Tracking projector usage

Just wondering if there is any internal clock or tracker or something that allows us to check how many hours the projector has been used and is unaffected by factory resets etc. This would be pretty helpful in planning when to get a new device, would lend credibility to the brand as well as help those people who want to buy used PPMs. :slight_smile:

Would it just measure the hours with the LED:s active? It could be better than nothing, for someone buying a “lightly used” PPM, but would not tell you the full story without more information about the type of use. There might be more age-related issues in a PPM that has been shining at presentation brightness for 10000 hours in the home of a smoker, in a climate with 30+ degree temperature, vs one that has been used for the same time at eco brightness in clean air in an airconditioned 18 degree bedroom.

If they do not already have this type of counter built in as part of the light-engine, it might be difficult to add a software solution that counts both internal apps and HDMI/USB-C, and persists through reset.

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Haha I like the thoroughness of your suggestion but perhaps at this price point they may not be willing to do all that. Regarding the persisting through restarts part, that’s fairly easy to do if they were to store the hours used in the system partition in a log file or database or even sync to cloud every time the device connects to the internet. It can be done. Just matters if they want to do it. But it may have other repercussions for them if they add a usage tracker in here. I mean they’re advertising 30 thousand hours, if it fails before that, they’re going to have a lot of people complaining. :slight_smile:

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It was not really a suggestion that they should track every possible feature of usage and environment. It was more a note that a buyer would still need to trust the seller’s description of the state of the device.

30000 hours is 5.14 years if you watch your PPM for 16 hours every day. If you claim that your LED:s are worn out in less than five years from now, Philips/Screeneo would find it difficult to argue that you must have used it more than 30000 hours, whether or not it was measured. If you wait for more than five years, they are probably no longer offering hardware repair service for the PPM.

Depending on how much you use the projector plugged in vs on battery, I might expect a need to replace the battery before the LED:s. If use is tracked, it might be relevant to log hours off and on mains power separately, and how many times the battery has been depleted to the point where the projector turned itself off.

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