[mythtv-users] starting amp from MythTV

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Richard Morton
<richard.e.morton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am trying to rearrange my lounge into its final arrangement now that I
> have Myth as our full time DVR.
>
> The arrangement will be to move the AV receiver into the same cupboard as
> the Myth backend/frontend, leaving just TV and speakers in the room. I
> rarely use my PS2 or PS3 so the receiver stays on the TV input most of the
> time and I simply turn it on and off and volume up and down.
>
> I want to control everything from MythTV; (at the moment through a remote /
> keyboard until another interface comes along). I am looking for the server
> to send the correct IR signal to turn the amp on and off based on position
> in Myth; if not in one of a few pages (or playback) then after a
> configurable delay, the amp should be powered down. Immediately upon
> entering one of these defined screens or in playback then the amplifier
> should be turned on (but my preference is for this to turn off the amp if
> MythMusic playback is in the background when on the main mythtv menu as this
> would make it easy for the (lazy) me to turn off the amp without bothering
> to stop playback - the server is left on all the time anyway)
>
> When using the volume up and down ( [ and ] ) the appropriate IR signal
> should be sent to the amp, and myth would not need to adjust the volume of
> the soundcard mixer - it could be useful if F10 and F11 (i think) still
> controlled the mixer volume, a further defined button would ideally also
> change the input of the AV receiver (but for the reasons I outlined above,
> this is lower priority).
>
> The button layout of the remote is that each of the functions outlined has
> its own defined button (power on and power off are not combined onto a
> single button).
>
> The screens I would want the amp on for are any of the ones where I can
> select media that would play sound, or while
>
> Any one done anything similar; attempted it, or know how where I can look
> that can help - I have skimmed LIRC and the Wiki, but nothing jumps out at
> me on how to trap the screen changes and use that to initiate LIRC without
> polling the telnet interface (messy).
>
> thanks
>

I am no expert and others may have better ideas. The menu xml files
can point to arbitrary places, so perhaps amend the menu entry for,
say, "watch recording" to activate a script that turns the amp on and
then goes to the watch recordings menu. You'd need to change quite a
few menus though...