Advice on turning non-smart TVs on and off, automatically

Hardware
1

Hi there.

I am having a bit of a problem that I cannot quite solve.

I have three TVs (non-smart) that each have a Firestick attached.

We seem to have a bit of an issue whereby, after five minutes, the Firesticks turn the screen black and then nobody realises that the TV is left on for hours.

I am trying to find a way that the Firestick can turn the TV off, rather than make the screen go black.

My initial thought would be a smart switch on the TV’s socket but I am not sure it is particularly good for a TV to be turned off that way.

2

I (think) it should be fine to use a smartplug, if you can fit it of course. Or use a smartsocket.

You could also use a IR receiver (like those tuya/moes ones or the rf broadcom (no experience with those), get a remote that works in the app, get a button for on/off and put that as a scene in HA.

1 Like
3

Pretty sure that will connect to a firestick…

Use that to turn the fire stick off, once the firestick is off the TV should turn off due to lack of source after a few minutes…

1 Like
4

Great - thanks for that.

The IR receiver idea is really interesting, combined with the Android TV integration - i.e. if HA can tell that the Firestick that it has been idle for, say, 5 minutes, it can then send a signal on the IR receiver to turn the TV off.

Then, when HA receives anything but idle from the Firestick, it can then turn the TV back on.

Annoyingly, none of the TVs appear to turn off if they have no source - which is really odd.

One quick issue, though, with IR - as the same signal is used to switch between on and off (as opposed) to a separate signal for each, is there a possibility for a circumstance whereby the opposite starts to happen if someone turns off the TV manually? If that were the case, might I need some way for HA to sense whether the TV were on already?

5

Does your fire remote turn off the TV (using HDMI CEC) ?

If so, the Android integration in HA will generate a media player entity and it will have a power button

6

Without discreet codes, yes that is possible.

We use chromecasts in our household. I use ir to power on the TV and androidtv to turn off the smart TV that doesn’t have CEC. But i found a discreet On for that TV, no discreet off.

Dumb TV… Makes it abit harder… Power monitoring smart plug, to supply power usage might help.

1 Like
7

I ordered one of these to control my sons TV.
The plan is to use the IR transmitter to send the power button, and I will use one of the available GPIOs to read the voltage of the USB port of the TV to see what state the TV is in.
That way I can use this as a condition to not send power off if the TV is off already.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001666471902.html

Too bad the shipping is a swimming drunk donkey

2 Likes
8

Never knew they existed, I’m currently using a Broadlink RM4 to control an KVM and its really unreliable, think I’ll try one of those, thanks

1 Like
9

Sorry - should have also said that, further to Holdestmade’s comment, none of the TVs have CEC either (rubbish, I know).

10

I know. They look great, there are some reviews saying it works with ESP-Home (hopefully not fake).
I have high hopes on this.

Hopefully it will have a few more pins so that I can setup a lightstrip to get his attention when it’s dinner time.

1 Like
11

Yup, i check if my tv is online before i do that :wink:

1 Like
12

That looks brilliant - seems to be exactly the thing I am after.

The key thing does seem to be sensing whether the TV is on already or not.

A Zigbee power monitoring switch might also be an option - though could get quite pricy.

I also seem to remember seeing a sensor that actually clips to the outside of a wire and that senses whether a high current is passing or not.

13

Doesn’t the TV have a USB port?

1 Like
14

Yes - all three do.

15

That is all you need (if the USB port is also turned off).

All you need to do is set up a voltage divider to bring down the 5 volt to 3.3 volt and hook it to an GPIO.

1 Like
16

Sorry bear with me - am a bit new to all this:

  1. How do you connect the device to your HA Server?
  2. How do you power the device itself?
17

Wireless via wifi.
The device should be flashed with ESP-Home which gives excellent control.

From an old phone charger or other USB port that is always on.

But I have not got my device yet, but I’m very confident it will work

1 Like
18

Hmm this looks interesting. Do you have an existing ESPhome template for this already? I don’t see where the USB port is on this thing? Does it go from thisdevice->subpart to tv->subport ?

1 Like
19

There is no USB port.
You program it using the pins at the top with an FTDI adapter:

image

image

Then to hook it up to the TV:

image
image818×464 3.73 KB

(GPIO pin on this image is one of the solder pads you see on the backside of the board lin two rows)

Make sure the FTDI adapter you get can do both 5 volt and 3.3.
Look at the reviews, because sometimes the descriptions are not correct.

2 Likes
20

I used to use the USB sensing on an old TV but when I replaced it, the new one’s USB is on all the time, even when the TV is on standby. I use a cheap wifi plug (Athom) running ESPhome to determine if it is on.

Other countries are available too

1 Like