How to use triggers to monitor power status of a SetTopBox

Forum Devices
1

Dear Community,

I thought I’d share a solution I recently managed to implement which allows me to monitor the power status of an IR-controlled SetTopBox (Telekom MR-300).

Due to the nature of IR, there’s no way to get feedback from the device regarding its actual power state. And in my case, the SetTopBox only supports POWER TOGGLE and does not allow for discrete POWER ON and POWER OFF commands.

While SimpleControl can track the power state of a device which it controls and turns on and off, this obviously can run out of sync if the respective device’s power state is altered by some other external event. This is typically the case when SimpleControl is not the only remote being used or just someone physically turning of the device. This can result in SimpleControl executing a POWER TOGGLE command which turns the device off instead of on if the device is actually already on.
To get around this, I use a Global Cache iTach IP2IR device with the GC-SV1 Video Out Sensor connected to the SetTopBox and a SimpleControl Trigger that monitors the state of the Video Sensor. This Trigger then activates/deactivates a Toggle Activity which reflects the power state of my SetTopBox. I then use conditional command execution on the Start and Stop actions of a Remote to conditionally execute the POWER TOGGLE command for the SetTopBox depending on the actual power state of the device. Works just perfectly.

This setup can actually be used to monitor any kind of device that does not provide discrete .POWER STATUS feedback, optionally using the GC-SP1 AC/DC Voltage Sensor.
If anyone is interested in more details about the configuration, I’m happy to share.

Cheers
Alexander

2

I’d love to see exactly how you did this with the GC sensors. I looked at GC and I’m somewhat confused about what is needed and this cross over cable nonsense they describe.

3

Hi dgeffs254,

yes, the cross over cable stuff is a bit annoying.

But here’s how it works:

The GC iTach IP2IR device has three inputs which can be configured individually, either as IR-OUT, SENSOR-IN, SENSOR-NOTIFY or IR-BLASTER.
I have one of the inputs set to SENSOR-IN and have Video Sensor Cable connected to it. The Video Sensor cable is connected to the Video-Out (Composite) signal of the SetTopBox.
Due to some internal design alterations, GC requires you to use a cross-over cable or simply swapping the wires from the tip and the ring. Since I could find an appropriate pre-built crossover-cable anywhere, I did this myself by cutting the wires apart and attaching a new Stereo jack with the cables swapped. Not nice, but it works.

Hope this help!
Cheers
Alexander