Experience report with stb-tester & video-capture hardware

[David Röthlisberger]

We have had some trouble using the Hauppauge HD PVR video-capture
device: When running tests continually for hours on end, the device
become unreliable, locks up, and must be powered off for a "cool-down"
period before it becomes reliably usable again.

For details see http://stb-tester.com/hardware.html

If you use stb-tester with other video-capture hardware, please share
your experiences here and I'll add the information at the above link.

Cheers,
Dave.

[Máté Szendrő]

Hi,

We have a workaround which is not the most convenient solution but at least it saves manual work and it has proved to be quite reliable.

What we experienced is that when the HD-PVR gets overheated it 'locks up', meaning the red light is constantly on even if it doesn't deliver video and it has to be switched off and on in order to work again as expected.

Our solution is that we plug each HD PVR device to an IP controllable power supply; we have a shell script that checks the device state after every failure and every time it detects that the device has locked up it powers the device off, lets it cool for 10 minutes and then powers it back on.

We use 'v4l2-ctl' to check a PVR's status. 'v4l2-ctl' is part of the 'v4l-utils' package. This tool has an option to query supported video formats from the device with the '-V' argument; if the PVR is in locked-up state then this query fails, so all you have to do is to check the exit code.

This is one of the IP power switches that we use: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aviosys-IP-Power-Remote-Switch/dp/B004O1XZVW/

If you find any better solution we would love to hear it...

Mate

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 11:25 AM, <007al...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,
    I am facing similar issue of discontinuation with HD-PVR and experiencing that HD-PVR can not work more than for an hour continuously without fan. Have you guys found out any workaround for this? Please post if have any update on this.......

Thanks

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "stb-tester" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to stb-tester+...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to stb-t...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/stb-tester?hl=en.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[David Röthlisberger]

On 4 Feb 2013, at 11:25, 007al...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> I am facing similar issue of discontinuation with HD-PVR and experiencing that HD-PVR can not work more than for an hour continuously without fan. Have you guys found out any workaround for this? Please post if have any update on this.......
>
> Thanks

One hour seems a bit extreme... we were getting failures any time after
2 to 20 hours; adding a fan increased that to >30 hours, on average.
Perhaps even an external desk fan pointing at the devices would help
(in our experience a "test rig" area of the office, full of electronic
devices, does tend to get quite warm).

Even without the fans, the automated failure detection & recovery
described by Máté works adequately. Note that after the first failure
the device does seem to require a cool-down period of a few minutes
before you switch it back on.

We are in discussions with Hauppauge about diagnosing and fixing the
HDPVR's stability issues; they seem very willing to help but the gears
move slowly.

Your other option is to use the BlackMagic Intensity Pro instead; its
price is similar to the HDPVR. We are running ~10 of these at the
moment, and though we haven't stress-tested them as much as the HDPVRs,
early results are encouraging.

Cheers
Dave.