Thank you @TheCoolest and @tobetter or the clarification, I will have to find my own solution then.
Good to know beforehand.
cheers Stephan
Is the odroid supposed to have a splash screen when booting ?
Shoog
Mine has, and can use any of my choice…
None with mine, but it maybe due to the N2 not recognising the native resolution of my Samsung TV as petitboot was corrupted as well.
Shoog
You can set/force startup resolution to match your tv.
It looks like N2 with CE on SD CARD doesn’t support suspend nor resume and for that reason it belongs back to LilliputUK and HardKernel.
It supports it just fine. Search the forum, there are plenty of posts about it.
Out of the box CE N2 cannot be suspended.
In fact, I have been trying to get to the bottom of it for the passed hour.
KODI suspend command and SSH suspend command is powering it off and only power cycle can bring it back to life again.
So with all due respect and regardless of how much I like the box, it’s unsuitable for it’s purpose.
I never saw any point in using suspend on these boxes, but indeed there are a few steps required to make it work.
1 Like
It’s crucial requirement.
Single CE remote only needed.
When you done playing with your precious box, pressing one single power button on your CE remote will suspend your box and switch off your TV and AVR.
By pressing same button on the same remote will resume your box and switch on you TV and AVR.
How’s that not quintessential functionality of TV box?
If N2 is stripped of such a meaningless in your opinion functionality it belongs back to HardKernel’s warehouse.
When a box idles at 5W its not really significant whether its switched off between uses. This is lower than most entertainment equipment in standby. They also do all their housekeeping duties overnight such as running webgrab+ and library updates - so that they do not interfere with normal use when on. Remember as well that even when off your brick power supply will still be consuming electricity anyway.
I never switch either of my boxes off and they consume less electricity than the hallway light which is always on. If this is so important to you - then yes send it back.
Shoog
It’s just my personal opinion and preference, I don’t suspend my boxes. I can use my TV remote if I need to control both the TV and CE with a single remote.
But check this post, it should help get you started.
My flagship Marantz AVR uses 0.5W with CEC in standby. My TV (65" OLED) uses 0.3W. There is a huge difference to 5W.
If i would leave all my devices running without standby, i would easily have a power consumption of 150W. All day long.
Just to add my 2 cents…
I prefer to have my whole setup on a power bar (with a remote switch) as I don’t want to draw unnecessary power. Not only with the N2 but with other platforms I used in the past I had the problem that they auto-boot on AC return even when turned off before removing AC power.
First, I don’t want to have the HTPC power up when my son is willing to play with PlayStation or my wife just want to watch a DVD…
Second, I had problems with resolution handshake between the HTPC and A/V Receiver, TV screen, I had some bad experience with that in the past…
Also, with the Logitech Harmony setup it can be a mess with pre-powered devices, etc…
So, I have made a little script placed in autostart.sh that detects if a real screen is connected or not, and if no real screen is detected (because A/V receiver or TV not powered-on), the HTPC will poweroff immediately after being powered-on. With this script, my system will auto shutdown when powering the whole system and will be power-on by Logitech Harmony remote when needed.
Please let me know if anyone is interested, but be aware that this can be very setup-dependent and tricky if some problems arise.
I was been over pessimistic, 5.5W is the on heavy load power state. Idle is 1.8W.
Shoog
Would be interested to see this. I have had problems trying to reliably detect my TV turning on and off, and doing the same with my N2.
Dear MoojMidge,
You can adapt the script to your needs (remove echoes as I used them only for debug), also be aware that if you have problems with your script and setup, you will have to edit this script out of the box as otherwise the box will shutdown itself before you can access and modify autostart.sh with SSH.
Use it as base for your needs but be aware to what your are doing.
Also this script maybe needs to be modified in the future with new CE versions or Kernel…
Let me know if I can be of any help.
Best Regards.
Autostart.sh:
CURSCREENWIDTH=cat /sys/class/display/vinfo | grep screen_real_width | awk '{print $2}'
echo “Current Screen Real Width is $CURSCREENWIDTH”
if [ “$CURSCREENWIDTH” = “0” ]; then
echo “No Real Screen connected, will poweroff now!”
sleep 5
poweroff
else
echo “Real Screen Size detected, continue booting…”
fi
Thanks John.
Unfortunately that approach has never worked reliably for me.
When checking vinfo, screen_real_width never gets set to 0. When the TV is in standby or on, the real dimensions are always reported as 160 x 90. When the TV is off, or the HDMI cable is unplugged, the real dimensions are reported as 16 x 9.
Haven’t yet been able to find a way to detect this properly, that works for my N2. Not sure what would be effecting the information reported in vinfo.
The only thing that semi-works is checking /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/hpd_state, it toggles from 1 to 0, then back to 1, when the TV turns off/on for a short period of time.
Dear MoojMidge,
I have more luck than you on this because when devices are turned off, the real_width allows me to detect power state indirectly but in your case this not an option.
In an other system with a similar problem as yours, the real_width was as yours but I was able to detect the situation with resolution set at 640x480 when A/V Receiver + TV are turned off on boot, so in this case I was able to detect this resolution and poweroff device.
Have a nice day, Best Regards.
I put mine in full shutdown with wol disabled since I don’t use my N2 all that much and I actually have a reason I want the ethernet port inactive when I’m not using it. Though if I had a reason to leave my CE box on full time (like running a TVH server) I wouldn’t have a real problem with it.
I do have less trouble doing a full shutdown and startup. When resuming out of suspend I get login issues with my Netflix add-on so my options are either fully on or fully off.
It’s a bit of a nuisance that my N2 always powers up upon application of power, but I rarely pull the power plug and it’s really not a big deal anyway. I’m not going to sweat it if the box turns itself on after a power failure. I can’t rely on CEC since I have a TV that is rather old and is not very CEC friendly. The TV just confuses the hell out of my new mid-range AVR. So CEC is disabled everywhere. That will get resolved when I get a new TV, hopefully sooner than later.
In terms of power consumption, my entertainment center is probably pulling more wattage with everything off than the N2 draws when it’s on. These SBCs are really power friendly devices. I guess people can get picky about pulling a few watts with devices in standby, but I leave lights on all the time that draw more power. I’m just not going to worry about power consumption that small. It’s sure a lot better than a couple decades ago where even lights drew hundreds of Watts.
1 Like