[mythtv-users] amplifier power control

[Matt S.]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Shawn Rutledge
<shawn.t.rutledge at gmail.com> wrote:
> Finally, last night, several years of frustration ended with me
> finally getting useable ATSC HD video out of my MythTV box.  Complete
> with digital audio, from the cx88_alsa module, even!  After I gave up
> on the onboard ATI video for now and put an nVidia board in, it's nice
> and smooth, and the dual-core CPU is fast enough to not bother with
> XvMC.  (But I still hope the ATI drivers will get Xv support in a few
> months, and then I can go back to it, because it will take less
> power.)  I got an Apple Bluetooth keyboard to use as a remote (it will
> have other uses) and that's working fine too; as advised on some
> Gentoo page I set it up in /etc/conf.d/bluetooth to run hidd --connect
> <bdaddr> on startup, so it "just works" after the pairing has been
> done the first time.  (It would be nice to have a Myth module to
> search for and pair Bluetooth peripherals, though.  It should use the
> BlueZ v3 APIs and/or dbus to accomplish that.  hidd is supposed to be
> obsolete now.)
>
> So the next thing I'm thinking is how to make it more friendly for my
> wife to turn on the rest of the stuff to watch TV.  Well the projector
> has a serial port, so in theory I could automatically turn it on and
> off.  (What to use as the main system "power" button still needs some
> thought.  Some key combination, maybe.)  If I have audio from legacy
> components (such as the old VCR and laserdisc player) all passing
> through the computer's line in (yes that will degrade the audio
> somewhat) then there could be complete software control of the source
> switching (tell the projector to take composite input, and tell the
> sound card to pass through the line input, at the same time).  The
> sound card's mixer could be the main audio control and I could use a
> simple block amplifier rather than a receiver, so you always use the
> keyboard to adjust the volume. There could be a simple Myth module to
> select other sources and control the volume, maybe even do
> visualizations the way MythMusic does.  Another way I was thinking is
> to get a 1U stereo mixer and equalize the volumes between sources, so
> that you will always hear audio from every component without having to
> switch anything.  (Just have to turn off the ones you aren't using.)
> But again it would lead to more total system noise.
>
> Anybody know of a project to turn an amplifier on and off based on
> whether there is any audio going through the ALSA device?  It could be
> a separate app which listens to the device, and uses some sort of USB
> or parallel-port relay to turn the amp on, and then back off after 5
> minutes of silence or so.
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Most of us just use something like a harmony remote.  1-button
functionality for all of our devices.

Thanks!
Matt