Airtame Hub and CEC

What is CEC?

CEC stands for Consumer Electronics Control and is a feature of HDMI that allows devices to control each other. For example, a CEC-enabled device such as Airtame can automatically power a CEC-enabled screen on and off.

Please note that CEC support is available for Airtame 2 and Hub devices only.

Requirements

• The Airtame Hub device needs to be running firmware version 5.0.1 or higher.

• Ensure that CEC is enabled on your display, as it’s often disabled by default.

• Access to Airtame Cloud Plus is needed in order to benefit from the Sleep Schedule functionality

Considerations

• CEC is an industry-standard term and yet many screen manufacturers have renamed this feature, meaning CEC might be called something else on your display. For Samsung it's AnyNet+, for LG it's SIMPLINK, for Sony it's Bravia Sync/Bravia Link/HDMI control, for Philips it's Easylink, for Epson projectors it's HDMI link, etc. If you are in doubt, please check the user manual for your display.

• CEC support varies among screen manufacturers. Not all displays support CEC and some only support certain functionality. For example, some displays will revert to Airtame as the default input source, but won’t automatically power off when idle. Other displays support CEC, but only on specific HDMI ports. This should be specified within manufacturers’ display manuals.

• If the Airtame device is not plugged directly into the display via HDMI, it will not support CEC. In other words, if the Airtame device is plugged into an HDMI switch or video conferencing hardware, CEC will not work.

Use cases and benefits

• CEC used together with Sleep Schedule enables remote screen management through Airtame Cloud. You can use Sleep Schedule to automatically power displays on and off at specific times of the day or after being idle for a specific amount of time. This saves on energy consumption as well as the time and effort otherwise wasted on manually turning screens on and off within corporate and educational environments.

• When CEC is enabled, the Airtame device will turn a display on as soon as a presenter connects. The display will also revert back to Airtame as the main input source, even if someone changed it the last time the display was used. This means less hassle when starting a meeting or class, as presenters don’t have to spend time changing the input source.