How to force Radio to display screensaver?

[RobbH]

In the absence of any other alternative, the brute force method works, even if it is not pretty. Every time the player controlled by the Radio starts, the Radio reboots. After a few minutes, the clock screensaver reappears on the Radio.

I'm as happy as I'm going to be, and I disabled the cron job that was rebooting the Radio every week, since it's now superfluous.

[RobbH]

....Has any one confirmed that reverting the screensaver detection change fixes the original issue?

I am the original poster of this thread, but I am not certain if you mean that reverting those changes should fix my issue, which is that the Radio continues to show the Now Playing display, when the screen saver should be shown, when the Radio is controlling another player.

I have manually reverted those changes and rebooted the Radio. The Now Playing display still fails to time out. The screen saver will not activate, unless I press the Home button on the Radio or a remote.

I do NOT expect anyone to spend time and energy on this; it's obviously a very obscure issue. But I am ready to try some other code changes, if you have any suggestions.

[RobbH]

I installed the Community firmware on the Radio. I didn't expect it to solve my odd and obscure problem, so I was not disappointed when it didn't....

I take it back! After a reboot of the LMS server, the Radio screensavers are now working as expected.

That lasted the rest of the week, until my weekly reboot of the Radio. Now it's back where we started: the Now Playing display (from the player the Radio is controlling) never times out, so the Clock screensaver never appears, unless I press the Home button on the Radio or a remote.

Can anyone with knowledge of the Radio internal workings think of a way to simulate a press of the Home button from the command line, using SSH into the Radio? Or any other way to achieve this? The only way I can think of is to set up a Pi or equivalent with an IR emitter to send the key code.

Yes, as I have confessed in other threads, I am very lazy, so the thought of having to press that button ,every time I want the screen saver to work, is almost more than I can bear. But I'll manage.

[ralphy]

I can't remember the original behaviour but I think I probably wanted the clock on my bedside Radio to be dimmer in a dark bedroom than the original firmware allowed.
My understanding was that the community firmware with the patch fixed the original issue from this thread.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

The partial change that was committed should have fixed the original bug reported.

The original discussion around the change is discussed here.

You would still need to manually install the remainder of the changes from https://server.vijge.net/squeezebox/ on the radio.

[slartibartfast]

I didn't merge it because I prefer the original firmware behaviour and I don't like forcing interface changes on everyone.

I added the Detect NowPlaying as screensaver support so it could be used by other applets.

Has any one confirmed that reverting the screensaver detection change fixes the original issue?

I can't remember the original behaviour but I think I probably wanted the clock on my bedside Radio to be dimmer in a dark bedroom than the original firmware allowed.
My understanding was that the community firmware with the patch fixed the original issue from this thread.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[ralphy]

Probably. I wonder why the "Reduce Brightness" patch related to it was never merged. I wouldn't be without it on my Radios.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

I didn't merge it because I prefer the original firmware behaviour and I don't like forcing interface changes on everyone.

I added the Detect NowPlaying as screensaver support so it could be used by other applets.

Has any one confirmed that reverting the screensaver detection change fixes the original issue?

[RobbH]

I recently retired my Radio due to the wifi connection issues, but I had this problem all the time, going back years. So it's not a recent issue due to any firmware or server changes. I never used the Radio to control other players, so it would happen happen when controlling itself....

Thanks! It's good to know I'm not the only one to encounter this problem. It does seem to be related to the patch that mrw linked, although the problem you and I had seems to me the opposite of the one the patch addressed. It seems to me that the Radio firmware was treating the Now Playing screen as a screensaver, although we were not using it that way. The patch corrected an issue when Now Playing WAS used as a screensaver but was not recognized as such.

[slartibartfast]

Perhaps a consequence of this change in the Community Firmware:
Detect NowPlaying as screensaver

Probably. I wonder why the "Reduce Brightness" patch related to it was never merged. I wouldn't be without it on my Radios.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[JJZolx]

I have a situation in which my Radio display never times out, so the screensaver never appears.

I recently retired my Radio due to the wifi connection issues, but I had this problem all the time, going back years. So it's not a recent issue due to any firmware or server changes. I never used the Radio to control other players, so it would happen happen when controlling itself.

One thing about the way I used the Radio was that to shut off the music, I'd often be sitting at my computer in another room and would do so by clearing the playlist from the LMS web interface. Not sure if that had anything to do with it.

[RobbH]

Perhaps a consequence of this change in the Community Firmware:
Detect NowPlaying as screensaver

Very interesting! Thanks for that reference.

[mrw]

I take it back! After a reboot of the LMS server, the Radio screensavers are now working as expected.

Perhaps a consequence of this change in the Community Firmware:
Detect NowPlaying as screensaver

[RobbH]

I installed the Community firmware on the Radio. I didn't expect it to solve my odd and obscure problem, so I was not disappointed when it didn't...

I take it back! After a reboot of the LMS server, the Radio screensavers are now working as expected.

[RobbH]

I installed the Community firmware on the Radio. I didn't expect it to solve my odd and obscure problem, so I was not disappointed when it didn't. I hoped there might be a chance that my issue had been part of some larger and more significant issue, which had been fixed; but no.

I do not expect to fix the issue myself or convince anyone else to tackle it. It's very minor, and obviously it has not been a problem for anyone else.

So I am only interested in finding a way to get the screensaver on my Radio working again, after the display has been hijacked by the Now Playing screen from the player controlled by the Radio. I can easily achieve that by pressing the Home button on the Radio itself or on a remote. But I am extraordinarily lazy, so I seek a way to automate that task. As stated earlier, I can easily run a command when the other player starts playing, and that command can send telnet messages to the LMS cli or ssh into the Radio.

So, can anybody think of a way to achieve that? I have found one that works, but it requires brute force and it's not as smooth as I would like. I can set up a script to ssh into the Radio and reboot it. That achieves my goal of getting the clock screensaver back on the Radio's display, after an interval of time that includes playing the Radio startup tones.

I would be very interested in hearing any other ideas about how to get the Radio screensaver to work again in this situation. (In brief: the radio is set to control another player. When that player starts playing, the Now Playing display is shown on the Radio, and it never times out, so the clock screensaver never appears until the other player stops, UNLESS the Home button is pressed on the Radio or a remote. More detail in post #1)

[RobbH]

This doesn't help you but if I set my Radio to control my Touch then it does still enter screensaver mode normally

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

Thanks. That's good to know.

So far, the bedroom Airplay (not bluetooth!) speaker (a Jam Symphony) is consistent. If the Radio is set to control it, the Radio screensaver will not appear while it is playing, without intervention. It does not matter if the Airplay speaker is playing as part of a group or by itself. When I have used the Radio to control other players around the house, this has only happened when the other player is part of a group.

[RobbH]

I think the time is to tell LMS when the key was pressed.

There are some comments at the start of
Slim/Hardware/IR.pm

I expect the same thing is used elsewhere within LMS ... and perhaps those other places have a better description.

I suspect the player has a notion of "now" and this number is compared against that. "now" probably 0 when a player starts rather than unix time since player need not know the real time (as in the time on your clock).

The map file is in LMS
IR/Default.map

Thanks, Paul. That gives me plenty to cogitate over.