Turn TV off when Screensaver Starts?

[spazlon]

Is it possible to use LIRC to blast an IR command when the screensaver starts, then blast another when the screensaver stops? Basically I want the TV to automatically turn on and off, but I'm not sure if there is a way to have cron check once a minute to see if the screensaver is running.

Anybody know of a way?

[mad_ady]

Checking wether the screensaver is on and off is easy. How do you plan on sending a IR signal? Using the IR receiver on the WDTV? That won't work. And you can't send the IR from the remote because there's no way to control the actual remote from the wdtv (works only one way).

[spazlon]

Can't I use a USB iR blaster of some sort? Right now I am using something like this (http://www.amazon.com/HP-Infrared-Receiver-Center-5188-1667/dp/B000Z7XJME/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1323276260&sr=8-17) on Windows to blast the signals, but if this doesn't work on WDTV or LIRC, I would purchase one that does (if there is an IR blaster that works with WDLXTV/LIRC).

Admittedly, I don't know much about LIRC, but having messed with it briefly it seems like it should be able to do what I want as long as the hardware support exists.

Thanks!

[mad_ady]

If you could get a driver to support it, then it might work on the wdtv. To identify the driver it uses, try it first on a linux system (e.g. Ubuntu live cd). See if you can get it to work. Most likely it will create a serial port (/dev/ttyUSB*) that is used by LIRC to send the signals.

Get the setup working on a full-blown linux distro and then try to port it to the wdtv. You can check which driver is registered for it by running dmesg | tail after plugging in the device into the PC's USB port. Then you need to find out if that driver is already compiled for the wdtv. If not, you'd need to cross-compile it.

[recliq]

You probably need to compile LIRC with the respecting driver for this to work.
I compiled LIRC and I'm using it with a X10 RF remote.

I remember when I was messing around with LIRC that there was an issue with compiling the serial drivers and I gave up on it because my X10 was running.

But it's been quite some time since I did this.

[leetwanker]

Nobody ever got anything like this working? I think it'd be a really cool option to have.