Remote TV on/off sensing

[english_1969]

Hi,

I am slowly installing a home-grown crestron system for whole-house A/V control. So far, so good. The one problem I've not solved yet is how to reliably sense the on/off status of the various wall-mounted flat panel TVs.

I don't really have a good way to sense the current using a large, plug-based current sensor as the TV is wall mounted and the AC is not home-runned (except for one). Which, BTW, I highly recommend in retrospect.

Ideally, I'd like to get a contact closure output to feed my crestron controller.

I do have a free CAT5 from the TV location back to the control room. I was also wondering if someone had any experience with using some form of wireless for this. The TVs I own, except for one, do not have serial. I could do video sense, but I'm not seeing that any of the TVs have any form of video out.

I've the McSharry (sp?) how-to guide for building this using one-wire, but I'm not quite skilled enough to translate this into something I could outside of a one-wire setup.

Any creative thoughts on this?

Thanks,
W

 

[english_1969]

Well, maybe this answered my question:

http://www.james.lipsit.com/tvsensor.htm

 

[AceCannon]

I am going to have the same problem when I get started on my home automation project here in a few weeks (or months). Solutions I have identified are:

1. serial control
2. discreet IR commands - if your TV's have these (which are often not documented in the user manual), you can just send a POWER OFF command regardless of the monitor's current state.
3. current sensing devices
4. some have described monitoring the "power-on status LED" on the front of the TV with a photoresister.

Please keep us informed of your progress and what route you decide to take.

 

[english_1969]

I am going to try the solution in the link above and I'll let you know how that goes.

I am ordering an LED/light sensor from a local dealer from ELAN home systems. I willl probably have to hack it a little to get it to work.

The whole notion of not having discreet on/off IR codes alway makes me frustrated with equipment makes.

W