Weird alarm behaviour

[bluegaspode]

Actually the fallback alarm should be fading in (what firmware are you using on the Radio ?).

One also has to know, that the "sound effects" are also streamed from MySqueezebox.com (which might not be the most reliable streaming service around).

I suggest to either use
- a different alarm time (one or two minutes off your current time)
- a different alarm tune (either try a radio station indeed, it might be more reliable. If you are using your own server you might also want to add some "sound effect" to your local library as an alarm, just to avoid streaming from MySqueezebox.com).

[TopGeek]

Yepp happened to me today as well.. maybe it happens to everybody on the same day :-) But seriously, it's bloody annoying. I reckon the frequency of this occuring has increased, it seems to be every other day I wake up to this damned music.

The annoying thing is, I know that there's some sort of logic in the SBR which says "ok, I haven't got a connection to the internet and there's an alarm coming up so I'll use the onboard alarm" - or thereabouts ;-) So why the booming music? - can they not choose something a little easier on the ear... oh and I don't know, maybe fade it in. Like some birds tweeting or something... I'm sure my Boom had that option.

So how do I escalate this? - book a bug ticket in? I'd seriously send the thing back to Logitech if I could, but it's 2 months old... what are the chances?

Matt.

Sorry to hear you have the same problem. It could indeed be a server issue so it would be nice to know that Logitech is aware of it. I don't know how to draw it to there attention. Maybe they monitor this forum.

[TopGeek]

Actually the fallback alarm should be fading in (what firmware are you using on the Radio ?).

One also has to know, that the "sound effects" are also streamed from MySqueezebox.com (which might not be the most reliable streaming service around).

I suggest to either use
- a different alarm time (one or two minutes off your current time)
- a different alarm tune (either try a radio station indeed, it might be more reliable. If you are using your own server you might also want to add some "sound effect" to your local library as an alarm, just to avoid streaming from MySqueezebox.com).

The firmware is the latest. I regularly ask for an update. It probably is a server fault and I am using mysqueezebox.com, not my own PC.
I'm not clear why you suggest a different time setting and I do not want to use the radio station as an alarm. I deliberately selected a gentle cascade sound fading in, as my wife sleeps longer than me and I respond to the alarm well before it wakes her.

[Mnyb]

Re the time setting bluegaspode may think mysqueezebox.com my be "busy" at even times many people wake up at 06:00 or similar times .

The alarm is not only a local event on the radio mysqueezebox.com initiate the whole thing and cue up the sound or radio station, except for the backup alarm wich is done by the radio itself ( the anoying disco tune )

[chill]

Just chiming in here with another similar tale. I've had a radio for two or three months and the alarm has been totally reliable from day one. Nevertheless I'd read so many scare stories on here that I've had a backup alarm on another device, set 15 minutes behind the SBR.

For the last couple of mornings my SBR alarm has failed me - same symptoms as others have reported: late, loud, wrong music. Obviously, first thing in the morning isn't the time to try and troubleshoot these things, but in fact the cause was simple. The radio station I use has changed it's format. Strangely my SB devices still seem to connect to the old stream, but they seem to be playing silence. So in fact the SBR seems quite intelligent in this case - it seems to detect that what it's playing is silent and then play something else to wake me up.

[TopGeek]

It's not like that in my case. The alarm is set to come on with a selected sound effect not a radio station. The SBR is switched off so, at alarm time, the SBS should trigger the sound effect. Presumably, if that fails the SBR will trigger its own backup alarm - ie. the canned music.
Consequently, I still believe this to be an online SBS problem.
Whatever, it's not good enough that a device costing that much has the number of problems that this forum indicates.
The most important of those issues is that it is not a radio - it's a player - so the name is misleading. The only thing it does is to play whatever is available on the mysqueezebox.com server.
On the positive side, it does (currently) allow me to listen to my favourite foreign radio stations and (mostly) it does have a very nice 'sleep' function.

[Mnyb]

It's not like that in my case. The alarm is set to come on with a selected sound effect not a radio station. The SBR is switched off so, at alarm time, the SBS should trigger the sound effect. Presumably, if that fails the SBR will trigger its own backup alarm - ie. the canned music.
Consequently, I still believe this to be an online SBS problem.
Whatever, it's not good enough that a device costing that much has the number of problems that this forum indicates.
The most important of those issues is that it is not a radio - it's a player - so the name is misleading. The only thing it does is to play whatever is available on the mysqueezebox.com server.
On the positive side, it does (currently) allow me to listen to my favourite foreign radio stations and (mostly) it does have a very nice 'sleep' function.

Yea and the sound effects are delivered by mysqueezebox.com they are not local in any way even if you use your own server

[Marc]

The firmware is the latest. I regularly ask for an update. It probably is a server fault and I am using mysqueezebox.com, not my own PC.
I'm not clear why you suggest a different time setting and I do not want to use the radio station as an alarm. I deliberately selected a gentle cascade sound fading in, as my wife sleeps longer than me and I respond to the alarm well before it wakes her.

Can't seem to sleep here (while admittedly unrelated to the Radio alarm - haha), so I'm taking a rare gander at the forum...

Honestly, if your wife is getting upset and you risk her wrath every time the alarm does something obnoxious then my advice is to stop using the Radio alarm and start relying exclusively on another alarm device. I don't advise this glibly...

The Radio is a fine streaming device, but it is not an adequate or particularly reliable alarm clock (with the Logitech provided code base). Either trust me on this or do some forum searching for the historical discussions regarding alarms that I've engaged in with Logitech development.

It will not get better with firmware updates in reality, as the Radio alarm architecture is not conducive to stability. Even if a future firmware version appears to 'get it right', you will always run the genuine risk of a future firmware update regression that causes annoying alarm behavior anew.

In your particular case, since you don't care about streaming music or internet radio as the alarm audio source, there is one additional option... you could modify the code to use a truly local (Radio resident) audio sample of your choice and remove the server entirely from the equation. Then the alarm behavior would be maximally stable for your purposes. You would, however, be stuck in having to reapply the code changes after every Radio firmware update pushed down from Logitech if you did this...

Frankly, if your domestic situation is at any risk then you'll do well to posthaste abandon the notion that the Radio provided alarm functionality will never again stir your other half with a jolt. Cut your losses and enjoy the Radio for its streaming while you fall back to another alarm device to keep the peace in the bedroom...

Marc

[TopGeek]

That's a real shame, Marc but, with 3-4 alarm malfunctions in only just over one month of experience, it certainly seems that your summation of the situation is correct - i.e. this is not a reliable alarm clock.

Mind you, it also seems to be a fairly unreliable Internet radio. I've already had the experience of one of my favourite stations disappearing for more than a week while others were telling me they could still get it. I get frequent dropouts of up to 30 seconds on radio signals, while there is no wifi or Internet interruption. It only has a mono speaker, although it does have a stereo decoder so I can at least appreciate stereo sound in my earphones.

The impression I get is that this is a Beta product that should not yet be on sale to the public.

[bluegaspode]

While the situation on mysb.com might be indeed very unreliable, I still have to note that with my local server me and my wife still do wake up every morning with the configured radiostation.

This is at least since september when my wife started getting up before me. I cannot remember a single failure since then.

Having said that: don't expect Logitech to change anything anymore on the alarm code anymore.

So either you want to help yourself by following some simple advises/workarounds (i.e. when using MySqueezebox.com, use some odd time like 6:57 and if that still does not help don't insist on using a sound effect but switch over to a radio station) or follow the route Marc suggested: use something different otherwise you won't be happy with your Radio.