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[gfriedman]

Unfortunately the receiver in my home theater system does not power-off automatically if unused so its been left on overnight many times much to my dismay.   What I am thinking of doing is running one of the available audio outputs on the receiver to a Powerflash module so that when the TV, dvd, or radio is turned off the audio out signal on the receiver drops low enough to trigger the Powerflash to send an X10 OFF to an appliance module that the receiver plugs into.   I'm sure I'll need to fiddle with this but just wondering if anyone has experience feeding audio signals into the Powerflash.

Thks

[bitman]

Yes I have.

I send a full scale 0db (full blast line level) steady tone to one when my digital audio workstation in in record mode so as to alert the clients via an "ON AIR" light that they had better straighten up and play right. 

Anyway, I had to mod mine to make it respond to such a feeble signal as a 0db line level input. That is no where near the 6 - 9 volts the power flash is calibrated to respond to.

Here is the schematic:

http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/cc/staff/pool/homeauto/pf284.html

What I did was remove the 33k resistor you see there.
While this allowed me to drive it with line level audio, it was unstable and a 100k resistor across the screw terminals terminated the drive enough to make it stable.

For whatever reason however, I cannot get a new PSC01 style powerflash to work with this mod, but the old PF284 (brown ones) work great this way.

A problem you will have is that every time there is a quiet section of audio such as even the space between speech phrases, the power flash will go off. And that will be the end of that.

You might be able to store the audio in a big capacitor and drive the PF with that output, thereby holding up the voltage for oh, 10 minutes or so. But that would require pre buffering the drive to the cap so that it doesn't drop your desired audible audio to filtered nothingness.

Any like 1000uf cap from Rat Shack might be something to start with.


Best o' luck.

:Ron

[HA Dave]

  the receiver in my home theater system does not power-off automatically

I have a powered subwoofer, an IR re-sender (like a powermid), and a Infrared Mini-Controller (IR543) in my Home Theater I also have a neon clock. The subwoofer will shut itself off... but I think it still uses some wattage waiting and looking for a signal to power up. I put all four units on two appliance modules set to the same House/Unit code.

I then created a start-up and a shut-down macro (using AHP and the CM15A) that included the House/Unit code of the two modules. That way... If I go for a week between movies.. I am not wasting electric running devices that aren't needed. And... if the neon clock is on... I know everything isn't off.

Since I use BVC... I can setup the Theater with a voice command... and my Kate Voice tells me when its on. I could expand the setup.. similar to my garage door reminder (I guess).. to give me a voice reminder if I was to forget to shut the theater off. Or maybe just a third appliance module (on the same H/U code as the other devices) on a light upstairs.

Of course... you could just use BVC... or PC companion (both have IR abilites) to shut down your theater. Or... if you want to use the powerflash module.. you could plug BOTH the receiver and an old low-voltage AC wall-wart into an appliance module. And the wall-wart should trigger the powerflash and let you know the receiver is still on.  Lots of options.

I have a video at YouTube that shows my system/setup.