How to turn on Multiple TVs using a raspberry Pi?

[JonKClark]

Hello,

Forgive me if this is the wrong forum, if it is let me know and I will correct that.

Here is the situation. I work for a company with a large production facility. Currently we have about 45+ TVs that have a PC connected to them to display information produced by our communications department. The problem is when there is an interruption in the content either due to the PC's getting updates and rebooting or some other loss of signal issue, the TVs turn off. This then requires our local IT team to travel the production floor(over 1.5 Mil. Sq. Ft.) and manually turn the TVs back on.

So the question is: Is there a way for a Raspberry Pi to be used with an IR transmitter to turn a TV on? If so, if we outfit all the TVs with these, how can I send the "Turn On" to all of the PI devices at once to do just that?

Thanks,
Jon

[blimpyway]

Wifi, 45 x (esp-01's + ir transmitter diodes).

And a Pi to talk to them all.

[btidey]

If each TV is fed from a PC then you could drive the local IR diode from the PC I believe lirc can drive a diode via the DTR line of a serial port.

Then either the PC locally turns the TV on when its is rebooted or you send network commands to the PC to do it from a central point.

The other thing to check is the type of tv being used. If they have a network connection then they can often be turned on via a network command rather than using IR.

[jj_0]

No Pi required if you already have a PC with each TV. You can use a USB infrared transmitter or possibly even a infrared transmitter connected to the sound out and use that in combination with WinLirc to switch on the TV.
I hope your TV's have a different 'on' and 'off' infrared command though, and not only 'on/off toggle' command.

[JohnsUPS]

If the TVs are on a network, they may respond to a wake on LAN broadcast.....

Otherwise, (as was previously mentioned) it would be perfectly feasible to configure a Pi with an IR LED connected to a GPIO pin and modulated with the "turn on" remote control code bit banged by a snippet of code. For that matter, you could configure many other codes in the event that you want to change channels, adjust the volume or whatever.