Power status?

Hi,

Many thanks for a great plugin. I've just got a TiVo box and am having great fun integrating it into Indigo.

Is it possible to tell the power status of the TiVo box?

The "TiVo" button command seems to turn the box on if it is in standby, but if the box is already on, it brings up the "home" menu on my box.

I'd love to be able to tell whether box is powered on or in standby to decide whether or not to send the "TiVo" button command.

Cheers!

R.

Unfortunately TiVo's normal standby doesn't actually power all too much down - since it still may be recording in the background - so nothing can be determined from the plugin (at least on the Series 3 and Premier units). Some of the other-branded ones seem to have a "STANDBY" command, but not sure what it will do (and I don't know if it will tell the plugin that its current state or just able to put it in standby). Not sure the plugin will work with off-branded units, though.

If it goes all the way off you might see the isConnected state turn to False, but sometimes those connections don't even realize that they are no longer connected until something "forces" a refresh (e.g. trying to communicate).

At some point I may look further into using a different interface to augment the current functionality - but that has some issues with the version of Python that we are using and is not officially supported by TiVo for 3rd parties. The former is a major obstacle, the latter just makes it a little bit harder. Even then, I haven't ever seen a standy query, but it may be that I just didn't recognize it.

If being able to try to put it into standby is something you would want (even if can't read status) I can try issuing that STANDBY command "manually" to by box and see what happens

Adam

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your response.

I'm using a TiVo from Virgin in the UK, so I'm not sure what model it is - but it seems to be working absolutely fine so far.

Certainly all my "requests" are "nice to haves" rather than essentials There is always another way to crack the egg, so it's no major issue.

I appreciate that the standby mode is just "muting" the video and audio output in essence.

If you fancy playing with some standby commands, I'm happy to try them out on my box too

All the best,

Richard.

IIRC, the ones where I saw the standby command were from the UK, actually... I'll see about adding it in for you to try out, worst case I assume it would just get ignored / return an error which the plugin would send to the log.

Adam

Richard, I just tested sending the STANDBY instruction via the "Send IR Command" action and it does indeed work, turning off the video/audio output. It will be included in the new version of the plugin publishing here in a few minutes. (Note, I think you can send a small subset of keys to wake it up, but the TiVo button for sure works)

Adam

Hi Adam,

Great stuff - Many thanks!! I'll give it a go

I'm sure the Tivo switch will suffice for my needs to turn back on…

Cheers,

Richard.

… I can confirm that it works perfectly with my TiVo - working as a toggle as well, so I can put it into standby and wake it from standby with the same switch.

Cheers,

Richard.

Hi Adam,

In setting up my entire house now on the new homekit bridge I am looking at AV. Whilst normally I control my Tivo through the harmony remote, there are times when I Would like to control independently with Siri so am adding it to my HKB server. I have a virtual device setup with 2 action groups that send the standby command as per this thread. It works well, but I cannot trigger an update to the status variable so that Homekit knows if its off or on, and so prevent it getting stuck trying to turn on a device it thinks is on, when its not.
I am in the UK like Richard below (using the Virgin media branded Tivo) and was wondering if along with sending the stnadby command which works great, you know if there is a way to capture if the box is in standby or not?

Cheers