[mythtv-users] determining power state of firewire cable box

[Sam Logen]

Hi everyone,

I've got a motorola DCH-3200 attached to my mythtv setup via a firewire cable.  The way I've set up my boot process, it primes the firewire port before mythtv starts up.  However, if the DCH unit is powered off when the machine turns on to record, then the priming process hangs and I won't be able to enter mythtv.

I've downloaded and compiled the latest "6200ch" from svn.  I noticed that this script has the capacity to toggle the power state of the cable box.  So I modified its source to include my box's vendorid, then compiled it.  Toggling the power of the cable box with "-w" works, but all it does is toggle.

That means that if the box is on, "-w" will turn it off instead.

So if I was to set the machine to power on for a recording (and I'm not the only person to use the cable box at times), I'd still have to manually check the power state of the cable box to make sure that it powers on in accordance with my scripts, and not power off instead.

Is there a simple way to query the power state of the cable box via the firewire connection, so that if it returns a value meaning the box is off, it can power it on with the 6200ch "-w" switch?

Thanks,
Sam