Motion Activated Monitor Wakeup

This hardware is used to keep a computer monitor awake when there is motion in the room. The monitor displays important information for firefighter in the vehicle bay, but only needs to be on when they are getting ready to go out on a call. The solution is a simple one, a PIR sensor combines with a mouse for motion sensitive input. When the PIR sensor detects motion it causes a mouse button click via a 2N3904 transistor. Now the monitor will not waste power or have burn-in over the long term, but whenever someone is in the room it will be displaying the information that the emergency workers need to know.

[Thanks Andy]

15 thoughts on “Motion Activated Monitor Wakeup

  1. That is interesting and very clever.

    I wonder, though, if it wouldn’t be a much better idea to have the trigger be a slight one or two pixel move of the mouse rather than a middle click. Something that would move a few pixels one direction ( just over the threshold tricking the computer to stay awake ) and then right back to where it was. That would keep the screen awake and not middle-click anything. In this case I see that it doesn’t seem to matter if the middle mouse button is clicked, but in other applications it might.

    For personal use it would probably be a good idea to normalize the connection so when someone actually touches the mouse it would disable the need for the keep alive trigger and then when the mouse is let go again the PIR sensor kicks back in.

  2. ummh.. it’s a bit too dirty I think. Why don’t connect it as a mouse or keyboard and press a button/move a pixel when someone is there. 5 minutes timer after someone moved, and noone could notice a 1 pixel mouse move every 5 minutes.

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