Comment by Fwirt
1 month ago
I never thought I would connect my Hisense to the internet, but it turns out that it runs an MQTT broker and responds to WoL packets, so control via Home Assistant was really easy to setup and is much better than the IR blaster I was using before as response is almost instant and I can get power state so I can sync it to the rest of my living room. Most smart TVs seem to do well behind a DNS black hole, and if you're knowledgeable enough for that then self-hosting a dnsmasq instance on an old box you have lying around and pointing the TV at it is a snap.
Most modern TVs are fully controllable via their HDMI inputs. My shield and gaming systems are perfectly capable of turning my unconnected to the Internet TV on and off.
The shield also has a HA integration.
There's no need to risk an update that puts ads on the TV.
Yep, HDMI-CEC is pretty common these days, Samsung call it Anynet+ for..reasons I guess.
Yes, but good luck finding a way to integrate CEC with Home Assistant, or anything else for that matter. Even modern GPUs don't support it. You usually have to buy a USB dongle that MITMs the connection for a disgusting amount of money. It looks like Raspberry Pis support it, but then you have an SBC and its power source dangling off of your TV just to run a single lightweight daemon that may not even fit your use case. CEC is not designed for total control, and on many TVs it's even a bit flaky. I had to disable it on mine because misbehaving devices would randomly turn the TV off and on when I didn't want it.
1 reply →