/lirc-0.8.6/drivers/lirc_mceusb/lirc_mceusb.c

On or about line 208 you’ll see a bunch of ‘Formosa’ lines.  Insert the follow two lines and save/exit (CTRL+X, y):

/* Formosa Industrial Computing MG-IR01BK */
{ USB_DEVICE(VENDOR_FORMOSA, 0xe03e) },

Recompile the lirc modules:

# dpkg-reconfigure lirc-modules-source

Restart lirc:

# service lirc restart

Check and see if the device was created:

# ls -lh /dev/lirc*
crw-rw—- 1 root root 61, 0 2010-04-25 13:45 /dev/lirc0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    19 2010-04-25 13:45 /dev/lircd -> /var/run/lirc/lircd

Now just follow the normal lirc crap to get it working in the app of your choice.  Confirmed working in XBMC as a Windows Vista MCE Remote.