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[hoyt]

I've been having issues with my IdPi for a while.  My IdPi is connected to an MC server as a remote library.  It was connected via wifi, but I just ran a CAT6 cable to eliminate possible wifi issues as the problem.  I get the same problem if I connect to the remote library and play in JRemote when connected to the IdPi to the built in HDMI output, or if I connect JRemote to my server and output to the IdPi via DLNA.

The problem is that I'll hit play and it'll play for a few seconds, maybe a minute, maybe more, but it rarely ever plays for >1 song.  Then it'll stop.  I'll open up JRemote and see that I'm disconnected from the IdPi, so I reconnect, hit play again and it'll start again and eventually just stop.  If I'm in the VNC viewer, I can see that the time bar just stops (4:17 of a 6:00 track for example).

I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this, but I'd like to now that I have a hardwired connection to it.  I feel like the problem likely lies in the IdPi now that I've eliminated the wifi.  Thanks!

EDIT: I should note that I just updated it to .80 last night as a troubleshooting step.  Also, it's a pi3 B+.

[astromo]

I've got an IdPi 3B and 3B+.

I'll see if I can do the same. Hopefully over the course of the next 24 hours.

[hoyt]

Any ideas?  The IdPi is essentially useless for me because I can never play more than 3 tracks. 

[bob]

Did you change any of the IdPi's media network settings?

[hoyt]

Did you change any of the IdPi's media network settings?

Sorry - for some reason I hadn't seen this follow up until now.  I have the IdPi set to use the wired network (shut off the wifi) but I didn't change anything else in the Pi for that.  It gets a static IP, DNS, DHCP, etc. from my router.

[bob]

What's the format of the tracks?
Are you doing any DSP on them?


It's starting to sound like a hardware issue. Can you try a different power supply?

[hoyt]

What's the format of the tracks?
Are you doing any DSP on them?


It's starting to sound like a hardware issue. Can you try a different power supply?

No DSP, just 16 bit FLACs mostly.

I'll try a new power supply this afternoon and see if I see a difference.  For what it's worth, I've never seen the power supply icon on the desktop (or is that only on the RPi4...?).

[JimH]

The Pi's don't have much power, so if you plug in anything it needs to be separately powered.  Or a bigger power supply.  Try a Google search on this subject.

[hoyt]

The Pi's don't have much power, so if you plug in anything it needs to be separately powered.  Or a bigger power supply.  Try a Google search on this subject.

Thanks Jim.  I have 4 Raspberry Pis around my house, so I generally have an idea about their picky power requirements.  This device has only a Z Wave stick plugged into the USB for Engen, so no external drives using additional UBS power.

I swapped out the power supply and got the same outcome.  Here are my exact steps.

I turned on my TV so I could see the desktop and opened up VNC so I could easily control the mouse.  I wanted to take Gizmo/ JRemote2 out of the equation.  The IdPi is connected to my Win10 library.  I browse via VNC and find an album (FLAC16) and hit play.  It starts playing on the stereo.  I RDP to my Win10 library and see the first track of that album showing in the Playing Now window.  The filename is m01p://internal_server_ip:53199/MCWS/v1/File/GetFile?File=#####.  Track 1, 2 and 3 seem to play just fine.  As Track 3 finishes, the display of MC on the IdPi freezes.  It shows 3:29/3:41.  On my Win10 library, the time advances just fine.  Track 4 starts playing out of my stereo, but the IdPi is still showing Track 3 frozen at 3:29.  I go to VNC, flip to the main menu, then flip back to MC and it's now a solid white screen (but music is still playing).  5 minutes into Track 4, the MC GUI snapped back to reality.

At the end of Track 6, music stopped.  The Win10 library says the state is 'stopped.'  The IdPi GUI doesn't look like it's stopped (button is showing Pause, not Play).  The IdPi is showing a playback position of 3:49/4:50.  In VNC, I flip to the main menu, then back to MC GUI and it's a white screen again. 

A few minutes later, the IdPi "wakes up" and moves to track 7.

This is slightly different behavior than I'm used to, usually it freezes playback, but perhaps I don't wait for it to respond like I did here and instead I just give up and turn it off.  I'm also typically using a remote, so perhaps the remote disconnects from the IdPi then tells me it's stopped.

Also, to take the Win10 library out of the equation, I generally play from that library to my Mac during the day for hours at a time without issue. 

Let me know what data would be helpful to figure this out.  Thanks!

[hoyt]

I realized I did have some DSP setup for output format.  This shouldn't have come into play because I was playing a 16/44.1 album, but I just disabled that.  I also had "load full album into memory" set.  I disabled that.  Will retest with those changes.

EDIT:  This did not make a difference.  In fact, during the first track the IdPi froze at 2:50/5:12, sound kept playing, but at the end of the track it just stopped.  The Win10 library shows playback as 'stopped.'  The IdPi GUI is frozen again, flipping to main menu and back the MC GUI goes all white.

[hoyt]

I just queued up an album with JRemote2, and this is what I normally experience (vs using VNC and the MC GUI).  It played one track, then stopped (after 10 minutes, it had not started on Track 2).  I see the whole album in the Playing Now queue when I look in VNC, but it didn't advance past the Track 1.

When I look on the Win10 library, I actually don't see any tracks from this album in the "Playing From" library, though I do see an MCWS call on the Win10 library in the Media Network (GET: http://internal_ip:52199/MCWS/v1/File/GetFile?File=###). Is that expected that it wouldn't show in Playing From when using JRemote2 like this?

[bob]

I just queued up an album with JRemote2, and this is what I normally experience (vs using VNC and the MC GUI).  It played one track, then stopped (after 10 minutes, it had not started on Track 2).  I see the whole album in the Playing Now queue when I look in VNC, but it didn't advance past the Track 1.

When I look on the Win10 library, I actually don't see any tracks from this album in the "Playing From" library, though I do see an MCWS call on the Win10 library in the Media Network (GET: http://internal_ip:52199/MCWS/v1/File/GetFile?File=###). Is that expected that it wouldn't show in Playing From when using JRemote2 like this?

That's correct.
MCWS playback doesn't have a zone associated with it.

[hoyt]

So when I use MCWS playback, I initiate an entire album in JRemote2, but it only plays one track.  Sometimes I'll get 2, but almost always just 1 before it stops.

If I playback using the MC GUI, if I get lucky, it'll play 5 tracks "normally."  Then there will be a significant delay before it plays track 6 - seconds to minutes.  The same will then occur for Track 7, etc.  During this time, the MC GUI is frozen, and connecting to the IdPi via MCWS (JRemote2) doesn't work.  It just says the server is offline.  There's almost always a freezing event at the end of every track.  Sometimes that freeze is short enough that the next track plays just fine but I never see the MC GUI on the IdPi say it's playing 4:59/ 5:00, then 5:00/ 5:00.  It will always freeze at about 4:40/5:00 for example.

This is the playback issue that I'd like to solve.  To put it bluntly, I can't use the IdPi because playback is unreliable.  It seems others don't have this issue, but I'm not sure what else to do because the OS is locked down.  So I can't see what it's trying to do, if the CPU is pegged at 100%, etc.  It doesn't appear to be a network issue because I went hard wired, and when this is occurring, I can still VNC to the IdPi and at least interact with the Main Menu stuff, just not the MC GUI.  I don't see that I can run a speed test anywhere in the Main Menu, but I assume if I did, it would be plenty of bandwidth to move a FLAC file across my network.

Are there special IdPi logs that I can generate?

I could try buying a Pi4 (I have one in the house already, but it's in use for Home Assistant, so I can't really take it offline to play with it for too long at a time or my lights don't work).  How hard is it to flip the SD Card over from a 3 to a 4 for the IdPi?  Is there support for 64 bit on the IdPi?  If so, maybe I'd go crazy and get 8 gb of ram.

[bob]

The new IdPi cards can run on a Pi3 or Pi4
The older cards can't run on a Pi4, the kernel isn't new enough.
If your IdPi is up to date the Id version will be 25.0.10 for the newer cards
and
24.0.17 for the older cards (or less if it was prior to the release of the 3B+)

There is no 64 bit IdPi version as of this time. 64 bit support for the Pi4 isn't mainstream yet.

Yours really is acting totally wacky IMO. BTW, the ZWave sticks do pull a pretty fair amount of power, if you haven't tried a higher amperage power supply I'd still do that first.

Also verify that disk buffering is disabled under Options->Media Network->Advanced.

You can get a log by turning logging on under Help->Logging (set a maximum size since it will be writing the log file to the SDCard). Turn off logging after it fails.

You can view/copy that log by right-clicking on the desktop, opening the browser, navigating to
file:///home/media/.jriver/Media Center Id/Log.txt
Then just use the browser File->Save Page as
dialog to save the log on /export/media where you will then be able to grab it via SMB or CIFS from your PC/Mac.

[hoyt]

Thanks!  I'll take a look at the logs to see if anything jumps out to me.  Hearing you say that it's acting wacky is oddly reassuring.  It does show Id 24.0.17.  Is the difference between that and Id 25.0.10 simply the card hardware?  If so, is it possible to just clone it to a newer SD card using dd?  I have a handful of 32 gb ones that I bought recently before moving my Pi 4 to an SSD.

Also, I may just pull the Z-Wave stick for a bit to test.  I have a few things still running on Engen because they're a PITA to move to another Z-Wave network (ceiling fans that I have to take down the housing to reset, a gate sensor that's been glued/ sealed, etc).  If that's causing a problem it may just move up my desire to move those to Home Assistant sooner rather than later.

[bob]

Thanks!  I'll take a look at the logs to see if anything jumps out to me.  Hearing you say that it's acting wacky is oddly reassuring.  It does show Id 24.0.17.  Is the difference between that and Id 25.0.10 simply the card hardware?  If so, is it possible to just clone it to a newer SD card using dd?  I have a handful of 32 gb ones that I bought recently before moving my Pi 4 to an SSD.

Also, I may just pull the Z-Wave stick for a bit to test.  I have a few things still running on Engen because they're a PITA to move to another Z-Wave network (ceiling fans that I have to take down the housing to reset, a gate sensor that's been glued/ sealed, etc).  If that's causing a problem it may just move up my desire to move those to Home Assistant sooner rather than later.

You can't get to 25.0.10 without getting a newer card from us. The whole underlying OS is different so it can support the Pi4.
Also note that there is an incompatibility between some zwave sticks and the Pi4 with regards to current draw. The Pi4 won't allow the zwave stick to be connected directly to it's usb controller, you need to use at least a mini hub (even unpowered will do) to make it work.

[hoyt]

Makes sense.  I have one of these on my Pi4 running HA.  It's been quite reliable.  The combo of Z-Wave and Zigbee is nice as well so I'm less restricted on what type of 'thing' to buy:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GJ826F8/

I unplugged the Z Wave stick from the IdPi last night and it was significantly more responsive.  Even just using the GUI was less laggy.  I also booted up to headless mode and used VNC instead of the tv + vnc, so that might explain some of it.  I didn't do a ton of testing, so I'll do more tonight when I can, but it must be something relating to this.  I've hooked up a few different power supplies, some that I know are solid and produce 3 amps.  That should be well within the range of the Pi3 + Z Wave stick I would think.  The CanaKit ones are only 2.5 amps.  That strikes me as odd, but I know power supply + accessories on a Pi can be hard to nail down.

I then plugged the Z Wave stick back in and this morning through VNC have played an album.  It was back to pausing between tracks quite a bit.  I'm not in the same room, so just looking at the track progress every now and then.  When it gets to this pausing state, I can look at the system status monitor and the CPU is steady at 30-35%, ram is also unchanged at 30-35%.

I do have two externally powered USB hubs hooked up to other Pis running external drives, maybe I'll take one of those offline for a bit to try powering the Z Wave stick that way.  I'd like to know for sure what it is, but I'll probably just end up moving my remaining z wave devices over to HA and remove the stick entirely.

Thanks for the troubleshooting help!

[JimH]

I had a similar problem that was solved by using a different hub that Bob and Brad found.

Was it this one?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071JTSMVQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[JimH]

I found this in my email.  From Brad:

Bob did some testing with the Aeotec Z-Stick and the Pi 4. The
interesting thing was that it would not recognize any of the gen 5
(white) z-sticks, but it did recognize the gen 4 (black) z-stick. With
the older generation z-stick, Engen was running fine on the Pi 4. I did
some looking and found this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=245031

It sounds like the gen 5 z-stick pulls too much power initially, which
might trigger some kind of protection. There were quite a few other
people that reported the same thing. It sounds like it's an issue with
the gen 5 z-stick, and it doesn't sound like there will be a fix.

There was a simple hack to get around this. Basically, you can plug it
into a USB 2.0 hub (probably a powered hub), and it should work. Bob
tried out the hack and it does seem to work.

[hoyt]

Thanks Jim!

I just double checked my order.  I do in fact have that Gen5 Aeotec stick.  I would think with a Pi 3 it would just limit that power pull though, the Pi 4 is different because it actually has USB 3 ports.  But that is a bit out of my wheelhouse.  Knowing that there was an issue with this stick and power on the Pi 4s certainly leads me to believe that may be my issue here as well.

Later today I'll grab the powered USB hub I have and hook it up to the IdPi see what happens.

[hoyt]

It took me a bit of time to get back to this.  I finally pulled the pi offline that has a powered USB hub and put the hub on the IdPi with the Aeotec ZWave USB device plugged into it.  That seems to have solved my problem.  I've played back a whole album through the IdPi with JRemote2 with no issues.  That never happened previously, so I'm pretty sure that was the issue.

Thanks for the help!

[bob]

Hooray, thanks for reporting back!