Display control is a feature included with licensed displays that can automatically turn your display on or off according to the schedule it is assigned to allowing you to conserve electrical usage and extend the life of your hardware.
Which Media Players support HDMI-CEC?
The media players available at our partner, The Book PC do not support HDMI-CEC out of the box, but can be updated to support HDMI-CEC with this HDMI-CEC Adapter from Pulse Eight.
Does the Raspberry Pi support CEC?
Yes. The Raspberry Pi 3 natively supports CEC.
Configure Display Control using CEC.
Both your Media Player and Display need to support the HDMI-CEC in order to use it. If you are unsure whether your hardware supports CEC please refer to the manufacturer's user manuals.
Also note that the manufacturer for your hardware might use a trade name instead of HDMI-CEC. For example, Samsung refers to HDMI-CEC as Anynet+.
Display control leverages the Pulse Eight libCEC library for sending power commands to your screen. You can verify compatibility of your screen with the libCEC library here. If your Media Player is running Windows or Ubuntu, you will need to manually install the libCEC Drivers due to both OS's requiring administrative privileges in order to install.
To install the libCEC drivers on Windows, simply download and install the drivers from here. For Linux, open Terminal and enter the command sudo apt-get install cec-utils.
If your hardware is not compatible, RS232 might be an alternative option for you.
Configure Display Control for your Display
- From your display List, select the display you want to configure.
- From the display settings, select the “Configure” button next to display control to see the display control configuration.
- Update the interface= parameter to be interface=cec as shown below. The remaining parameters apply to RS232 and can be ignored.
- Click the Save button
- If this is the first time you're enabling Display Control for your display, restart your Rise Vision Player.
When you have completed the steps above, Rise Player will download the updated configuration and turn your Display on and off according to the Schedule it is assigned to.
Configure Display Control using RS232.
The steps below will show you how to configure Display Control using RS232. Please note that at this time RS232 is not supported on Raspberry Pi and 32-bit Linux. If you are using a Raspberry Pi or a 32-bit Linux device, you can use CEC instead.
Refer to the manufacturer's user manual of your Screen to confirm the appropriate serial port settings and power on/off commands. The steps below are based on the serial communication requirements of an NEC display. If your media player doesn’t have a serial port you can use a USB to serial cable.
For Media Player's running Ubuntu, Rise Player needs to be granted access to the serial ports on the Media Player. To do this, simply run Rise Player Installer on your Media Player and follow the onscreen directions.
Configure the Serial Port
You first need to configure the serial port from the operating system of your media player according to your screen.
As mentioned above, this guide is based on an NEC LCD and can verify that the settings from Communication Parameter from the NEC LCD external control documentation. The manufacture of your Screen should have similar documentation.
Test your Serial Port
Once you’ve configured your serial port test it is working by sending Power On and Power Off commands to your screen using a tool like Serial Port Monitor.
Configure Display Control for Rise Player
- From the Display Settings, select the “Configure” button next to Display Control to see the Display Control configuration.
- Update the interface= parameter to be interface=rs232. As shown below.
- Specify the serial port number the commands should be sent over with the serial-port=.
- Configure the remaining parameters that are specific to the port settings to match should match the configuration from Step 1, and according to your the manufacturer's requirements of your Screen.
- Click the Save button.
Display Control Configuration for an NEC LCD Monitor.
| interface=rs232 serial-port=3 serial-baud-rate=9600 serial-data-bits=8 serial-parity=none serial-stop-bits=1 serial-flow-control=none serial-screen-on-cmd=01 30 41 30 41 30 43 02 43 32 30 33 44 36 30 30 30 34 03 73 0D serial-screen-off-cmd=01 30 41 30 41 30 43 02 43 32 30 33 44 36 30 30 30 34 03 76 0D |
How does Display Control Turn Off my Display?
Display Control uses the Timeline set in your Schedule, or Schedule Playlist Items, to turn the Display off and on. When the Schedule is set to stop showing content, the Display will turn off at that time. When Content is scheduled to begin showing again, the Displays will turn back on.