RS-232 display power & source control

Problem

Commercial TVs and projectors left permanently powered burn energy and screen lifetime overnight. Leaving power control to venue staff means someone has to remember every day, and forgetting it is a common cause of a screen still black at 9am.

What we built

A protocol library and shared-variable trigger pattern for the SpinetiX player's native writeCOMPort API, sending vendor-specific hex command sequences (verified working sets for Samsung BN46 and Panasonic PT displays) for power on and off, volume, mute and HDMI-source switching. Commands fire from a shared variable that a schedule or the project's own logic sets to start, stop or a named command, with double-send-with-delay handling for slow-booting displays.

Result

Screen power and input switching run on the same schedule as the content, with no separate smart-plug and no site visit.

Links

No public link. This one runs inside a customer perimeter.

Tags

Related work

• HMP/DSOS field diagnostic toolkit A raw player diagnostic tarball read down to a ranked root cause.
• Display state reporting over RS-232 See whether the screen is on, on the right input and at the right volume, not only whether the player is up.
• Samsung display control over the network Power, input, locks and kiosk lock-down for Samsung signage displays, from one tool.