Screen control widgets

Applies to Elementi 2015 and later.

Description

The screen control widgets can be used to send different commands to the connected screen, like power on/off the screen, mute/unmute, set a certain volume level, or select a screen input. The commands are sent via the serial connection, so a proper RS232 cable must be used.

These widgets don't display any content and are especially useful when the screen commands must be sent according to a predefined schedule; for instance, the Power.svg widget can be used to create a custom power saving schedule.

Get started

Click the "Projects" tab in the Browse panel.
Create a new Elementi project or open an existing one.
The project's main index file is opened by default. If needed, open the one that should contain the widget.
Click the "Widgets" tab in the Browse panel to find the collections of widgets included with your Elementi version/type.
Elementi 2025 X widgets
Double-click the "Screen Control" collection and find all its built-in widgets.
Select the widget that best fits how you want to present the data.
Drag that widget from the Browse panel and drop it into the Edit panel (or Preview panel).
This creates a new media layer within the opened document. Also, the built-in widget is copied into your project.
Double-click the widget's layer in the Edit panel to find its properties.
Configure the widget's properties and layout to display your data.

Widgets

Elementi software comes with several screen-control widgets accessible from "Widgets" tab within the Browse panel:

Power
It is used for turning on or off the screen, depending on the "Command" property being set to "PowerOn" or "PowerOff".

This widget might work without a serial connection, as the player uses multiple display power management mechanisms simultaneously.
Mute
It is used for muting or unmuting the sound of the screen, depending on the "Command" property being set to "MuteOn" or "MuteOff".
Volume
It is used for setting the screen volume to a certain level; expected value is between 0 and 100. The command that is triggered is "SetVolume", with the selected value passed as parameter.
Sources
It is used for selecting a certain input source of the screen, from the following choices: HDMI1, HDMI2, VGA, AV1, AV2, AV3. The command that is triggered is "SelectInput", with the selected value passed as parameter.

These widgets simply pass the specified command to the finite state machine of the player – the actual serial message must be implemented in a serial port protocol file (.fsm).

Advanced

Each screen control widget allows modifying the command to be sent or its parameters directly from Elementi GUI; the specified command is simply passed to the finite state machine of the player through the auxCmd element present inside the widget code.

The "Power" and "Mute" widgets allow setting which command to be sent. For instance, the "PowerOn" command is described like this within the Power widget:

<auxCmd command="PowerOn" target="monitor"/>

Inside the serial port protocol file, something like this would be present:

<onStart command='PowerOn' goto='start'>
    <write data='&#xAA;%c{17}&#xFF;%c{1}%c{1}%c{18}'/>
</onStart>

The "Volume" and "Sources" widgets allows setting the parameter of the fixed command ("SetVolume" or "SelectInput") they are sending. In such cases, two finite states are required within the fsm file, for instance, the following code would allow to select the HDMI1 input:

<state xml:id='start'>
  [...]
  <onStart command='SelectInput' goto='select_input_start'>
  </onStart>
</state>
<state xml:id='select_input_start'>
    <onTest var='$PARAM1' stringEqualTo='HDMI1' goto='start'>
      <write data='%c{1}&#x30;&#x41;&#x30;&#x45;&#x30;&#x41;%c{2}&#x31;&#x31;%c{3}&#x72;&#x0d;'/>
    </onTest>
</state>

The full example can be found here.

To send other screen control commands, you need to change the name of the command to be sent within the widget (either from the XML Tree view or using a text code editor) and then implement that command within the fsm protocol file.