Turn on/off game console from PC

[cygnus]

Hi:
I don't know if this post goes here but I couldn't find any other topic suitable. My problem is this: I want to open an Xbox game lounge. I need to monitor/track every time a TV or an Xbox is turned on/off from a central PC. Or another approach is to somehow turn on/off the consoles from the PC and log this. All the Xboxes will be connected via ethernet to each other and to the PC. Does anybody have an idea how I could accomplish this?
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[folken]

There is probably something similar to the software used in internet cafes for tracking use times. If you have a local shop that does pay per hr lan gaming or something I'd go there and ask. They might know what software is avaliable. Though it might not be good to let them know competition is coming, lol 😉

If each xbox has it's own screen you might just want to rig a timer to the power on the screen. I've seen many lan places do that. Just have the power outlet for each monitor rigged to a timer under the cashier desk or something. That would make a fairly decent prepay system.

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[cygnus]

Thanks for the advice Folken. Any particular brand or type of timer comes to mind?

 

[folken]

I can't think of any off the top of my head but I have seen them around a lot. Putting in Timer Switch in google gave me lots of stuff. A local hardware store might even have some, check it out
Lots of them will probably be timer switches that turn something on and off in a certain timeframe. Make sure you get one that just a countdown timer and doesn't turn on again, lol.
It looks like they might have wattage limits too so make sure you get some that would be able to at least power a tv. 100-200watts should be more than enough for most tvs. If you are going to have extremely huge ones definatly get more than 200 just to be on the safe side.

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