I have ambient lighting behind my TV controlled by a little Rpi running Hyperion. Only “problem” is it can only work right if the signal its receiving is the same one being sent to the TV display.
So we have two things feeding inputs signals to our TV, our firestick and our cable box.
I envision some sort of powered HDMI swithcher where I could feed both firestick and cable box input into the Rpi via this switch. And either through smart home or some other smart technology, have the switcher switch which input is being fed into the Rpi based on what input we have the TV set to.
I already have the ability thru HA to see which input the TV is set to, so I have half of it done. But i just need this mythical powered HDMI switcher. Has anyone heard of such a device of sorcery? Optimally could be controlled via wifi, zigee, zwave, bluetooth.
So something like this, but with a way internally to have those top buttons pressed to control which input is making it to the output.
Unfortunately I don’t the community has found a “works out of the box” functionality so it is definitely in the mythical status today. So you will have to home-brew something.
Option 1 (easiest): get a switcher that has an IR receiver and set up a Broadlink IR blaster that has good support in HA and control it from that. Pro’s, easy to set up and program (make sure the IR is compatible with Broadlink), Con, won’t have positive response of source directly into HA.
Option 2 (hardest): wire in an ESP32 to have it control the switches, and then also wire up the LED’s as sensors that can tell HA which source it is on. Pro, total control, positive sensing on source, may be able to program with ESPHome, fun project. Con, technically in depth, bugs will not be fun, support to help may be spotty. Look at Github for code, I know others that have tried to tackle this.
Option 3 (easiest-er?): glue a Switchbot on top of each button and have little physical switches pushing the physical switches.
I think I am going to try option 1 first. I looked into option 2, some guy did do something similar but just for enabling power to the switch, not switching. Option 3, envisioning the setup in my head made me giggle. lol
How are you getting this state? Is your TV a smart TV integrated with HA or another device? Connecting e.g. a RaspberryPI on one of the HDMI ports would give you the ability to control things via HDMI CEC. But, you may not want to do this unless one of your connected devices are already a PI.
I don’t know if you found a solution, but I tested several devices that could match for the same purpose (ambient lights), still without success to this day.
For the diy solution with a ugreen switch modified with an esp32, I experienced stability issues, the CEC signal messed with the automatic integrated switching between the channels, and I don’t know if it was because of the bad quality of the switch or an excessive heating during the soldering, but the image was sometimes blinking (I had the same problem with bad quality devices with an Hyperion ambilight diy system, now abandonned).
For the IR blaster and a HDMI switch with an IR remote, I use a broadlink mini for other commands and I am not very satisfied with stability : I often have to send the command 2 times before the device receive the command and operate the action. It is not suitable for a complex scenario for a theater mode for exemple (lower light, turn on sound system and ambilight, switch HDMI channel).
I found this device, HDMI switch controlled by IR remote, and by voice and android app over wifi :
There is a home assistant integration for the magic home app, but I don’t know if the HDMI switch can be controlled and return its state to HA.
Has anyone tested the device and integration, or a similar device ?
So I ended up using a broadlink along with an RF HDMI switcher all mounted behind my TV. Pictures attached of complete setup and then TV hiding it all.
