Screen blanking weirdness

[dlmorgan999]

Just recently I decided to turn off the Windows screen saver on my Q1 and use the HB screen blanking functionality instead. This is much nicer now that I can unblank a remote from the server .

However last night I discovered something odd. I set the "Inactive Time..." option on the remote to 300 seconds. I noticed the screen kept unblanking without me touching anything so I looked in the trace log and I found that 300 seconds after no activity the screen would blank and then 300 seconds later it would come on again. Here is a portion of the log:

Code: Select all

1/9/2009 4:37:34 - Display is now OFF
1/9/2009 4:42:33 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231504654.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x49674639
1/9/2009 4:42:34 - Display is now ON
1/9/2009 4:47:35 - Display is now OFF
1/9/2009 4:52:34 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231505255.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x49674892
1/9/2009 4:52:35 - Display is now ON
1/9/2009 4:57:36 - Display is now OFF
1/9/2009 5:02:35 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231505856.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x49674aeb
1/9/2009 5:02:36 - Display is now ON
1/9/2009 5:07:37 - Display is now OFF
1/9/2009 5:12:37 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231506457.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x49674d45
1/9/2009 5:12:37 - Display is now ON
1/9/2009 5:17:38 - Display is now OFF
1/9/2009 5:22:38 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231507058.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x49674f9e
1/9/2009 5:22:38 - Display is now ON

Any idea what's going on?

[ScottBot]

Is anything else running on the remote?

[dlmorgan999]

Nope - it's a dedicated software remote. The log entries I posted were generated in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. It's very odd. Can you tell me what kind of activity triggers the "Activity received" message?

[ScottBot]

Can you tell me what kind of activity triggers the "Activity received" message?

Pretty much anything. Any Windows Message that is caught by the message queue for the remote will unblank the screen.

Unfortunately that trace message is not showing the correct message ID (fixed in next release).

[dlmorgan999]

Does that mean that if any of the properties currently being displayed changes value then the screen will unblank? If so then that answers the question because I show the current time (HH:MM) on an overlayed "common" panel.

-- Dave

[ScottBot]

No. The property value updates are coming over a socket directly into the app and do not enter the message queue.

I suppose it could be something else related to the panel that I've not thought of. I will admit that it looks a little suspicious that at 300 seconds it comes back on. Can you try changing the timeout to only two minutes and see what the on/off timing looks like?

[dlmorgan999]

That's a good idea! I'll try that tonight when I get home.

[dlmorgan999]

The plot thickens. Here's what I found out from my testing. If I start the remote and leave it alone the screen never blanks (I left it for over 10 minutes). As soon as I manually blank the screen (using a "Blank Remote" button) the process starts.

Something else odd is that I found is that instead of alternating every <screen blank seconds> interval it was alternating between the specified interval and three minutes. In other words the state would toggle after three minutes, then after five minutes, then after three minutes, etc. I changed the timeout to 120 seconds and then the state toggled at two minutes, then three minutes, then two minutes, etc.

And finally, while I was testing the remote started another one of its continual logout/login sessions. Here is a portion of the log:

Code: Select all

1/12/2009 17:28:03 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231809918.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x496bee23
1/12/2009 17:28:04 - Display is now ON
1/12/2009 17:30:05 - Display is now OFF
1/12/2009 17:31:01 - Activity received while blanking window is up.  Blanking window up at 1231810205.  Now is 0. Msg is 0x496beed5
1/12/2009 17:31:01 - Display is now ON
1/12/2009 17:32:55 - Client Wakeup is causing a reconnection.
1/12/2009 17:32:55 - Display is now ON
1/12/2009 17:32:56 - Display is now ON
1/12/2009 17:32:57 - Attempting to connect to the server
1/12/2009 17:32:57 - Client is attempting to connect to the server
1/12/2009 17:32:57 - Logging in to Server
1/12/2009 17:32:57 - Connected to the server
1/12/2009 17:32:57 - Client determined server has disconnected because recv() returned -1
1/12/2009 17:32:57 - Login Successful.
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Client Wakeup is causing a reconnection.
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Attempting to connect to the server
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Client is attempting to connect to the server
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Client determined server has disconnected because recv() returned -1
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Logging in to Server
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Connected to the server
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - The Server has Disconnected.
1/12/2009 17:32:58 - Login Successful.
1/12/2009 17:33:00 - Attempting to connect to the server
1/12/2009 17:33:00 - Client is attempting to connect to the server

I noticed that the very first message was the "Client Wakeup" message. I finally had to close and re-start the remote to make it happy again. I'm not sure what any of this means yet but I wanted to provide as much detail as I could.

-- Dave

[dlmorgan999]

More information. After I closed and re-started the remote it is currently behaving properly (except that it still never blanks out on its own). It looks like maybe there's an intermittent issue?

-- Dave

[ScottBot]

The wakeup that you have in the trace looks to be the result of your yo-yo reconnection issue (I'm working on that too).

Something else odd is that I found is that instead of alternating every <screen blank seconds> interval it was alternating between the specified interval and three minutes

I was wondering if that would be the case. That's why I wanted to see the results with another timeout value.

I've seen the issue where it won't blank right after startup until you interact with it. I'll check into that issue too.

[dlmorgan999]

FYI - I have tracing turned on at the server. I didn't see anything that looked helpful but if you want my log let me know. And of course I'm always willing to test something if it would help. It "feels" like this stuff may be related somehow. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not but now I'm seeing the remote blank after two minutes and then get awakened again eight minutes later. I noticed that this totalled a 10 minute interval which is also what I was seeing yesterday but five and five minutes. In case this is a clue...

[ScottBot]

I'll have something for you to test at some point. I've just been really busy and it's taking a while to track this one down.

[dlmorgan999]

No worries Scott. I'm busy finishing up a plugin for the whole-house energy monitor I just bought anyway so I'm somewhat busy right now as well.