How to suspend/sleep/turn off a VGA LCD monitor

[jeangot]

Hello,

I have several MDs using standard 19'' LCD monitors (mostly inexpensive monitors from I-Inc or Hanns).

I am not able to find how to have the monitors automatically go into sleep mode after a certain time (where the monitor would not only turn black, but turn itself off until the mouse is moved).

The "seconds before power off" seems to have no effect in the admin, nor does "Leave Monitor on for OSD" (what is that for anyway)?

I'm sure I can find out how to do this the hard way by editing some linux config files, but the point is that this should be controlled by LinuxMCE so that it does not turn off when watching any video.

I can't half half a dozen monitors display photos all day long. It uses power and the life of my LCD screens.

I read somewhere that Linuxmce will turn off TVs but not regular monitors, I find that hard to believe.

Any ideas anyone?

Thank you!

Jean

[1audio]

This site has the basics  http://linuxreviews.org/howtos/power/xorg_dpms/  and this site http://webpages.charter.net/dperr/dpms.htm  explains what they mean (Typical of computer docs- only explain if you already know the answer)

I will be experimenting with it also. I agree that it should be in the Media Director page.

[Zaerc]

The problem is that powersaving is turned off when the orbiter starts.  The code to do this was moved from the binary to the shellscript that starts it a while ago, so you can uncomment that line.  The drawback is that it will likely kick in while watching a movie. 

Would be nice when lmce would do an "xset dpms force off" instead of when it would normally issue a TV-off (when using a controlled TV).  Maybe we need an "generic monitor" device template for that?

[tschak909]

Yeah, as soon as i get some stuff cleaned up on it, I will check in a Generic DPMS Monitor template, which is a GSD driven template that sends the appropriate xset commands when the DCE on and off commands are sent. I need to figure out how to make it so that the system will automatically send on and off in response to security events, sleep, etc.

[jeangot]

Hello,

In case anyone is interested for some MDs that are not used to watch movies, the line to comment is:
/usr/bin/xset -dpms s off

in /usr/pluto/bin/LaunchOrbiter.sh

Jean

[jeangot]

Hello,

just to let you know that commenting out that line has no effect.
I also tried adding:
/usr/bin/xset dpms 60 120 180
instead, and that did not work either.

Tschak, if you get around to writing such a template, will there be a way for me to add it without waiting for the next linuxmce release?

Jean

[tschak909]

Yes, you will be able to do an sqlcvs update of the dce and ir repositories to get the new template, because it is a self contained ruby driver in the database.

-Thom

[jeangot]

Thom,

thanks, it would be great if you could write in this thread whenever you got around to it (including some instructions as to what to change in the linuxmce admin) so that I can give it try. It's really annoying that all my screens are on all the time, and if I turn them off manually, it kind of defeats the purpose of using orbiters and such...

Thank you!

Jean