Best practices: Save energy, power off your screens!

Hi everyone,

I’ve been playing with Xibo for a few months now. I really enjoy it and its wonderful that it stays inside the opensource community!

One of the things every Xibo user must think or consider is to switch off the screens used for Xibo Player, in order to save energy. I wonder if you would share your best practises with me. How do you switch off the monitor? Using serial communication, using the tool Nircmd or a bulky relay switch to cut the power? Or just with a static CRON job or Windows Shutdown command?

I’m very interested in Nircmd because I would like to have full control (via Xibo) and it does not need extra hardware.
Let me know!

There are many ways in which you can achieve that, all depends on your environment and preferences, we also have a topic listing some of the options here - Power ON/OFF for Xibo Players

Hi Peter,

Indeed a very good link. Thanks for sharing. CEC is indeed an additional (and good) method that I did not mention in my opening topic. Unfortunately, my Samsung SyncMaster does not support HDMI as it is too old.
It seems that Nircmd is tried by several Xibo users, but not with very much luck it seems?

As seen in these threads;

Anyone any success with Nircmd out there? I’d like to hear it.
Any other methods not mentioned in the link from Dan?

Hi Richard,
i have created an application which is used to turn display on and off by scheduling it.
My application is installed into the PC where i run Xibo.
Application has a user interface where you can schedule when to turn off and turn on the screen.
It starts with Windows startup.

It works well, have been using it for around 4 years with all kinds of Digital Signage applications.
It however does not turn the screen off same way as you unplug it. It only cuts the signal and after 15-30 seconds (depending on the screen) screen goes to standby where you save the energy and the screen.
All the screens goes to standby when there is no signal which has been enough for everyone so far.

Hi,

Yes, it definitely makes sense to cut the signal and therefore the Monitor goes into standby. Thanks for the suggestion.
In what language did you create this application? Are you willing to share it ?
I might consider something like EvenGhost (www.eventghost.org/). Most probably I can schedule (based on time) EventGhost to power on or off the signal on the DVI output.
Would be perfect if I could activate/deactivate EvenGhost via the Xibo Player

Hi Richard,
I can share my application with you if you like.

Most TV screens or professional screens have powersaving built in.

I use the build in “power on” and “power off” schedule on the TV for this to turn them on every Mon-Fri 0700 and power off at 1800