Automating an Android TV driven projector (turn on, play something specific, etc)

by jh20001

I am wondering if anyone has successfully automated a projector driven by Android TV (I am using 10.0). I am looking to be able to turn the projector on at a certain time and have it start playing a specific file off a USB drive plugged in. Then to turn off at a certain time. Rinse and repeat.

To make sense of it, it is for Halloween and I am looking to play a series of clips I combined into a single MPEG formatted file.

I have multiple automation platforms I can control things with, including Vera/Ezlo hubs (Z-Wave/Zigbee/Lua script for everything else on Wi-Fi), Home Assistant, Alexa, and Google Assistant.

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Any thought? :)

brianunfried

I don't believe turning the projector off would work. I have two projectors and it takes around 30 seconds for the lamp to warm up. When I was a projectionist at a movie theater, the projectors have a "Gate" to turn off the screen, it's just a metal plate that drops down in from of the lamp.

kilters

Home assistant and node red can do this. Either via android adb commands or with a Logitech harmony hub. Overkill if it's just the projector you want to automate though.

itscurt

Look into harmony hub or r/homeautomation

jh20001

I may end of trying to see if the right commands can be sent from Home Assistant to open/play content from a USB drive using Android ADB commands. I'd have to intially turn the projector on via another method though as the remote is Bluetooth. I'm sure I can turn it back off via Android ADB commands. Or maybe even find ADB options to trigger sleep vs full power off states.

If all else fails, I'll have to use a normal non-Android projector (dumb projector), trigger it via IR for on off and have a small raspberry pi connected via HDMI that is running the video content 24/7 so the loop is always going. It isn't the cleanest way but it should still save a little energy.

Gongui

Did you check the projector's settings? It should have options to turn on automatically when it detects signal and turn off after a few minutes of inactivity.

  • If you are using a raspberry, probably just disabling/enabling the HDMI output with tvservice would work.
  • Using an Android tv device, you only need to tell Google Assistant To turn it on/off.

You could also control the projector using an universal IR remote like the broadlink rm4 mini and then connect it to Google Assistant.