OSMC Remote lagging on RPi3

tomszechy · 4 October 2020 07:42

Hi,
I’m a happy user of OMSC on RPi3 for a couple of years now. Recently I noticed some strange behavior of the official OSMC Remote control: after booting up, the remote works justs fine for a couple of minutes, then it starts “stuttering”.
It either doesn’t register button presses (so I have to press twice), or registers them with significant delay. Functions like scrolling (ie. with holding the down directional button) or timeskipping (double-tapping) do not work.
Rebooting solves the problem for a couple of minutes, but then it comes back.
I changed the battery in the transmitter twice already, and I did change the USB slot for the receiver too.
There is no visible sign of the RPi3 having CPU overload issues (no thermal throttling icon) when this happens.
Any ideas what can be wrong?

ActionA · 4 October 2020 13:53

To get a better understanding of the problem you are experiencing we need more information from you. The best way to get this information is for you to upload logs that demonstrate your problem. You can learn more about how to submit a useful support request here.

Depending on the used skin you have to set the settings-level to standard or higher, in summary:

enable debug logging at settings->system->logging
reboot the OSMC device twice(!)
reproduce the issue
upload the log set (all configs and logs!) either using the Log Uploader method within the My OSMC menu in the GUI or the ssh method invoking command grab-logs -A
publish the provided URL from the log set upload, here

Thanks for your understanding. We hope that we can help you get up and running again shortly.

OSMC skin screenshot:

sam_nazarko · 4 October 2020 16:17

Try repairing the remote by holding Home and OK.

tomszechy · 5 October 2020 12:51

Thanks for the ideas, I tried re-pairing… it improved the situation for a couple of minutes, but then it reverted.
As soon as I have the time, I’ll upload the logs too.

tomszechy · 5 October 2020 16:08

Hi,
I’ve uploaded the logs with the help of My OSMC.
FYI: first time I tried enabling the logs, after power-cycling for the second time, the system didn’t start up (at least it didn’t show any output on HDMI)… So I had to reinstall OSMC completely.

Interestingly enough, even with the fresh OSMC install, using the remote is still very-very sluggish
I tried using a standard USB keyboard, and apparently it works perfectly (no lag at all!). I have to assume there’s something wrong with the RF remote.

darwindesign · 5 October 2020 17:57

Is there perhaps some interference from a wifi device/s or reflective surface that could be tested by moving physical location?

Additionally any issue you have with the remote would be exceedingly unlikely to cause a boot failure so it may be worth considering that you may have a SD card or PSU issue and the remote is being affected by that.

tomszechy · 5 October 2020 18:46

Is there perhaps some interference from a wifi device/s or reflective surface that could be tested by moving physical location?

Can’t tell. I tried moving the remote transmitter closer to the USB dongle (and so the RPi unit), but it didn’t help in any way.
The only thing that helps (for a while) is to remove the USB receiver and plug it back again.
This way I can get snappy responsiveness although just for a couple of minutes.

I’ll play around with my router to see if changing the wifi channel helps in any way.

tomszechy · 7 October 2020 08:47

Update: I changed my router options (I’m on 2.4GHz), such as bandwidth & channel number, but could not see any improvements in the behavior of the OSMC RF remote.
It’s the same: after starting up the RPi, it behaves normally for a couple of minutes, then the lagging begins…

For now I’m switching to HDMI CEC, but I’d really like to understand what causes the problem.

sam_nazarko · 8 October 2020 16:43

Hi,

I had a look through the logs for the most obvious cause, which would be if the USB was repeatedly connecting/disconnecting. But this does not seem to be the case.

Some thoughts:

Do you have another device you can try the remote on? Does it exhibit the same problem?
Does rebooting the system – but not removing the USB receiver temporarily alleviate the problem?

Thanks

Sam

tomszechy · 9 October 2020 13:24

Do you have another device you can try the remote on? Does it exhibit the same problem?

I tried it on a laptop too: it works pretty well (ie. flawless).

Does rebooting the system – but not removing the USB receiver temporarily alleviate the problem?

Yes it helps, temporarily. Maybe for 2-3 minutes tops.

sam_nazarko · 9 October 2020 13:26

I don’t think it’s going to be a hardware issue with the remote if it works well on another device.
Was the laptop in the same location?

Could you relocate the Pi temporarily to another room and see if the issue persists?
Could you check whether Bluetooth is enabled under My OSMC -> Network and turn it off? I can see that you are not using WiFi on the Pi

Sam

tomszechy · 9 October 2020 13:55

Was the laptop in the same location?

Yes it was (~5 cms away)

Could you check whether Bluetooth is enabled under My OSMC → Network and turn it off?

Bluetooth is (and was always) turned off on the RPi.

I can’t relocate the unit just yet, but I’ll give it a shot in the coming days.

Update: I’ve run another test in the meantime: I reconnected the USB dongle to the RPi (while it was powered), and I could use the OSMC remote just fine. FYI, my “test case” is browsing a regular NFS share with 100+ files in it.
So I could scroll up/down just fine, response is snappy, etc.
After waiting a couple of minutes I ran a database update on OSMC, and after that the laggy response came back… Unplugging/replugging the USB dongle helped again.

For anyone interested, here are the logs again, from today.

sam_nazarko · 9 October 2020 13:59

I see the issue.

2020-10-09 15:40:42.616 T:1723851488  NOTICE: Register - new hid device registered on usb->/sys/devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.4: OSMC RF Remote (2017:1688)

and

Oct 09 15:38:24 osmct kernel: usb 1-1.5: USB disconnect, device number 5
Oct 09 15:40:42 osmct kernel: usb 1-1.4: new low-speed USB device number 6 using dwc_otg
Oct 09 15:40:42 osmct kernel: usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=2017, idProduct=1688, bcdDevice= 1.04
Oct 09 15:40:42 osmct kernel: usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Oct 09 15:40:42 osmct kernel: usb 1-1.4: Product: USB Keyboard Mouse
Oct 09 15:40:42 osmct kernel: usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: OSMC Remote Controller

Just after you ran the ping.

At a guess – you need a new power supply.

When there’s load on the Pi, it doesn’t have enough power to also power the attached USB peripherals, so they keep dropping off the bus.

tomszechy · 9 October 2020 21:22

Thanks for the analysis!
Happen to have any idea if an official RPi power supply can deteriorate over time this much? I know it’s not your product but I assume you have way more experience with it than I do

sam_nazarko · 9 October 2020 21:41

I use our PSUs on my Pis. It depends on how long you’ve had it. Power supplies will indeed degrade over time and anything can fail.

I don’t have information on how Pi branded PSUs will perform over time unfortunately, but I am confident this will solve your problem. If your device isn’t getting enough power this can cause other issues soon, like SD card corruption.

As a suggestion, if you have a friend with a Pi, you could try with their power supply and see if the issue goes away.

Please do keep us informed.

Thanks

Sam