[mythtv-users] How turn on / off external box

[Joseph Fry]

>
> > If you only have IR it will be tricky but you could try and write a
> > script that checks the success of the HD-PVR and then tries to
>
>    I don't see how you could do that really.
>
>    With a USB cable (or firewire) there's some means to query the box to
> make sure it's in the state you want it to be. There really isn't an option
> to do this with IR. The communications is only in one direction. You just
> have to throw singals out there and hope they work.
>
> > toggle the power. I recall someone on the list doing something like
> > this. If you have some discrete outputs from the box that only
> > activate when the box is on that might be easier.
>
As he said after your comment.... "if you have some discrete outputs from
the box...".

For example, one might be able to determine if the box is on by analyzing
the video, or perhaps through some unrelated output that only has a signal
when the box is on, such as polling a serial port.

I have considered creating a USB device that you'd plug your device into
like a kill-a-watt; but instead you would set an "on" threshold and you
could poll the status of the device via the USB port.  If the device is
drawing more than the threshold you could assume it was on.  Handy for
things like this, and other home automation tasks.  Couldn't be too
expensive to develop?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20100802/157481ce/attachment.htm>