SageTV Energy Saver

[karnal]

All:

I've been thinking of a project to accompany my SageTV box. Specifically, when the screensaver comes on (5 mins idle?) the PC could signal (X10, relay, whatever) to turn off the TV and Receiver I have attached.

What I don't know is whether Sage (default install) could pass a signal to another application that it is in sleep/screensaver mode, and my lame searches in the forums didn't show anything.

Sometimes you just need to know what to search for, so I apologize if this has already been done... but can some sage genius point me in the right direction?

[babgvant]

I did something similar to this but using vista APIs to listen for the display to time out.

[wayner]

Is there a significant power usage when a Receiver is "off" vs. on? The reason that I put off in quotes is that I don't think receivers totally shut off, they just go to standby mode, not unlike a Sage extender, so is there a difference in power consumption between on, but not being used, and standby?

[babgvant]

My AVR (someone else's numbers I haven't measured myself):

Standby, HDMI Control OFF: Power supplied to memory circuits (0.3 watts)
Standby, HDMI Control ON: Power supplied to memory and HDMI switching (30 watts)
ON: Power to all circuits (60 - 110 watts)

[wayner]

What AVR do you have and what exactly does HDMI Control ON/OFF mean?

[babgvant]

Denon AVR1909. If it's on HDMI A/V continues to pass through the AVR to connected devices even when it's in standby.

[farfromuman]

Originally Posted by babgvant

I did something similar to this but using vista APIs to listen for the display to time out.

I would love to do this, I was thinking about using EventGhost with USB-UIRT sending the OFF command to the TV after Vista times out the video but not sure if that is possible.

babgvant how are you doing this on your setup?

[babgvant]

I'm actually using the feature to keep my server awake while the pc client is connected. I don't know anything about EventGhost, how do interact with it?

[farfromuman]

I am able to share the USB-UIRT between Sage and EventGhost. EventGhost is similar to Girder.

Just figured out how to do it using EventGhost, when the video times out in windows, EG gets "System.Idle" event message, this event would then trigger the blaster to send the "OFF" command to the TV. There are other power events like System.UnIdle, System.Suspend, System.Resume....so many other possibilities