Enable auto screen off (Device Operation Time) for non CEC enabled projectors or TVs

Feature Requests
1

So you know how some of your customers (like yours truly) have TVs or projectors without CEC? We are basically hosed when it comes to using Zoom rooms because our projectors stay on all the time and that causes all the projector bulbs to blow up (literally).

Here is the thing though; almost all TVs and projectors already have functionality built in to turn off after x amount of time.

Here here is what you cloud do (please):

  • Everyone with a non CEC device (or anyone too cheap to buy a Pulse 8 USB-CEC adapter) will set their computer to auto shutoff their computer screen every 5 minutes.
  • The user will enable Device Operation Time and set hours.
  • IMPORTANT FEATURE REQUEST - Zoom builds functionality to simulate a key press (something unimportant like F15) every minute (something like this http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/ or https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/). This would prevent the screen from timing out during operation hours.
  • After operation hours, Zoom would no longer simulate a key press and the screen would turn off in 5 minutes. The TV or projector would auto-shutoff shortly after that.

The only non-perfect thing about this is that you would still have to manually turn on the projector or TV every morning for the first Zoom meeting. Not ideal, but more ideal than exploding projector bulbs in my opinion.

1 Like
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Hi @mckay,

That’s a wonderful suggestion for non CEC projectors :grinning: ! We’ll pass this on to our Engineers who work on Zoom Rooms so that they can take a look to determine how fast can this idea can be developed and released.

Thanks

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Thanks for your quick response Michael!

Just for further background: We have asked people to turn off projectors when they are done, but of course that never happens. We have already have two bulbs go out. Turning off projectors at the end of the day should at least double the life of the bulbs. Everyone here is loving Zoom and it would be fantastic to have a solution that could at least help turn off the projectors.

Thanks again!

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4

Looks like a new feature came up to simply blank(black) the screen. This might save some electricity on a TV but does not really do anything for a projector.

I wonder if this feature is related to this feature request or not. Does Zoom have any sort of roadmap for features? I am curious if my feature request will be fully implemented or not and how. Thanks.