HouseBot

i suspect this might not be possible. But is there a way to get one of my devices, which I control through IR, to tell me if it's on or not? For example, i'd love to have my software remote have an indicator light that shows the Cable box is actually on. The light would then turn off if the box is off.



I can do this right now by just sending different values for the same property but if I were to ever turn the box on with the real remote the whole process could be out of sinc. Does that make sense?

I dont believe this is possible if you are using a 'real' remote. The only way this could happen if there were some device which polled the cable box's on/off state. If you use discrete on and off commands the indicator light can only be messed up for 1 button press.

IR is tough because it's one-way. If you had an RS232 interface, you could poll for status and know whether it is on or off.



You could use something like thiswith an X10 HouseBot Interface to know the power state. It's supposed to send X10 commands when the power state changes, but I've never used one.