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The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/Tuxabyte on 2026-05-20 17:52:28+00:00.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a fun project I recently finished. Like many of you with toddlers, my daughter has developed a fascination with standing about two inches away from the TV screen. To protect her eyes and teach her to keep her distance, I decided to automate the parenting.
Whenever she gets too close (< 240cm), the TV automatically pauses. Once she steps back, it resumes. She actually adapted to it immediately and now stays behind the "invisible line" on her own!
Hardware
- Sensor: Hi-Link HLK-LD2410C (24GHz mmWave Radar)
- Board: M5Stack Atom Lite (ESP32)
- Mounted directly under the TV edge (I initially hid it inside my wooden TV cabinet, but the wood density messed with the radar scattering).
The Netflix Hurdle: Everything works perfectly for apps like SmartTube and my local TV provider app, but the official Netflix app actively blocks state updates (playing/paused) via the Android TV integration. I had to build a bypass in Node-RED to ignore Netflix so the flow doesn't get stuck.
Demo & Code:
Has anyone else found a reliable workaround for reading the play/pause state of the Netflix app on Android TV?