Vero4k thermal shutdown

Thermal shutdown strikes back :disappointed_relieved:

When a Picture Slideshow screensaver kicks in, the temperature rises rapidly over 105 °C and Vero shuts down in a while.

The strange thing is that top shows only kodi.bin at about 20% and nothing else.

Any ideas?

Hi @Airacobra , I installed this “Picture Slideshow Screensaver” on my Vero 4k and gave it a lot of real photo images with the default settings. Unfortunately (or better happily?) the temperature stays at 79°C, here.

Perhaps, I do not meet the circumstances in your environment, so could you please add some info?

  • What Vero model?
  • What OSMC release?
  • What’s the GUI resolution and frequency used?
  • What is the source of your picture, kind of image, typically resolution, etc.?
  • What are the settings of this add-on?

Will give it a try again with your settings if possible.

Thank you for your assistance.

  • What Vero model?
    Vero 4K

  • What OSMC release?
    Linux Vero 3.14.29-126-osmc #1 SMP Wed Oct 31 17:34:23 UTC 2018 aarch64 GNU/Linux
    VERSION_ID="2018.10-1"
    Kodi (17.6). Platform: Linux ARM (Thumb) 32-bit
    Skin: Amber

  • What’s the GUI resolution and frequency used?
    Resolution: 720p, frequency: 60Hz

  • What is the source of your picture, kind of image, typically resolution, etc.?
    Synology NAS drive mounted via NFS by systemd automount.
    About 5500 jpegs in 165 folders, mostly 3072x2304 and 3968x2976

  • What are the settings of this add-on?
    Mode: screensaver.picture.slideshow
    Time default: 3 min
    Use visualisation playing sound: On
    Use dim if paused during video playback: On
    Source of slideshow images: Image folder
    Folder: /mnt/photos
    Amount of seconds to display each image: 10
    Dim level: 100%
    Effect: Crossfade
    Display images in random order: On
    Resume slideshow from last position: greyed out
    Display background picture: On
    Scale images fullscreen: greyed out
    Display image name: Disabled
    Display picture date: Off
    Display additional picture tag: Off
    Display music info during audio playback: Off

I have tested it under a different skin, but no luck.

@Airacobra Ok, except the settings

  • Time default: 3 min (mine is 1 minute)
  • Synology NAS drive mounted via NFS by systemd automount. (here a Syno DS214se, NFSv4 via autofs config)

all other settings were set to the same and similar picture jpegs used rgearding resolution.

Skin: Amber, screensaver “Dim”: 58°C (after 10 minutes)

Skin: Amber, screensaver “Picture Slideshow Screensaver”: 79°C (after 10 minutes)

So, there might be something else (another add-on) on your system causing this high temperature?

I reduced Amount of seconds to display each image: 5 and provided a set of jpegs with at resolution around 5000 x 3300 pixels and 24 bit color depth.

Even running it for over 30 minutes I cannot reach 90°C, first (out of three) thermal trip point would be reached at 95°C.

Hello!
I have the problem too vith Vero 4k. At the menu with Fullhd resolution is 90 C° with 2-8% CPU use, and 200MB of RAM used. Today i watched a 4k movie and shutdown 4 times coused the overheating. After the crash i wait 4 minutes, and it can play 30 minutes until the next shutdown.

The device shouldn’t be getting that hot out of the box.
Can you make sure it’s well ventilated and make sure you are on the latest version of the software?

Thanks

Sam

I’ve just thought of something that might possible help with the overheating thing.

Many years ago, a friend of mine who was always reading and experimenting with odd stuff, told us at a party that he could control things with his mind. We pooh-hooed that, so he offered to demonstrate this ability. He took a small piece of paper - like 50mm x 50mm - and bent it so it was like a little fan. Then he pushed a needle into a big cork, sat the fan on top of the needle, and put the whole thing down on the floor. He squatted down bedside the contraption and cupped his hands around it. The he told us he would make the fan turn. Within 10 - 20 seconds it did begin to turn, and kept turning. We were all amazed, but eventually we prevailed upon him to tell us the truth.
Of course, it wasn’t his telepathic powers that spun the fan, but the warmth of his cupped hands.

So I was just looking at my own Vero 4K, after a thermal shutdown last night, and reading this thread, and it occurred to me that a fan like a small computer fan, but with a very light blade and an almost friction-less pivot point, might sit on top of the Vero and rotate from the Vero heat alone, and perhaps enough to provide enough air movement to drop the temp a little?

Just a thought…

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I’ve had a 4K since they first came out, and have never had a thermal shutdown. So you need to figure out what’s using so much CPU that’s causing it to get so hot.

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Agreeing with Bill. I never had problems with overheating until the past few months. I am using the osmc skin and there is no difference in where I have the vero 4k box located.

I’m still experiencing the thermal shutdown problem on my Vero4K, even with a fresh & clean install of OSMC and no addons installed. I get the thermal shutdown message in the console and then the red light shutdown. I’ve tried for a long time to narrow it down in order to actuallly see what causes the CPU to all of a sudden spike but I just can’t wrap my head around it. The problem seems completly random in pattern, sometimes it occur every other day, sometimes in can pass a week without shutting down. However, I think that it had never shut down while playing content, only while idle at the homescreen, which makes it even more strange since I’ve no way to reproduce the issue. Is there some way of logging/debugging this? A logfile that will persists when the Vero shutdowns? Any help is much appreciated because this is starting to drive me insane. Thanks in advance.

Yes, logfiles will survive a shutdown. So next time that it happens, please post logs.

Thank you for quick reply. Will it be sufficient with debug logging enabled in Kodi or should I try to gather more information on the CPU usage from something like this? command line - How to log CPU load? - Ask Ubuntu
Please also bear in mind that I will have to have this running for a longer period of time since I cannot reproduce/force the problem to occur.

I would suggest starting with just debug logs. If that doesn’t show anything useful we can try other things. It could he helpful to post logs now, so we have a baseline.

You did mention that this is a fresh install. Did you restore an existing .kodi directory, or is that also using the basic setup?

Alright. I digged around some more last night and I discovered a running add-on called “Trakt” that I wasn’t aware of, I’m wondering if it could have been installed as a part of some skin I tried out. Do you have any experience from this add-on to be causing CPU spikes?

I’ve disabled the add-on in question now to see if it will make any difference regarding the thermal shutdowns and if not, I will post logs in order to troubleshoot this further. Thank you for your assistance this far.

Personally, I’ve been using trakt for years, without any such issue.

Hello, I’m having a similar problem:
I use Vero 4k as a server, I stream to kodi for xbox within the lan via 5g wifi network, And for a few weeks it has been crashing for high temperatures. It’s about 98 degrees and after a while the LED turns red, I can just turn it off and wait for it to cool down. How can I fix it? By now it’s been a while since I use this device, I’ve only installed transmission as an extra

If you disable Transmission temporarily, do the temperatures go down?

Transmission is not downloading, it’s just started. Just started is at 57 degrees

I would keep it disabled and monitor the temperatures.