Shutting down WiFi-connection while Box is in standby, missing feature for good sleep

[Dermaplex]

Well, you all are right that there are more threats to a good night sleep and health than WiFi waves. But I think I don't need to add another one having the Squeezbox Boom sitting next to my bed. Plus I can choose for myself if for instance I want to turn of my mobile phone at night or reduce other electric smog by shutting down unused devices or at least don't have them close to the bed.

And I guess especially the Boom is designed to be independent and work as an alarm clock. So there is absolutely no need to have a WiFi connection alive all the time. Or what if your internet is down or the radiostations livestream is dead - no wake up? Doesn't make sense to me! So the alarms need to be saved and activated internally and not coming via Squeezecenter or Squeezenetwork. And I don't know about you, I don't have my computer running day and night so it also doesn't make sense being able to activate the Box via the web interface because if I have to turn on my computer, I can also switch on the Squeezebox.

Speaking of other Squeezebox Players, they also don't need a permanent connection or is your 10000 Watts Home Theater system or stereo equipment always powered on? When you turn it on it is also time for the Squeezebox to connect. I plugged my Squeezebox Classic into the switched outlet of the amplifier - works just perfect. And if you want a standby clock, I guess there is not much engineering necessary to code this into the firmware without using the network.
At least the Boom has already an internal clock which it displays very nicely when not having a network connection. So this clock can also be used to establish a WiFi link when needed.

And adding the aspect of power consumption, if you are living in a country where you have to pay real money and not just peanuts for electricity, you start thinking twice if you really need all that standby gadgets running permanently. Every watt you save is saved money and less carbon dioxide destroying our planet.

I agree with this one. Even if the consumption is not a lot, and if a lot of people have "proven" than wifi waves are not dangerous, it is for me simply a better design to use an internal clock and use wireless when needed than relying on the internet to get the time (which seems a bit strange on a design point of view...).

[peterw]

I agree with this one. Even if the consumption is not a lot, and if a lot of people have "proven" than wifi waves are not dangerous, it is for me simply a better design to use an internal clock and use wireless when needed than relying on the internet to get the time (which seems a bit strange on a design point of view...).

Does it seem strange even when you consider daylight savings changes? The current design handles theat beautifully, as Windows, MacOS, and all other modern OSes handle daylight savings very well. Why spend money adding worldwide daylight savings logic to the Boom firmware (thereby also using more of its limited onboard resources) when the SqueezeNetwork and SqueezeCenter systems handle that for free?

I can see how you & cosmo might appreciate what you're asking for, I just can't imagine either of you can make the case to Logitech that the benefit would be worth the cost of implementing & supporting such a change (e.g., fielding calls from users who enable such a setting and then don't understand why their Controller doesn't see the Boom, or why it takes several seconds to turn the Boom on using its own power button).

-Peter

PS: I think the notion of getting time from anything other than the Internet is strange. What, hang a GPS antenna by my window? Set up a receiver for the WWVB radio time broadcasts from Colorado? Ick.

[sckramer]

I think the best part of the boom is that fact its always connected & ready to go, we're starting to over-complicate things -- I surprised we even added code to turn the amplifiers off.. it saves what .7 watts? c'mon!

do you turn your wireless router off every night? probably outputs more power...

in this world we're saturated with radio signals, at this moment you have 100+ HD TV channels flowing through your body ,

so if you're right we're already screwed

[jeffmeh]

This sort of nonsense is based on groundless fear, primitive superstition and abysmal ignorance. A WiFi signal is not harmful to anyone. And a milliwatt more or less, out of the kilowatts any house is always consuming, is absolutely meaningless. With this sort of superstitious jabber becoming more widespread, it's important that people who know better point out the utter foolishness of it. Anyone who seriously believes that the WiFi transmissions from a SqueezeBox might disturb their sleep or damage their brains really should sue every school they ever attended for failing to teach them simple, basic, fundamental facts of physical science. And anyone who talks about turning off a milliwatt in order to "save the planet" should not only learn something about physics and electrical power, they should go back to their early grammar school math book and get a grasp on the simple concept of fractions and proportions.

I certainly hope the Slim engineers know better than to let this sort of folderol influence their project schedules. There are plenty of more important things they can put their development efforts into than giving credence to lunacy.

Hear, hear!

[ghostrider]

Would you vote for a firmwaredevelopment which would solve this problem?

No!!!!!!!!

[cosmo]

Does it seem strange even when you consider daylight savings changes? Why spend money adding worldwide daylight savings logic to the Boom firmware when the SqueezeNetwork and SqueezeCenter systems handle that for free?

I think the notion of getting time from anything other than the Internet is strange. What, hang a GPS antenna by my window? Set up a receiver for the WWVB radio time broadcasts from Colorado? Ick.

I'm really surprised how high tech minded people without questioning sense seem to be nowadays. Do you remember radio alarm clocks before internet existed? I think they worked quite well and people still could handle changing the time manually twice a year for daylight savings changes.
But you won't even have to do this as it would be sufficient to sync the internal clock everytime you are online. This I guess is already happening on the boom.

I think the best part of the boom is that fact its always connected & ready to go, we're starting to over-complicate things -- I surprised we even added code to turn the amplifiers off.. it saves what .7 watts? c'mon!

do you turn your wireless router off every night? probably outputs more power...

Actually yes, WiFi is automatically shut off every night and turned on again in the morning by my wireless router. It also controlls the output power on demand and goes into energy savings mode at night for the LAN ports if no traffic occurs.

And about saving energy, it might be only a watt or two. But try to think to how many watts that summs up considering thousands of Squeezeboxes or even the millions of other standby devices worldwide!?

Let's say you save 2 watts, that's 17.5kWh per year. That is 17500kWh for 1000 Squeezeboxes which equals a carbondioxide output of about 10 tons that could be saved...

This sort of nonsense is based on groundless fear, primitive superstition and abysmal ignorance. A WiFi signal is not harmful to anyone.

Well well well, I guess there is no doubt that microwave radiation (which WiFi is) does effect human tissue and that there are many worldwide studies which prove that. It is also a matter of fact that the energy decreases drastically with distance from the radiation source which alsoe reduces the effects to the body.
So having a Boom standing right next to your head at night when using it as an alarm clock will most likely have some effect on your system, especially at night when the human cells try to regenerate preferably without any disturbance.

I'm not speaking of a health risk or harmful radiation here, it is just that the radiaton coming directly from the Squeezebox is unnecessary and adding up to all the other electromagnetic pollution around us.

There are thousands of websites with this topic, like http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiofreque...theffects.html for more information.

[Dogberry2]

There are thousands of websites with this topic, like http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiofreque...theffects.html for more information.

There are also thousands of websites devoted to Bigfoot, UFOs and Elvis sightings. Number of Google hits is not what determines the validity or reality of a phenomenon.

From various sources cited on the given OSHA link (after weeding through the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo):

Concerning radiofrequency fields, the balance of evidence to date suggests that exposure to low level RF fields (such as those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations) does not cause adverse health effects. ... Several recent epidemiological studies of mobile phone users found no convincing evidence of increased brain cancer risk. ... The biological evidence suggested that RF fields do not cause mutation or initiate or promote tumour formation, and the epidemiological data overall do not suggest causal associations between exposures to RF fields, in particular from mobile phone use, and the risk of cancer. ... The balance of evidence to date suggests that exposure to RF radiation below NRBP and ICNIRP guidelines do not cause adverse health effects to the general population.

Mobile phones and WiFi operate in the same general frequency band, but WiFi signals are at lower power.

Most of the so-called "debate" in the matter is not one of scientific evidence, but purely political. People who don't know better are afraid of RF signals, because to them, they're some mysterious magic in the air, and therefore scary. So they bombard political and social organizations with demands for "proof" that these mysterious forces aren't evil spirits, rotting their brains while they sleep. Political and social organizations have to respond, or risk looking as if they don't care about the masses. So they write reports, bloated with circumlocutions about how important it is that they study the issue and make sure they're protecting the public (which makes the "issue" sound much bigger than it is in reality) to make themselves look good. Buried deep in all the bureaucratic rhetoric can be found bits of actual scientific conclusions, which all state: no study has ever concluded that there's anything to worry about. Then they wrap it all up with some more bloviation about "continuing to study the issue" so the frightened masses will again be reassured that they're being watched over by a benevolent power (but this again puffs up the matter beyond what it deserves). At core, though, the only "debate" is at the political level: political organizations have to pay attention to everybody, regardless of whether their trepidation has any real basis.

If it makes someone feel better to unplug their SB at night, or to sleep in a tinfoil hat, or to burn the entrails of a goat and chant ancient Etruscan imprecations against mysterious forces in the air, that's their own business, and I say go for it, and have fun. Just leave the rest of us out of it. Once again: I hope the folks at Slim don't waste their time on this medieval bugaboo; they have more important things to do.

[Dogberry2]

Let's say you save 2 watts, that's 17.5kWh per year. That is 17500kWh for 1000 Squeezeboxes which equals a carbondioxide output of about 10 tons that could be saved...

First, the difference between a SqueezeBox in standby and a SqueezeBox unplugged is not watts, but milliwatts. (The exact spec is probably available somewhere, but the exact number is irrelevant.) It isn't a question of how many milliwatts, or even how many watts one would "save" (an inaccurate term, but I won't take the time to get into that, because it's also irrelevant). It's a question of proportions, or fractions, or percentages. Cutting back power consumption by, say, 0.01 watts (10 milliwatts) for a portion of each day when the device is unplugged (say 18 hours) comes to .0000075 KWH per day, or about .000225 KWH per month. If an average household uses around 225 KWH per month (which is a rather low estimate for a modern home in most industrialized nations), that's one ten-thousandth of one-percent, or one-millionth (1/1000000) of the total. A number so small as to be completely and utterly negligible. And you don't make it more important by multiplying it by a thousand devices, or a million, or fifty-seven billion: it still remains only 1/1000000 of the total, because every one of those thousand, or million, or fifty-seven billion houses are each using the same average number of KWH. That's what proportions are; that's what percentages are. No matter how many KWH it is when you multiply it by the number of devices, it's still a teeny-tiny itty-bitty, minuscule, negligible amount of the total.

Do you unplug your TV before you go to bed? Your kitchen stove? Your microwave oven? Every single one of them is drawing more power, all the time, than a SB in its idle state. And every single one of them is negligible and unimportant in terms of the overall power being used in your house. Why focus on the SB? You can save more power by brewing one less pot of coffee per month than by unplugging your idle SB during the night. If that makes you feel like you're "saving the planet" why not just cut back on coffee? (If you don't drink coffee, then make it "toast fewer bagels" or whatever else you do that uses an electrical heating element). But try to understand: micro-minuscule fractions of total power use are totally insignificant. If you want to live a modern, comfortable life in a modern, industrial society, you're going to use a lot of electricity. The alternative is to do a Ted Kaczynski and go live in a barebones cabin in the wilderness. Which would be up to you. But leave the rest of us out of it (and please don't go entirely down the Kaczynski trail; one of him was enough).

[aubuti]

First, the difference between a SqueezeBox in standby and a SqueezeBox unplugged is not watts, but milliwatts. (The exact spec is probably available somewhere, but the exact number is irrelevant.)

Yes, it is about proportions, but that doesn't mean you can make stuff up. The SB Classic and SB Duet Receiver each draw 3-5 watts (not milliwatts) when in standby. Prior to the latest Boom firmware update, I think a Boom in standby draws around 12w (I can't check that number with my Kill-a-Watt meter because my beta-testing Boom draws a lot more than the production Booms because they used a different PS). Still small relative to the fridge and the cable box, but most definitely not milliwatts.

[sckramer]

Let's say you save 2 watts, that's 17.5kWh per year. That is 17500kWh for 1000 Squeezeboxes which equals a carbondioxide output of about 10 tons that could be saved...




seems big, but that's like pissing in the ocean compared to the actual manufacture/logistics of the creating boom (and thats just the boom)

you're splitting hairs here