Trick Question for the Gurus here... Has this been done before? please read.

[yellowbmr]

I have my equipment hidden in the closet behind the wall in my living room which can only be accessed inside the master bedroom. This will hide the cables and the living room is just clean. I am using a IR to send signals to the receiver mounted under tv, which then sends the signal to the room (via wire) and then i have 5 eyes in the closet which turns on devices on and off.

My question is, sometimes, i don't know if the receiver is on or off, cable box is on or off, plasma unit is on or off and same thing with DVD. So i have to guess which one is on and it makes it really confusing. Is there something that i can wire to the front (like LEDS) that shows the status of the units (if they are on, the LED shows on for DVD, i don't mind installing LED;s), but has there such install been done?

 

[rectifier]

Mount a videocamera in the bedroom closet focussed on the AV gear and route the video output to a big CRT monitor facing you on the sofa in the living room - it'll even heat the place a bit!

 

[JohnA]

Well...

My question is, sometimes, i don't know if the receiver is on or off,

Well you won't get Audio or video if it was off

cable box is on or off,

Should stay on all the time

plasma unit is on or off

You are watching it...right

and same thing with DVD.

No movie...no power and you have to load the DVD into the player, so you would know if it was on or off

Just messin' with ya'

In theroy you could leave everything on, with the exception of the plasma. It might get warm..but that is what fans are for and if you want to turn the Receiver off just put it on a macro with the power on/off of the plasma.

 

[jotham]

This is always a tricky problem.

The cleanest way to accomplish your goals would probably be with some of these probes and one of the boxes.

You could send a IR turn-on signal to the box and have it execute the right macros with the probes to detect what needs to be done.

http://www.smarthome.com/1622.html

 

[Karp]

Does any of your equipment have discrete on/off codes? If so, hitting the "on" button if it is already on will not turn if off, so even if you hit it multiple times you do not have to worry that you turned it off by mistake. If your receiver or preamp has discrete codes, you can probably plug in the dvd player, cable box or other low amperage devices into the switched outlets (if it has them) and use the discrete off code to turn them off.