Fully stop CEC or options that might affect it?

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

I have disabled CEC in my Vero 4K as it interferes too much with my setup, but it still seems to be having an effect of sorts.

I have a Phillips 50PUS6754, a Pioneer VSX-933, my Vero, and some other bits that are unaffected.
They are all connected through the Amp, and the Amp is connected to the TV with a single HDMI cable with ARC turned on for the return audio from the TV’s built in streaming apps.

I don’t use CEC on my equipment because (in general) it is more trouble than it’s worth, however I do have the option on my TV to use a basic version that only deals with power, and not using the same remote for 10 different devices.

To cut a long story short, with it turned on on my TV and Amp, the TV can detect the Amp (puts a little Amp symbol in the source list), turn it on when the TV is turned on, turn it off when the TV is turned off, and switch source on the Amp (to ARC) when I use the built in streaming Apps on the TV.

This all works great until I plug the Vero into (any) source input on the Amp, then the TV stops detecting the Amp, and turning it off when the TV turns off. The amp still turns on, and still switches sources when I use the built in apps.

By repeatedly messing with settings and power cycling I found that I could get it all working on the two devices with the Vero disconnected, connect the Vero and sometimes it would all play nice, but as soon as there was a power cut (happens a least once a month), it would all stop working again.

Anyway, as of a couple days ago, I cannot get it back up working again at all. As soon as the Vero is connected to an input source it affects the whole system.

The only other option I could think of on the Vero was an audio ‘keep awake’, but I checked and they are all turned off. The send low level noise option was on, but I turned it off and it made no difference.

Can you think of anything else that may help?

Oh, and I’m using the last Vero software that was based on Krypton.

2

Can’t think of anything obvious here.

Did you fully disable CEC?
Is it possible for you to upgrade to Leia?

3

It says it’s disabled, I don’t know if it can be removed in any way. I did look to see if it was in the controller settings in OSMC to see if it could be removed any further, but it wasn’t.

I would rather not upgrade to Leia. The skin I use is not compatible and I have a daughter who is not easily able to accept change due to a neurological condition. We can live with turning it all off separately, It’s just frustrating when it has been working before even if a bit flaky.

I was really just asking to see if I had missed something, which it seems probably not.

I will likely experiment again tonight and see if I can trick it into working again.

4

What skin?

5

reFocus.

6

Try uploading some logs so we can see if CEC is indeed disabled.

7

You can buy adapters that disconnect pin 13 on the hdmi cable. Alternatively you could just butcher a hdmi cable to knock it out without buying anything new (at your own risk). I did this on mine by just taking a very small flat blade screwdriver and pushed up that pin so it would not make contact. Just do a web search for “CEC disable pin 13” and you should find plenty of info.

8

Interesting! Thanks darwindesign, I’m going to look at this. I have plenty of spare HDMI cables so I’ll see what happens.

@sam_nazarko I assume there is no threat to Vero hardware doing this?

9

Difficult to see it would be a problem if you are butchering the cable only.

10

You can’t cause any harm from leaving the CEC data line floating. If you mangle the pins and short something out then ??? but if you unplug both ends of the cable and push only that one pin up into the connector without touching any other pins then the worst thing that can happen is the pin springs back down and makes contact again. I would give it a good look with some magnification before reconnecting it and that should make it pretty obvious if anything is askew.

…or just purchase a passthrough adapter that has pin 13 disabled.

11

It’s ok, I’m an electronic engineer anyway so there’ll be no butchering.

I just stripped a section out of a spare HDMI cable, isolated and snipped the CEC wire, heat shrinked the two ends, soldered in a new section of braid, and heat shrinked over the outside.

If this works, I’ll design a pass-through PCB with an HDMI plug/socket with pin 13 disconnected.

12

You might get an annoying notification saying ‘CEC Adapter initialisation failed’ when you boot up, and you might get a lot of log spam as it will keep trying to setup CEC, but other than that shouldn’t experience any issues.

13

IMO way too much effort without advantage. I just pushed my pin up and it has been working without issue since.

I’ve not noticed anything and in the last 14 hrs since I rebooted…

osmc@Vero:~$ journalctl | grep -i "cec"
Sep 27 15:05:52 Vero kernel: input: cec_input as /devices/virtual/input/input1
Sep 27 15:05:52 Vero kernel: cectx aocec: aml_cec_probe(): no hdmirx reg resource
Sep 27 15:05:52 Vero kernel: cectx aocec: aml_cec_probe(): no hhi reg resource
Sep 27 15:05:52 Vero kernel: cectx aocec: aml_cec_probe(): can't find hdmirx
Sep 27 15:05:52 Vero kernel: cec: wake up flag:0
Sep 27 15:05:55 Vero systemd-logind[245]: Watching system buttons on /dev/input/event1 (cec_input)
osmc@Vero:~$ cat .kodi/temp/kodi.log | grep -i "cec"
2020-09-28 19:17:34.842 T:3897577696  NOTICE: Register - new cec device registered on cec->AOCEC: CEC Adapter (0000:0000)
osmc@Vero:~$

I don’t see how this would act any different than if connected to a display that did not have CEC enabled.

14

Well I tried my makeshift cable and everything is working great! :+1:t2:

So something is happening on that pin in spite of CEC being disabled.

Anyway, I’m just glad to have it working.

Now I need to find a permanent solution as I doubt the hdmi cable I modified will play nice with 4K.

15

Awesome!

I have no issues transmitting 4k HDR on the one I spent two minutes modifying :grin:

1 Like
16

My issue with this is having a non standard cable in my system, and having to remember that the CEC pin is disabled. I just know later on down the line I’ll be scratching my head as to why something isn’t working right, only to find that the cable is the issue.

18

I just need to give it a try. The only reason it might not work is because the cable I modified was a cheap one that most likely isn’t
HDMI 1.4 compliant.

19

Get some tipex and mark the cable with it.