My movie playing setup involve Kodi, +OpenELEC (probably soon to be +replaced with LibreELEC) and an +Infocus IN76 video projector. My projector can be controlled via both +a infrared remote controller, and a RS-232 serial line. The vendor of +my projector, InFocus, had been +sensible enough to document the serial protocol in its user manual, so +it is easily available, and I used it some years ago to write +a +small script to control the projector. For a while now, I longed +for a setup where the projector was controlled by Kodi, for example in +such a way that when the screen saver went on, the projector was +turned off, and when the screen saver exited, the projector was turned +on again.
+ +A few days ago, with very good help from parts of my family, I +managed to find a Kodi Add-on for controlling a Epson projector, and +got in touch with its author to see if we could join forces and make a +Add-on with support for several projectors. To my pleasure, he was +positive to the idea, and we set out to add InFocus support to his +add-on, and make the add-on suitable for the official Kodi add-on +repository.
+ +The Add-on is now working (for me, at least), with a few minor +adjustments. The most important change I do relative to the master +branch in the github repository is embedding the +pyserial module in +the add-on. The long term solution is to make a "script" type +pyserial module for Kodi, that can be pulled in as a dependency in +Kodi. But until that in place, I embed it.
+ +The add-on can be configured to turn on the projector when Kodi +starts, off when Kodi stops as well as turn the projector off when the +screensaver start and on when the screesaver stops. It can also be +told to set the projector source when turning on the projector. + +
If this sound interesting to you, check out +the +project github repository. Perhaps you can send patches to +support your projector too? As soon as we find time to wrap up the +latest changes, it should be available for easy installation using any +Kodi instance.
+ +For future improvements, I would like to add projector model +detection and the ability to adjust the brightness level of the +projector from within Kodi. We also need to figure out how to handle +the cooling period of the projector. My projector refuses to turn on +for 60 seconds after it was turned off. This is not handled well by +the add-on at the moment.
+ +As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
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