Putting individual monitors to sleep?

[noquarter]

Not really a 'gaming' question but.. I love having 3 monitors for workspace but I often only need to use 2 of them and would like to put a monitor to 'sleep' without actually hitting the power button to turn it off.

The ideal solution would be an app/script that detects whether the mouse has visited the screen within the last 10 minutes and puts it to sleep if it hasn't, then wakes up the monitor if the mouse hits the edge of the adjacent monitor.

I'd also be happy with just a hotkey I can hit to put a monitor to sleep without having to switch profiles..

So, anyone know of a way to do this?

[johnnyvd]

Not really a 'gaming' question but.. I love having 3 monitors for workspace but I often only need to use 2 of them and would like to put a monitor to 'sleep' without actually hitting the power button to turn it off.

The ideal solution would be an app/script that detects whether the mouse has visited the screen within the last 10 minutes and puts it to sleep if it hasn't, then wakes up the monitor if the mouse hits the edge of the adjacent monitor.

I'd also be happy with just a hotkey I can hit to put a monitor to sleep without having to switch profiles..

So, anyone know of a way to do this?

You can switch profiles with hotkeys!

[Freo]

I suppose it's completely possible to use the RS232 com interface if your monitor has one. Many commercial televisions come with this ability, however it seems to be rare on pc displays. If your monitors have RS232 simply write a quick application using VB's com interface to detect where the mouse is, and send the proper com signals to turn the displays on/off.

[noquarter]

You can switch profiles with hotkeys!

Yes, thanks, I do already use hotkeys for switching profiles between Extended, Eyefinity, and dual monitor and single monitor even.. bunch of different profiles w/hotkeys. I'm just looking for something more fluid that doesn't require the screen blanking and everything involved with switching profiles.

I suppose it's completely possible to use the RS232 com interface if your monitor has one. Many commercial televisions come with this ability, however it seems to be rare on pc displays. If your monitors have RS232 simply write a quick application using VB's com interface to detect where the mouse is, and send the proper com signals to turn the displays on/off.

No RS232 interface on these monitors, didn't even know it was an option. But that is what I'm looking for. I had looked into writing a quick and dirty vbscript but the only control over monitors I could find was to put them all to sleep as they aren't enumerated

[Tamlin]

Perhaps you should see what method that are used over linux? Sleep signals can be sent over DDC/CI. :)