Home Theatre Challenge - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: ludzinc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 09:58:50 pm
content: HiA friend of mine is building a new house and asked if he can do the following with his home theatre. When pressing 'play' he wants the lights to automatically dim.Not a bad idea if you ask me.Now if this were something for myself I'd probably go with something custom, but as it's for some one else, living with a prototype and ironing out the kinks isn't an option....So I thought I'd ask the good people of the EEVBlog what would they do!Is there an X10 controller or similar that can intercept the remote commands and control the lights?Is there a series of home theatre equipment that already can do this (my google-fu tells me no, but maybe I don't know the right keywords...)?Is there some magic that RPi Media Player and a HDMI / Ethernet combination can achieve?Thanks for any tips, happy to do more leg work to investigate but am unsure of where to start...

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 10:17:36 pm
content: I doubt there's anything off the shelf as any 'pro' users would simply script their media controllers to output DMX-512 on a serial port or similar , but you should be able to get there with an off the shelf computer interface (provided its not closed source Windows only) to whatever lighting control system he intends to use and some scripting on the Pi.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 10:28:00 pm
content: The commercial level solution for what you're looking for isAMX. They have systems that can do all sorts of things, including controlling retractable screens, controlling playback, patching/routing audio and video, and on and on. If all your friend wants to do is control the room lights, though, then those sorts of systems are certainly overkill unless he has a lot of money to burn.There are lots of options for dimming the lights, from an X10 dimmer, to a DMX-controlled dimming system, to wifi-enable light bulbs, so you're more or less spoiled for choice there. There are certainly open source projects for all of those methods that will allow you to move from one preset to another at the press of a button. The trick is tying that to pressing 'play'. If playback is from a computer of some sort, then there's probably some sort of scripting solution, especially if you use one of the open source home theater setups. Personally I'd think that a simple preset panel on the wall would be the best way to go, since likely there will be times you'll want to control the lights independently of watching a movie.Actually, another solution that comes to mind would be using a Harmony remote or similar. Should be possible to set one of those up to trigger a script on a control PC to hit the lights when you hit play.

author: edpalmer42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 10:38:44 pm
content: If you have a Harmony remote and an IR controlled dimmer, all you do is teach the Harmony the dimmer commands and create an activity that does what you want. e.g. dim the lights, play the DVD.I use a PC as my PVR. With one button I turn on the TV, turn on the audio system, turn on the PC, set the audio to the correct input, set the TV to the correct input. Works great!Ed

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 10:42:08 pm
content: That will work if you press , but isn't going to bring the lights back up afterwards. It depends how close to a real cinema/theatre experiance he wants the automation to provide.

author: ludzinc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:07:31 am
content: Thanks all - I'll have a look at DMX, probably to satisfy my own curiosity, and help my buddy set up macros on a programmable remote.Simple things, are often the best!

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 11:02:18 am
content: I think it's quite feasible.Others have already suggested what devices to use and control the light.Intercepting the RC commands is the easy part and the one I can help you with. Supposing all of the RC use the standard and commong 38kHz frequency, you'll need a Vishay TSOP1738 infra-red receiver (or equivalent, but I really like the ones from Vishay) and a microcontroller like a Attiny or even an Arduino Pro Mini.Your friend will then program the Attiny in 2 parts: in the first part he'll use a sketch that'll just recognize the "Play" commands from all the remotes and note the codes. Then, in the second and final sketch, he'll hard-code the Play codes in the program so that anytime that code is sent a signal is sent to the device that controls the lights.Codes can also be used to turn the lights back on, off, and so on. I suggest you use Ken Shirriff's IRremote library, which is the oneI have also used in the past.