{HowTo} turn on/off your monitor (Time based, PIR/Button, App)

richland007

@cruunnerr Hey there great tutorial,
I want to use the cronjob to turn on and off the mirror at certain times of the day.
My monitor is a DVI monitor so it is connected digitally with a cable that on one end is HDMI that sticks in the Rpi and the other end is a DVI connector that goes in the monitor.
When i try the commands you have mentioned;

sudo tvservice -o to turn off
sudo tvservice -p to turn on

vcgencmd display_power 0 to turn off
vcgencmd display_power 1 to turn on

Both commands for OFF turn off the display however none of the ON commands work right …it does not come on fully!!!
Meaning that it is On just no picture… it says DVI = Active VGA - No Signal and the Rpi is working there is just no picture …and no there is no Power Saving feature, i don’t think, because the back light of the LCD i can see is on after the ON command.
I send the On and Off commands through Putty ssh but i am also logged in with VNC and the moment you click reboot from VNC (there is nothing on the screen just dark with On LCD back light) the picture comes immediately back on and reboot carries on as usual and the picture is back on!!
So i think the Rpi HDMI signal is at fault and not the monitor feature but i may be wrong …what do you think may man??

Thank you in advance
Denis

p.s I read all 11 pages of this thread form the begging to the end with the hopes of finding a solution before bothering you LOL :)

teitlebot

@cruunnerr @Maros
Thanks to you guys I finally got it working although for me I needed to use crontab -e because if I edit the ect/ file it doenst work. Also I had to make the two changes @Maros had to make. I changed the pkill to kill and removed the /usr directory. I wish I understood more of what I was doing but it works now. Next question
I would also like to remove a specific module that I have called mmm facial recognition during certain hours. Would this be possible?

richland007

@cruunnerr Hey there buddy i know everyone is busy with the holidays coming up and i don’t want to bother you much but in regard to my predicament 2 posts above do you think if i add a cron job to restart the pi at the time i want the screen to be on will be a solution?? And how would i go about adding a restart as a cron job everyday in the morning at 7:30 am for example?/
Thank you
D

cruunnerr

Hey dude,

sorry for not answering, but i am only rarely here :(

First i would try to edit the config file:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

try to uncomment “hdmi_force_hotplug=1” and try to uncomment “config_hdmi_boost=4”

maybe play around with some other settings.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/video.md

Rebooting the pi once a day is not the best solution :/
But however, if necessary:
http://www.simsalabim-solutions.net/vademecum/raspberry_pi/setting_up_reboot_cron_job_on_pi

Rec3ptor

@cruunnerr Thanks for the reply, apreciate it. I now have a 5050 LED strip wired up with the mosfets.
working with the pir script (removed the module as you advised others)

what method did you use to run pigpiod deamon on startup. i added this in my crontab, guess that will do unless theres a better way.
@reboot /usr/local/bin/pigpiod

cruunnerr

@Rec3ptor

If u followed the guide i posted, your PIGPIOD installation path should be “/usr/local/bin/pigpiod”

For autostart when booting u must edit the rc.local. Mine is like this:

pi@MagicMirror:~ $ cat /etc/rc.local
#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

# Print the IP address
_IP=$(hostname -I) || true
if [ "$_IP" ]; then
  printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP"
fi

iwconfig wlan0 power off &

sleep 5 &

/usr/local/bin/pigpiod

sleep 10 &

/usr/bin/python /home/pi/pir.py &

exit 0

So enter this via ssh:

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

and just put this into the file:

/usr/local/bin/pigpiod

Mykle1

@cruunnerr

My nickname for you:

King Cron

:thumbsup:

teitlebot

@richland007 This wont be helpful but I will say I had a similar problem a few months back but now it works. Must be some configuration that changed in the mean time on my pi but I dont know what.

bolish

Hello there,

I’m currently planning my project and will integrate PIR sensor + related 2.1 method through HDMI.There is one thing confusing me :

we talk about HDMI CEC in method 2.1
nevertheless, it seems the PIR Sensor module is “only” turning HDMI output off and that is triggering "issues such as “powersaving / no input”.

But is HDMI CEC not allowing us to send a “turn screen off” command to the monitor instead of disabling the rasp. HDMIoutput and relying / hoping on the monitor’s behaviour?

Sorry once more if I mssed the point, but would like to understand before moving forward.

Regards

sdetweil

@bolish said in {HowTo} turn on/off your monitor (Time based, PIR/Button, App):

But is HDMI CEC not allowing us to send a “turn screen off” command to the monitor instead of disabling the rasp. HDMIoutput and relying / hoping on the monitor’s behaviour?

as I understand it, not many monitors/tv’s provide support for external power off/on commands…

none of my TV’s used for MM support this…