There have been a number of requests for a standby / low power mode for Vero 4K and we’ve been working on implementing this. We now have something to test.
Add the following line: deb http://apt.osmc.tv stretch-devel main
Run the following commands to update: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && reboot
Your system should have have received the update.
After installation, it should now be possible to select ‘Suspend’ from the power menu in Kodi. The location of this menu may vary depending on the skin that you are using.
Currently, the network is not brought down when the device is suspended. It would be good to get a consensus of whether this should be the case, at least by default:
Network on/off - well if in doubt make it an option (no need to expose it to Kodi UI). Personally having the Network on is preferable for me as I am connected over WiFI and can’t do an easily WOL if I need to SSH into the box to do some stuff.
Main reason for a “Fake Standby” mode is that Kodi doesn’t run and waste power when being idle by just rendering the screen over and over again (more a failure of Kodi here to have no real “idle” support, that stops the game-like rendering loop).
Beside Kodi the rest of Linux is of no issue here. Just Kodi…
So Kodi keeps running, but external called screensaver keep the system mostly idle? Fair compromise. In that case the network should definitely stay on.
Just a waste of power that Kodi’s UI cannot be idle when e.g. no HDMI connection is active to the device - idling takes more resources than actually playing a movie because of its ancient game-like rendering loop from the early XBMC times. Always wanted to patch it, but never found the time to implement a “halt rendering loop” feature when Kodi is not actively displayed…
Anyway will give it a test run and report back.
HDMI was of no issue for me, I disabled basically all CEC options as I had issues here anyway that my receiver didn’t jump to the TV audio (ARC connection for DVB-S2 audio). But nearly all devices cause such problems for me - so automatic input switching is disabled and the TV tells the receiver what to do and that works over here - with some issues usually after TV recorded something (wrong input channel initially when going to Kodi on the reciver, loss of configured HDMI/CEC connections, so many small things that just doesn’t work properly). All caused by Samsung. Vero is totally innocent here.
Once sniffed what the Samsung does over CEC. Yeah, totally their fault…
That buggy Samsung CEC implementation I hate so much is the root cause here - never buying Samsung again - great hardware, extremely shitty software - same quirks in all sets I owned over the last decade or so - and guess it will never be fixed. Next time it will be an LG set (probably other quirks) but at least a better CEC implementation.
Kodi screens/backgrounds can be animated, so I suspect this is the easiest way to support that feature. In addition, backgrounds can rotate randomly, which would mean checking on each change to see if the new background is animated, and going into “idle with static background” if not, and waking up the next time the background changes.
It could certainly be done, but with so many variables in terms of skins, settings, etc., it’s probably a lot easier just to redraw constantly.
In LibreELEC on a NUC, and also earlier then then when I had a custom HTPC with a Nvidia card, there was a way to have the signal from the graphic card shut down after five minutes. It wasn’t a screensaver, but the signal was turned off, and after a while the TV was turned off as well due to this.
It wasn’t the HTPC that was in sleep/hibernate, but only the signal from the video card.
Isn’t that possible on the Vero 4K? As someone else said, to turn the Vero 4K in hibernation maybe isn’t worth it, but just the signal would be nice.
No, I haven’t. Since I don’t understood if I was switching to a beta chanel doing this, or if it was just a mod that was added.
Also, the name “suspend” was used in LibreELEC and Kodi for what the power button should do, like, shutdown, or just suspend.
The thing with the graphic signal was somewhere else…
But about new feature then, if the signal is of, will it resume when press a button on the remote? And if the TV is turned off, will the CeC turn it on like it does now, when the screensaver gets turned off?
About this: “After installation, it should now be possible to select ‘Suspend’ from the power menu in Kodi. The location of this menu may vary depending on the skin that you are using.”
That’s not exactly what I want? I want the Vero 4K to automatically turn of the signal from the graphic card after 5 minutes. Is that possible on this version?
The power menu in Kodi isn’t something I use that very often…and also, there’s no power button on the remote to use for this…even if it would be possible to use the HOME button for this…
EDIT: The function I talked about is in LibreELEC on my NUC in system settings/Power saving and above the Shutdown function timer, ther is “Put display to sleep when idle” and I can set it to 5 minutes, but I guess I now on Vero 4K should use the Shutdown function timer, and set it to Suspend after 5 minutes?
EDIT2: Well, after 5 minutes it does turn of the display signal. But, I still doesn’t understand why the “Put display to sleep when idle” isn’t there. That way we can have the display turned of after 5 minutes, but the Vero 4K totally shut down after say, 2 hours, if we wanted… =)
EDIT3: I now even waited for me TV to turn of since no signal. When I then press a button on the remote, that isn’t taken as “Wake devices when deactivating the screensaver”, and the TV still was turned off. Before this change, with only the screen saver on, pressing a button would start the TV .
EDIT4: I’ve tried to fix my remote.xml with the
CECToggleState
Without any luck. (It would have been great though, since it would have just turned on and off the TV).
I used the suspend command instead, and it’s better than nothing
suspend
but to turn the TV off instead would have been better. Anyone knows why the cectogglestate doesn’t work?
Harmony (bluetooth) is getting it out of suspend with a keypress
I checked cpu usage for a while, and the usage was like before, maybe even a bit more.
So this is a fake suspend? What is actually the benefit of having this?
I just tried 2 or 3 times, but the Vero4 goes into standby or suspend (the LED turns red) and comes back without any problems (with CEC from Sony TV via a Yamaha AVR).
