Announce: SuperDateTime - Current Date/Temperature and/or Baseball Screensaver

[GoCubs]

Sorry, maybe I should have been more clear. The issue isn't that I was wondering how to assign custom IR triggers, but I was hoping the plugin would have the functionality to do a temporary display.

I used the name "superdatetime" attached to a button and it produced no results. To me this says either of two things.

1. The name is incorrect - if so, what does it need to be?

2. SuperDateTime plug simply lacks the functionality found in DateTime that does a temporary display when called in this manner.

I took the name from inside the SuperDateTime plugin. I also made the IR changes for DateTime and that plugin works properly in this way - the time displays for a few seconds after being called.

I believe "superdatetime" is the correct name.

I wouldn't say SuperDateTime lacks the functionality provided in DateTime. SuperDateTime was created (although a while back) from the DateTime code. DateTime is pretty simple and after a fresh quick look at its code I don't see anything special to support extra remote functionality. Assuming you're doing everything the same between the two screensavers the only thing I can think of is maybe the custom remote stuff included in SuperDateTime overrides the other changes you're making.

When I have time (I'm still sick and way backlogged at the office) I'll try to look into it. I know a lot of people have asked about this sort of thing in the past.

-Greg

[GoCubs]

I've gone ahead and lifted SuperDateTime 5.0.0 from its Beta status since it seems to be working well for most people now. Compared to the latest beta this version has some additional icons and some code tweaks to help work with SOME SlimServer 7.0 builds. I haven't figured out the best approach to 7.0 yet...

This version introduces 34 graphical weather icons based on code from Martin Rehfeld's WeatherTime screensaver. Pressing the up/down bottoms will scroll through the forecasts as well as various display options that include/omit the forecast icons.
MLB, NBA, and NHL refreshing logic has been enhanced. The previous day's game information will continue to be shown/refreshed until 5am Eastern time. Refreshing will also stop on a given day once all the games you are monitoring have completed.
To save screen space Hi/Low and Precip information is no longer shown when the time is displayed with a large font (non Transporters only). The $largeFontTimeIcon variable can be changed by the user if they wish to show the hi/low and precip information or remove the current condition icon.
Added support for college football and tweaked code to handle ranked team name shortening.
Added experimental support for MLB and NFL team icons (must be enabled from plugin settings).
Parsing and networking tweaks.
Special thanks to Mike Meyer and Yannzola for contributing some of the weather icons.

http://gregbrown.net/squeeze/

Cheers
-Greg

[fred7]

I've been using SuperDateTime for a while now and I installed the latest version (5.0.0) with the new graphics and I think that it's great but I have a problem. When I use version 5.0.0 I see that slim.exe memory usage continually increases - slowly but surely. After running for a few days it can use up over 1GB of memory. When I revert back to version 4.1.2 everything seems okay. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Is there anything that anybody suggest that I try?

Here is my system information:

SlimServer Version: 6.5.1 - 11039 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
Server IP address: 192.168.2.2
Perl Version: 5.8.8 MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
MySQL Version: 5.0.22-community-nt

Thanks in advance.

[GoCubs]

I've been using SuperDateTime for a while now and I installed the latest version (5.0.0) with the new graphics and I think that it's great but I have a problem. When I use version 5.0.0 I see that slim.exe memory usage continually increases - slowly but surely. After running for a few days it can use up over 1GB of memory. When I revert back to version 4.1.2 everything seems okay. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Is there anything that anybody suggest that I try?

Here is my system information:

SlimServer Version: 6.5.1 - 11039 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
Server IP address: 192.168.2.2
Perl Version: 5.8.8 MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
MySQL Version: 5.0.22-community-nt

Thanks in advance.

Hey Fred-

Hmmmm. You're the first to mention this so I'm not sure what to say. If you leave 6.5.1 running without the plugin installed does the memory increase? Does the increase occur at a constant rate even when you're not using any players at all? I haven't paid particular attention to the memory usage on my server and I just restarted it yesterday, but it's at 55,680k right now and appears to be holding steady.

Before SuperDateTime I had not done any Perl programming. To be honest I'm not sure how it handles memory/garbage collection/etc.

Let me know what you find.

-Greg

[fred7]

Hey Fred-

Hmmmm. You're the first to mention this so I'm not sure what to say. If you leave 6.5.1 running without the plugin installed does the memory increase? Does the increase occur at a constant rate even when you're not using any players at all? I haven't paid particular attention to the memory usage on my server and I just restarted it yesterday, but it's at 55,680k right now and appears to be holding steady.

Before SuperDateTime I had not done any Perl programming. To be honest I'm not sure how it handles memory/garbage collection/etc.

Let me know what you find.

-Greg

Thanks for the response Greg. I use your Sirius plugin and really appreciate all of the work that you put into your plugins. I have 3 SB3's and if I use the 5.0.0 version of SuperDateTime the memory continually goes up little by little when all three are off - they access the SuperDateTime plugin when off. When I revert back to 4.1.2 my memory usage pretty much stays at 87,774K when all are off. I haven't tried completely removing the plugin. I also haven't tried some other things that may be helpful like unplugging my SB's and seeing if things change with only one running (or none running), removing any other plugins to see if there is some kind of interaction, using debug mode, etc. The only other thing that I tried was I was originally running a nightly version of SS 6.5.1 from October and got the latest nightly but I had the same results with each version of SS. I have company this week so I can't do too much debugging - it may turn out to be something specific on my setup. If I find anything I'll post the results. I mainly wanted to make a post to see if anyone else is having an issue since this is a very popular and useful plugin. I'm okay with using the 4.1.2 version which works great until I have time to see if I can find some patterns.

[GoCubs]

Thanks for the response Greg. I use your Sirius plugin and really appreciate all of the work that you put into your plugins. I have 3 SB3's and if I use the 5.0.0 version of SuperDateTime the memory continually goes up little by little when all three are off - they access the SuperDateTime plugin when off. When I revert back to 4.1.2 my memory usage pretty much stays at 87,774K when all are off. I haven't tried completely removing the plugin. I also haven't tried some other things that may be helpful like unplugging my SB's and seeing if things change with only one running (or none running), removing any other plugins to see if there is some kind of interaction, using debug mode, etc. The only other thing that I tried was I was originally running a nightly version of SS 6.5.1 from October and got the latest nightly but I had the same results with each version of SS. I have company this week so I can't do too much debugging - it may turn out to be something specific on my setup. If I find anything I'll post the results. I mainly wanted to make a post to see if anyone else is having an issue since this is a very popular and useful plugin. I'm okay with using the 4.1.2 version which works great until I have time to see if I can find some patterns.

My current setup includes a Transporter, SB3, and a SB2. All have SDT as the offsaver. I just remoted into my home server again and now the memory usage has dropped down to 37,248. Memory usage does go up a little when a data update triggers, but it seems to go back to around where it was shortly after (probably when Perl does some sort of memory cleanup). When you have some time and can do additional testing let me know what you find. Unless other people complain I'll assume it's something with your set up. I'll keep an eye on my server too.

-Greg

[fred7]

Hi Greg -

I tried a bunch of things to see if I could get the memory leak to stop and I couldn't on my main system. One interesting thing was when I unplugged all of my SB3's and started SS the memory leak went away but as soon as I plugged one of the boxes in the memory leak started. Even if I unplugged it afterwards the leak continued. Maybe the plugin doesn't start until a SB is connected?

I then tried using another machine that I had and the leak was on that one too. So I downgraded from SS 6.5.1 to 6.5.0 on the test machine and then SuperDateTime worked fine without any memory leak. It seems to me that the leak has something to do with the 6.5.1 versions. I was running the latest nightly on the test machine but I had problems with the previous 6.5.1 nightlies also. Anyway, I need 6.5.1 for Internet Radio on Windows (there is some sort of bug with Live365 and I think it also affects your excellent Sirius plugin).

Here are the results that I found on my systems:

Windows XP with SS 6.5.1 and SDT 4.1.2 - okay
Windows XP with SS 6.5.1 and SDT 5.0.0 - memory leak

Windows XP with SS 6.5.0 and SDT 4.1.2 - okay
Windows XP with SS 6.5.0 and SDT 5.0.0 - okay

I hope this information helps someone in some way, it doesn't seem to be a problem with the plugin. It would also be useful to know if other people have the same problem.

- Fred

[GoCubs]

Hi Greg -

I tried a bunch of things to see if I could get the memory leak to stop and I couldn't on my main system. One interesting thing was when I unplugged all of my SB3's and started SS the memory leak went away but as soon as I plugged one of the boxes in the memory leak started. Even if I unplugged it afterwards the leak continued. Maybe the plugin doesn't start until a SB is connected?

I then tried using another machine that I had and the leak was on that one too. So I downgraded from SS 6.5.1 to 6.5.0 on the test machine and then SuperDateTime worked fine without any memory leak. It seems to me that the leak has something to do with the 6.5.1 versions. I was running the latest nightly on the test machine but I had problems with the previous 6.5.1 nightlies also. Anyway, I need 6.5.1 for Internet Radio on Windows (there is some sort of bug with Live365 and I think it also affects your excellent Sirius plugin).

Here are the results that I found on my systems:

Windows XP with SS 6.5.1 and SDT 4.1.2 - okay
Windows XP with SS 6.5.1 and SDT 5.0.0 - memory leak

Windows XP with SS 6.5.0 and SDT 4.1.2 - okay
Windows XP with SS 6.5.0 and SDT 5.0.0 - okay

I hope this information helps someone in some way, it doesn't seem to be a problem with the plugin. It would also be useful to know if other people have the same problem.

Hey Fred-
Thanks for your additional testing. Those are some interesting findings. I don't believe I've restarted my server at home since my previous posting and it's currently at 47mb, so it doesn't appear to be having a memory leak. It's running a 6.5.1 nightly from 12/9/06.

I'm guessing it's something with SlimServer since it occurs in 6.5.1 and not 6.5.0. Perhaps something changed between my nightly and your nightly that is causing it in your 6.5.1 and not my 6.5.1. Or it could also be some sort of setting you're using that I am not... Hmmmmm... not really sure what the next step would be. So far there havent been any other posts of people experiencing the leak.

-Greg

[fred7]

Hi Greg,

After thinking about all of the changes that I made I realized that I had to start from scratch to get 6.5.0 working by uninstalling everything so I wiped out my slimserver.pref in the process. I didn't want to do that because it took me a while to set up my system how I liked it. Anyway, after starting from scratch I was able to upgrade to 6.5.1 and everything seems fine now. Maybe something in my slimserver.pref file was causing a problem. I have had to start from scratch in the past (wiping out my slimserver.pref file) due to other issues that I can't remember (I think passwords for Internet Radio). I really love the Squeezebox but this problem with the slimserver.pref file needing to be erased and started from scratch has been a big annoyance a few times (I know that it's not your problem) because it is really a pain to have to get SlimServer set up how I like it again. I have never edited the file 'by hand', I've always used the interface so I don't think that it should get corrupted. It is kind of odd that one of the settings in the file would cause a memory leak but at least everything is working for me now. Sorry if I led anyone down the wrong path.

Thanks,
Fred

[GoCubs]

Hi Greg,

After thinking about all of the changes that I made I realized that I had to start from scratch to get 6.5.0 working by uninstalling everything so I wiped out my slimserver.pref in the process. I didn't want to do that because it took me a while to set up my system how I liked it. Anyway, after starting from scratch I was able to upgrade to 6.5.1 and everything seems fine now. Maybe something in my slimserver.pref file was causing a problem. I have had to start from scratch in the past (wiping out my slimserver.pref file) due to other issues that I can't remember (I think passwords for Internet Radio). I really love the Squeezebox but this problem with the slimserver.pref file needing to be erased and started from scratch has been a big annoyance a few times (I know that it's not your problem) because it is really a pain to have to get SlimServer set up how I like it again. I have never edited the file 'by hand', I've always used the interface so I don't think that it should get corrupted. It is kind of odd that one of the settings in the file would cause a memory leak but at least everything is working for me now. Sorry if I led anyone down the wrong path.

It's all good. Hopefully the leak wont resurface. I agree with your points... and there's a lot of changes going on in 7.0 that will hopefully clean some of those issues up (although all existing plugins are going to have to be updated to work in 7.0 at all ) A few weeks back I began updating SuperDateTime for 7.0 and got it working on one of the nightlies but since then quite a few substantial changes have gone in so I'm afraid to try it out with a recent 7.0 nightly!

-Greg