OSMC, Vero4K+ and remote

Help and Support
1

As a newbie in OSMC world on Vero4K+ hw I have couple of questions.
The hw is nice, it plays HEVC videos smoothly. I set up Tvheadend and its PVR addon. I expected it will behave the same as a tv, but it’s not.

  1. Channel switching
    To watch TV I need to go to “PVR & Live TV” menu item (= 7x pressed down arrow on the remote). I can choose a channel there in the TV guide list. However, not intuitively by pressing the OK button but the Play button. If the channel is playing the arrow down and up don’t switch channels as it’s common on TV. So, I need to go back to the channel list by pressing the Return/Back button. If I choose another channel, I can’t play it by pressing OK, not even the Play button, first I need to stop playing by the Stop button. This is crazy.

Is it possible to change it so that I can switch channels by arrow keys and play another channel just by pressing Play without needing to stop the currently playing channel before?

  1. Slow Shutdown/Reboot
    When I choose Power -> Power off system or Reboot, the ssh is immediately disconnected but the screen gets stuck and takes about 17 seconds to actual shutdown or reboot. It’s much slower in compare to e.g. Raspberry Pi 3. Is it possible to make it quicker?

  2. Red lines in log
    When I list the kernel log (dmesg), I can see the red lines above:

    [ 307.540731] vfm_map_store:rm default
    [ 307.540774] vfm_map_store:add default decoder ppmgr deinterlace amlvideo amvideo

Is it an issue?
Image: Vero 4K / 4K + 2019.06-1

  1. Power off/on button
    The Vero 4K+ takes about 4.2 W (7.3 VA) with usb tv dongle and the same in the suspend mode. I’d like to turn it off when I am not at home.
    Does Vero 4K+ have an internal pin where I could connect a power off/on button?
    Or a pin that would signalize it’s suspended or powered off?
    Is it also possible to map Home button on Vero 4K+ remote to power off the system or at least suspend it?

  2. Mute button
    The Vero 4K+ remote control doesn’t have the Mute button. It’s not very comfortable to mute sound by holding Volume Down/Up. Is is possible to map a button to do that? E.g. pressing Volume Down 3 times.

  3. Front red lighting cross
    Is it possible to set intensity of it to very very low or even turn it off (when in suspend mode)?
    It’s quite distracting at night.

  4. Default channel playing
    Is it possible to set up OSMC/Kodi to play a tv channel automatically, so I wouldn’t have to go to “PVR & Live TV” menu item when I turn the Vero 4K+?

  5. Desktop
    I’d like to play also Youtube videos and videos published on a video blog sites. Is it possible to have a desktop on Vero with Chromium, so I would exit from Kodi, clicked Chromium icon and browse video blog (with mouse)? Now after Exit, it shows just a black screen.
    Or create an add-on that would find video urls on a blog site and somehow offer them to OSMC/Kodi, but not sure how difficult that is.

2

Best option for that is to use Yatse on your mobile phone, allows you to share and play any video on OSMC including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,…

1 Like
3

Hi,

This is an interesting remark. It might make sense to change this behaviour. I assume you’re using the supplied remote?

Have you made customisations to the system? They should both reboot with similar speeds.

No.

You could map the home button to suspend the device using the Keymap Editor add-on; but there is no internal pin to manage power.

This should also be possible with the Keymap Editor. We have some plans for some long press functionality.

It can be turned off and I can give some instructions if you know how to use SSH.

This could be done with an autoexec.py script

@fzinken has covered this pretty well below.

Sam

4

Thanks for the advice, having a mobile phone as a remote control is awesome!

5

This is an interesting remark. It might make sense to change this behaviour. I assume you’re using the supplied remote?

Yes, the supplied remote. It would be much more comfortable to

  1. switch channels by the Play button without needing to press the Stop button.
  2. play a channel by the OK button (it probably needs to rethink TV Guide UI - at least the focus could be on the left list initially and not the program cells), the OK button is easier to press in compare to the Play button.
  3. allow to switch channels by arrow keys when in fullscreen.

and they would really increase usability of the supplied remote even though Yatse app overcomes it in many ways.

Have you made customisations to the system? They should both reboot with similar speeds.

No, just installed Tvheadend server & addon via the OSMC menu.
Can I check somehow what happens there during that time or what can cause this? I am able to use SSH.

You could map the home button to suspend the device using the Keymap Editor add-on; but there is no internal pin to manage power.

With Yatse or with using Keymap Editor I believe it’s quite easy to suspend or turn off the device, that’s great. However, how can I wake it up? I found “Wake on LAN” menu item in Yatse. Does it work with Vero when it is turned off?

My goal is to synchronize monitor & sound system with Vero 4K+, so they would be turned off and on when Vero is - to achieve the lowest possible power consumption.

I found out Vero 4K+ in the suspend mode is not suspended at all - CPU is still running, Tvheadend server is running, DVB-T dongle as well and I can still watch TV on a remote machine with VLC playing the network stream, so it seems the suspend function just turns the monitor off.

This should also be possible with the Keymap Editor. We have some plans for some long press functionality.

Ok, thanks. I’m going to check out the editor. Agree with the long press of the volume button(s) - it is good idea.

It can be turned off and I can give some instructions if you know how to use SSH.

Great, yes please, SSH is not a problem.

This could be done with an autoexec.py script

Did you mean by calling XBMC functions there? I’ll try to investigate how I can return to the last played channel.

6

No Vero does not have Wake On LAN support. When you switch it off you would have to power cycle it. So would need to have a powerswitch that would react to network commands.

Suspend mode switches off the HDMI signal and put the CPU into power save mode. All other services including network remains active.

7

Regarding the reboot timing issue. I found out it is caused by mediacenter service.
If I stop it, vero4k+ gets stuck for more than 20 seconds and a console is displayed then.

$ time systemctl stop mediacenter

real    0m20.644s
user    0m0.020s
sys     0m0.010s

Starting it again returns immediately, but actual OSMC menu shows up after about 4 seconds.

$ time sudo systemctl start mediacenter

real    0m0.124s
user    0m0.020s
sys     0m0.060s

@sam_nazarko do you have an idea what can be wrong there? You said the start up time and shutdown time should be similar, so about 4 seconds?

8

Complete logs that would show the other services present and running/starting would likely be useful here.

9

It happened from the first run and still happens after I installed tvheadend service.
Can you please suggest ssh command for getting the logs?

10

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

  • reproduce the issue

  • upload the log set 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:

normal_logging
normal_logging1920×1080 764 KB

11

I have investigated the logs locally and found out the mediacenter service runs kodi.bin.

I ran kodi.bin from ssh:

sudo MALLOC_MMAP_THRESHOLD_=8192 LIRC_SOCKET_PATH=/var/run/lirc/lircd /usr/lib/kodi/kodi.bin --standalone -fs; CODE="0"

and ended it from UI by choosing Power->Exit with my remote control. The kodi got stuck immediatelly (the screen was not refreshed) and I had to kill it by sudo kill -9 9663.

The kodi’s log contains usual lines as it would have exited normally…

2019-08-14 21:29:00.289 T:4071694336  NOTICE: Stopping player
2019-08-14 21:29:00.290 T:4071694336  NOTICE: Stopping all
2019-08-14 21:29:00.292 T:4071694336  NOTICE: ES: Stopping event server
2019-08-14 21:29:00.323 T:3823092448  NOTICE: ES: UDP Event server stopped
2019-08-14 21:29:00.384 T:4071694336  NOTICE: stopping zeroconf publishing
2019-08-14 21:29:00.392 T:4071694336  NOTICE: CWebServer[80]: Stopped
2019-08-14 21:29:00.392 T:4071694336  NOTICE: stop dvd detect media
2019-08-14 21:29:01.053 T:3875500768 WARNING: CPythonInvoker(0, /usr/share/kodi/addons/script.module.osmcsetting.updates/service.py): the python script "/usr/share/kodi/addons/script.module.osmcsetting.updates/service.py" has left sever al classes in memory that we couldn't clean up. The classes include: N9XBMCAddon7xbmcgui6WindowE,N9XBMCAddon7xbmcgui12ControlImageE,N14PythonBindings31XBMCAddon_xbmc_Monitor_DirectorE
2019-08-14 21:29:01.174 T:4071694336  NOTICE: Application stopped
2019-08-14 21:29:01.374 T:4071694336  NOTICE: XBApplicationEx: destroying...

Or it might stopped logging after it got stuck.

So the issue is kodi.bin gets stuck, systemd waits for 20 seconds (configured in /lib/systemd/system/mediacenter.service) and then kills the process.

$ journalctl -u mediacenter | tail
Aug 14 21:29:00 tv systemd[1]: Stopping media center application...
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: State 'stop-sigterm' timed out. Killing.
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: Killing process 8594 (mediacenter) with signal SIGKILL.
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: Killing process 8701 (sudo) with signal SIGKILL.
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: Killing process 8708 (kodi.bin) with signal SIGKILL.
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=9/KILL
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: Stopped media center application.
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: Unit entered failed state.
Aug 14 21:29:20 tv systemd[1]: mediacenter.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.

The question is how I can debug kodi to get more info since kodi.log doesn’t contain much info?

12

I suspect you have an add-on that is hanging the exit process.

13

I have moved all addons out of the folder and rebooted.

$ ls -r ~/.kodi/addons/
temp  packages

It still freezes.

14

OK – has this issue always been there, or has this only happened after installing TVHeadend?

15

I think it was there for the first time when I installed OSMC from sdcard, but I can’t say it for sure since I immediately installed tvheadend and don’t remember it exactly. Let me try to disable tvheadend service.

16

I disabled Tvheadend service and Tvheadend HTSP Client and rebooted. No change, so the issue had to be there already before.

17

OK. I’ll dig in to this soon.

Sam

18

Any news regarding that?

19

I couldn’t reproduce this with Kodi 18.4

20

Ok. I have the latest version 2019.07-1 with Kodi 18.3. Is it possible to upgrade Kodi to 18.4 with the version I currently have or I need to wait for the official release?