Announce: Beta version of SvrPowerControl

[Roger66]

I'm not excited about SBS 7.4

I have to ask: If sleep monitoring is important to you, and if 7.3.4 isn't missing anything you can't live without, why not go back to 7.3.4, for the time being?

So do I. I had the beta of 7.4 installed and was not amused when the (beta) migration to mySB.com started one night and everything was broken down with all my SN favorites gone. I went back to 7.3.3 immediately. But as you know SN user respective users of mySB.com are now forced by logitech to update. And I'm a daily mySB.com user. Because I use the Boom each day as alarm clock and listening the news via mySB.com in the morning without my PC running. So especially automatic hibernate to mySB.com is important for me.

Roger: give http://srvrpowerctrl.googlecode.com/...l_20091020.zip a try.

Thank you, I'll try it this night and report to you.

You weren't crazy.

Never thought so .

Anyway, I apologize for my earlier crankiness.

No problem. You are a volunteer doing a good job. Everybody should keep that in mind - me too. But even volunteers need feedback about issues of their software, so I just tried to help you a little bit here .

I apologize for my rather harsh posting, too.

regards
Roger

[danco]

So, unless you are using a Squeezebox Radio or Squeezebox Touch, my attitude is 'why bother' with 7.4? I'm as susceptible to 'update fever' as the next person. But not in this case. My 'production' music server at home still runs 7.3.4 and SrvrPowerCtrl seems to be working well there.

I quite see that you want things to be enjoyable for you. All this volunteer work is a gift to the community.

But more and more of us will be getting a Touch or a Radio in the coming months (my Radio arrived a few minutes ago), so please keep up the good work even if it does not directly benefityou.

[epoch1970]

Gordon, isn't it a bit disappointing that you've not been upgraded to the status of beta-tester, so you'd have the hardware in advance?
--Unless of course you don't care for the poisoned gift.

Out of curiosity, how many downloads/users you think you have for srvPowerControl ?

(this message is only vaguely connoted to the previous ones. I guess it is well understood that anyone is free to grow a beard and code its own plugin if needed.)

[dip]

I run SrvrPowerCtrl's Debian setup script and now suspend works with the latest beta. Thanks a lot.

One small point. After waking up the server I always get the following empty "Now trying to execute" line in server.log.

[09-10-21 22:16:12.0014] Plugins::SrvrPowerCtrl::Util::SystemExecCmd (550) Now trying to execute sudo /usr/sbin/pm-suspend
[09-10-21 22:22:56.9270] Plugins::SrvrPowerCtrl::Watchdog::OnWakeupWatchdog (498) Wakeup Call!!
[09-10-21 22:22:56.9278] Plugins::SrvrPowerCtrl::Util::SystemExecCmd (550) Now trying to execute

[gharris999]

I run SrvrPowerCtrl's Debian setup script and now suspend works with the latest beta. Thanks a lot.

One small point. After waking up the server I always get the following empty "Now trying to execute" line in server.log.

[09-10-21 22:16:12.0014] Plugins::SrvrPowerCtrl::Util::SystemExecCmd (550) Now trying to execute sudo /usr/sbin/pm-suspend
[09-10-21 22:22:56.9270] Plugins::SrvrPowerCtrl::Watchdog::OnWakeupWatchdog (498) Wakeup Call!!
[09-10-21 22:22:56.9278] Plugins::SrvrPowerCtrl::Util::SystemExecCmd (550) Now trying to execute

I'm seeing more and more issues like this one. Where I used to be able to test to see if a variable was defined, I now have to test to see if it's empty too. E.g: in 7.3.x, this code returned without trying to execute $command if a command wasn't defined for the on-wakeup event:

	if (!defined($command)) {
		return -1;
	}

With 7.4, I'm finding more and more places where I have to change to:

	if (!$command) {
		return -1;
	}

..which is probably better practice, anyway. It just makes me nervous because I won't have SC 7.3.x to test with for a while yet and I'm worried that I'm introducing a raft of bugs for SqueezeCenter.

I assume that this new behavior is because 7.4 is bringing some subtle change to how perl is executing the code. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It might force me to be a less sloppy perl programmer.

[gharris999]

Gordon, isn't it a bit disappointing that you've not been upgraded to the status of beta-tester, so you'd have the hardware in advance?
--Unless of course you don't care for the poisoned gift.

Out of curiosity, how many downloads/users you think you have for srvPowerControl ?

(this message is only vaguely connoted to the previous ones. I guess it is well understood that anyone is free to grow a beard and code its own plugin if needed.)

Actually, I'm on the Touch hwbeta, for which I have to thank the SD & Logitech folks. I assume that this is due to the number of SlimDevices I've purchased over the years (2 SB1s, 3 SB2s, 6 SB3s, 1 Transporter, 1 Duet, 6 SBCs) rather than anyone at Logitech noticing this plugin or my ravings elsewhere on these forums.

Re downloads for SrvrPowerCtrl: hard to say. If you can believe http://code.google.com/p/srvrpowerctrl/downloads/list, then some 1,500 folks have downloaded it since the end of June. As far as SBS plugins go, I have no idea if that is a pathetically small number or not.

[Roger66]

Roger: give http://srvrpowerctrl.googlecode.com/...l_20091020.zip a try.

Sorry, sleep monitoring still doesn't work. At least when I use the option "sleep after current song". Didn't try the 15min option.

All the SB menu serverpowercontrol functions are working fine (as always), but the menu entries on SB server web frontend don't. "Suspend to mySB.com" f.e. ends up in a loop with the remote control page of mySB.com open, which even comes up again immediately after closing this page.

Roger

[gharris999]

Sorry, sleep monitoring still doesn't work. At least when I use the option "sleep after current song". Didn't try the 15min option.

All the SB menu serverpowercontrol functions are working fine (as always), but the menu entries on SB server web frontend don't. "Suspend to mySB.com" f.e. ends up in a loop with the remote control page of mySB.com open, which even comes up again immediately after closing this page.

Roger

Re sleep not working: was the current song longer than 2 minutes? If not, try a slightly longer song. Also, please switch the SrvrPowerCtrl logging to debug and post the relevant portions of the log. Just post the SrvrPowerCtrl messages, please.

Re mysb.com remote control page: Which browser are you using? SrvrPowerCtrl trying to point the browser to the Remote Control page ultimately may not work. This was an experiment. Other than that, are any of the other SrvrPowerCtrl webUI menu items messing up?

[peterw]

	if (!$command) {
		return -1;
	}

..which is probably better practice, anyway.

I wouldn't think so. More Perlish, maybe. Better? (!$command) returns true for $command = undef, $command = 0, $command = "", and who knows what else. Maybe you simply need to initialize with my $command = undef; -- then your defined() would be crystal clear. (!$command) is the kind of foolishness I really dislike in loosely typed languages.

[epoch1970]

Actually, I'm on the Touch hwbeta, for which I have to thank the SD & Logitech folks. I assume that this is due to the number of SlimDevices I've purchased over the years (2 SB1s, 3 SB2s, 6 SB3s, 1 Transporter, 1 Duet, 6 SBCs) rather than anyone at Logitech noticing this plugin or my ravings elsewhere on these forums.

Re downloads for SrvrPowerCtrl: hard to say. If you can believe http://code.google.com/p/srvrpowerctrl/downloads/list, then some 1,500 folks have downloaded it since the end of June. As far as SBS plugins go, I have no idea if that is a pathetically small number or not.

That's nice to know. I'm sure it has to do with your involvement as a community developer.

Shame you do not have download numbers split by releases. However, I ran a spreadsheet for fun.
- Let say a PC is on 16hr/day without srvPowerControl, 8 hrs off, and 10hrs on/14hrs sleeping with the plugin. Let's imagine the 8 hrs off draw 0 current, which is totally wrong for most people: off is soft-off, this mode draws as much as sleep/hibernate.
- If the PC draws 60W running (a conservative figure) and 15W sleeping, each of us running the plugin on the server are saving 4.5kWh per month. 18kWh June-to-Sept, 56kWh over a year. A financial gain of $6.2 over the year, woohoo.
- Now, let say 1.500 downloads means 500 PCs/households using srvPowerControl: this entire population will save over the year $3.100, not quite enough for you to make a living --considering over a dozen players and the house that comes with it :-)

More interestingly, the collective power savings would amount to 9GWh over 4 months, 27GWh over the year. Those 500 fine people would avoid the emission of about 13.5 tons of CO2/yr (quite conservative figure of 500g/kWh delivered). This is the equivalent of having planted +1100 trees on the 1st day of the year. 27GWh over a year is also the total, yearly electricity consumption of 2.5 US households (ahem.)

So, you may go in the woods chop up to 100 trees each month, in case SBS|perl|users run you amok: you've earned that right.
I will contribute $2 to your bail, in case the judge doesn't understand it that way

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...m/epm_sum.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/rec...nduse2001.html
http://www.agirpourlenvironnement.or...uCO2longue.pdf (PDF, in french: CO2/electric kWh, FR)
http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampa...acts/index.asp