Standby and Guide Updates / Fixes

Started by philzgr8, July 19, 2006, 09:24:21 AM

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philzgr8

I did a search and found a few posts describing standby issues and guide updates etc but I'm not really clear exactly what needs to be done to have the guide updating and the fixes all happening etc when my machine is usually in standby. If I set PIMP to update every 4 hours will the machine come out of standby and update then go back into standby every 4 hours? I assume that the guide update will cause this wake/sleep cycle but the whole process seems a little bit vague and perhaps a bit confused because I'm not sure whether enhancements in the latest version have changed the way it works. Can someone please explain clearly what the process is and how I should set it up to get the most reliable results?
Thanks,

Phil

philzgr8

Bump...

Despite some more reading I'm still not sure what is the expected behaviour for any given setting. In other words which, if any actions cause the machine to come out of standby. I'm assuming that the fixes and the guide update would do that but I'm not sure what the function of the PIMP update is and how it affects standby if at all.

Shane

Hi,

My guess is that PIMP and standby aren't going to work well together - they are in fact almost a conflict of interest.

Standby wants to put your computer to sleep whenever you the user aren't using it for anything, ie watching TV, movies, web, recording tv etc.

PIMP is a service that requires the PC to be always on as it needs to be in constant contact with an external server so you can use it to program recordings at a moments notice.

If you set your PC to standby whenever it is not in use, you negate the capability PIMP brings as the client can no longer talk to the PIMP server. You set a recording up via the web, and it doesn't get updated until the next time you turn your PC on? Failed or missed recording would be the result.

Personally I leave my Media Center PC running all of the time - it is the only PC in my house on 24 hours a day. PIMP updates to the Ice PIMP server every 5 mins, so whether I am visiting my parents 3 hours away, or sitting in my office, I know that a show I program to record will be on my PC at home and scheduled within the next 5 mins.

So you need to decide what you want to do... save a little bit of money using standby, or have the convenience of PIMP to remotely schedule recordings at a moments notice. I believe they are mutually exclusive.

Regards,
Shane.
Shuttle SB83G5M (P4 630 nVidia 6600) running Vista Premium with:
Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE Tuner|Ice TV Guide|PIMP|Buffalo LinkStation HD-H160LAN & HD-HG300LAN|Xbox 360 MCE

JPP

#3
Hi Shane,

I've been posting a bit in the Topfield PIMP thread, but reading your post here I have a suggestion that will perhaps get around the 24/7 ON requirement.

In the case of my Toppy, which I have directly connected to the net via the IceBox2, I have suggested in one of my posts that the timer info could perhaps be slotted in at the same time as the user has set his IceBox up to get the EPG from the Ice Server. For example in my case, I have set the time to get the EPG at 2.15pm, during a half hour of a non-recording timer on the Toppy between 2 and 2.30pm.

Now I normally don't have any recordings set for daytime, so the Toppy is in standby except for that half hour. But, I have noticed, that if the Toppy isn't ON at the time you have the upload of the EPG set, the IceBox2 will actually cue the transmission to the Toppy and continually retry, firstly every 1/2 hr from memory, and then hourly, until it finally gets it into your Toppy when it's powered up.

So, even if the Toppy is OFF at the time the upload of the EPG, it will get it eventually. If the PIMP commands could likewise be cued, it wouldn't matter when the Toppy came ON, as long as of course it would come on before the updated or new timer was to kick in.

Not sure how this would work on a PC based PVR, but the above might be some food for thought.

Phil.
Phil.
Beyonwiz T2, DVDO Duo Video Processor

Shane

Quote from: JPP on July 21, 2006, 08:10:26 PM
I have suggested in one of my posts that the timer info could perhaps be slotted in at the same time as the user has set his IceBox up to get the EPG from the Ice Server. For example in my case, I have set the time to get the EPG at 2.15pm, during a half hour of a non-recording timer on the Toppy between 2 and 2.30pm.

Phil,

Thanks for the suggestions. There are however two problems I see with this:

1. A PC can't be easily programmed to come out of standby without third party utilities.
2. A scheduled timer update once a day wouldn't work if you wanted to record a show that started in the next 10mins

The beauty of PIMP is I can be at work (or wherever) and go: "I really want to record this show I've just been told about, and it starts in 20mins" and with PIMP updating every 5mins (as per default) this works.

I guess if this isn't an option you want or need you could get around it with a daily schedule update. PIMP will update whenever there is a network connection.

Regards,
Shane.
Shuttle SB83G5M (P4 630 nVidia 6600) running Vista Premium with:
Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE Tuner|Ice TV Guide|PIMP|Buffalo LinkStation HD-H160LAN & HD-HG300LAN|Xbox 360 MCE

Marc

Shane, I've had the same dilemma with my Mac mini and come to the exact same conclusion... I think it has to be on 24/7. I have PIMP set to every 15mins though. Depending on the system, the HDs should sleep and the screen is off (ie. your TV!), so hopefully it's not sucking up too much juice.

philzgr8

Quote from: Shane on July 21, 2006, 09:04:14 PM
1. A PC can't be easily programmed to come out of standby without third party utilities.
Shane,
I'm not sure what gave you that impression. Personally I can schedule virtually anything I like and tell XP to wake from standby to perform that action and it works perfectly.

Shane

Quote from: philzgr8 on July 25, 2006, 10:28:57 AM
Shane,
I'm not sure what gave you that impression. Personally I can schedule virtually anything I like and tell XP to wake from standby to perform that action and it works perfectly.

Can I ask you what you are using to do this?

Even still - for me another reason to leave my machine on is I use an Xbox 360 as a MCE Extender, and because Microsoft don't have "magic packet" support (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Packet) in the 360 Extender functionality there is no easy way to ensure the system is running when someone else in my family, or a friend or visitor wants to watch TV.

Regards,
Shane.
Shuttle SB83G5M (P4 630 nVidia 6600) running Vista Premium with:
Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE Tuner|Ice TV Guide|PIMP|Buffalo LinkStation HD-H160LAN & HD-HG300LAN|Xbox 360 MCE

philzgr8

Quote from: Shane on July 25, 2006, 10:41:57 AMCan I ask you what you are using to do this?

Even still - for me another reason to leave my machine on is I use an Xbox 360 as a MCE Extender, and because Microsoft don't have "magic packet" support (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Packet) in the 360 Extender functionality there is no easy way to ensure the system is running when someone else in my family, or a friend or visitor wants to watch TV.
Shane,
I just use the standard Windows Task scheduler. (Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Scheduled Tasks) but you will have to have a password configured for the user account that you log in with. Logging in might seem like an issue in itself but if you use the tweakxp hacks to configure automatic logons the problems all go away. If you get stuck there are some really good discussions on this stuff in the xpmediacenter.com.au forums.

Shane

Quote from: philzgr8 on July 25, 2006, 11:12:17 AM
Shane,
I just use the standard Windows Task scheduler. (Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Scheduled Tasks) but you will have to have a password configured for the user account that you log in with. Logging in might seem like an issue in itself but if you use the tweakxp hacks to configure automatic logons the problems all go away. If you get stuck there are some really good discussions on this stuff in the xpmediacenter.com.au forums.

Actually I have tried this, and whilst it works (definately not idiot proof) I've found a better option in Auto Power-On and Shutdown (http://www.lifsoft.com/power/) to do these things. It is a paid tool but has extra capability that Task Scheduler lacks.

Regards,
Shane.
Shuttle SB83G5M (P4 630 nVidia 6600) running Vista Premium with:
Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE Tuner|Ice TV Guide|PIMP|Buffalo LinkStation HD-H160LAN & HD-HG300LAN|Xbox 360 MCE

BJReplay

Quote from: Shane on July 25, 2006, 10:41:57 AM...don't have "magic packet" support (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Packet)...

This is actually the secret - add WOL (and STUN and uPnP) to PIMP.


  • PIMP Client opens a port in a uPnP router using uPnP
  • The PIMP client tells the PIMP server the MAC address, external IP Address (derived using STUN) & Port for the client, and the server remembers (or the Server determines the external IP when it processes the updates from the client).
  • When you schedule a show using PIMP, if it does not receive a refresh request (say) 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the newly added show, it sends the WOL packet to the IP address at the port.
  • The router will forward the packet to the appropriate internal IP address based on the uPnP port previously opened by PIMP client
  • PC wakes up.
  • PIMP schedules the program when it does it's next update.
Woot.

You can do it without STUN as the server can determine the external IP, and you can do it without uPnP by setting up a static port forward & IP address.

This would be worth testing out (simply, with hand configured IP, port & MAC settings) to see if it works, and adding the flash automation stuff if it does.

If you look at some of the links in the wikipedia article you quoted, Shane, you can see there are already services out there that do this, so it isn't too hard.

Shane

BJ - nice idea !

Whilst this doesn't fix my issue with the 360 not being able to wake up the PC, it should fix the issue of waking the machine from standby to update the PIMP client (which is the topic's original point).

Up to Ice team (Doug?) to see if this is a possibility.

Regards,
Shane.
Shuttle SB83G5M (P4 630 nVidia 6600) running Vista Premium with:
Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE Tuner|Ice TV Guide|PIMP|Buffalo LinkStation HD-H160LAN & HD-HG300LAN|Xbox 360 MCE

peteru

UPnP won't let you keep a port open indefinitely. The forward has to be renewed regularly, otherwise it expires.

Not that any of that matters, since WOL is done with a broadcast packet at the Ethernet level, whereas UPnP works at the IP level. Ethernet broadcasts are not forwarded by routers either.

About the closest solution you would get is to have an embedded always-on device, like the IceBox2, connected to your local Ethernet segment, acting as a WOL agent for your main PC.

BJReplay

Peter, I was probably mislead by the fact that if I look at the port forwards in my router, I see two ports opened by Azureus - I last used Azureus weeks ago to DL knoppix, and it hasn't been run since.

Interestingly, though, now that I have another look, it is gone - the thing is that I added a static port forward for WOL testing - so maybe that's the trigger for the router - a new port forward causes out of date uPnPs to expire. So I'm not sure how long the expiration is, but there are ways around that.

WOL can be done with a broadcast packet, but it can also be done with a specific packet.

Anyway, I did some testing last night.

DSL Reports has a wake up tool: http://www.dslreports.com/wakeup. You put in your external IP and a MAC.  Provided you've got port nine forwarded, it wakes up your PC.

So, I know that I can get system outside my router (BEFSR41) to forward a packet, and my NIC will wake up my PC.

All good.  I can be pretty confident that dslreports are not sending a broadcast packet.

What about if you want to wake more than one PC inside a router.  My router (at least) won't allow me to set the port forward address to the broadcast subnet (e.g. 192.168.1.255), so that's out.  That means multiple ports would need to be forwarded to multiple PCs - which is why I thought of uPnP.

However, if that is out, then you could, at least, manually set up port forwards for each PC running PIMP that you wanted woken up.  Even if you have to set these up manually - and even if you need to configure the same settings on each PC in PIMP or on the server, it can be done, so it's a viable option.

Marc

While I don't have the same depth of understand as most of the guys is this thread, would waking up your computer every 5 mins be healthy? Or isn't that what's being suggested? Even if PIMP is set to update once every 30mins, I still think I'd prefer always on when compared to wake up and sleep every 30mins. Surely that'd shorten the life of the media center?