5.3.2 doesn't shutdown gracefully on restart

Spartacus · Post by **Spartacus** » April 22nd, 2006, 7:28 am

Not a big deal, but the new 5.3.2 does not shutdown gracefully when doing a restart. It leaves whatever was on the LCD in a frozen state. The previous 5.3 shuts off (blanks the display) when Windows shuts down/restarts. Just seems cleaner that way.

One other suggestion for a new feature.... a slider for Process Priority. I start Smartie with a batch file with the "/BELOWNORMAL" switch to keep priority for the LCD display low. I don't want LCD display updates taking priority over games or multimedia. It does cause the display to temporarily freeze sometimes, but that means the CPU is busy with something else and should not be interrupted for the LCD.

Fast351 · Post by **Fast351** » April 22nd, 2006, 9:28 am

Spartacus wrote:Not a big deal, but the new 5.3.2 does not shutdown gracefully when doing a restart. It leaves whatever was on the LCD in a frozen state. The previous 5.3 shuts off (blanks the display) when Windows shuts down/restarts. Just seems cleaner that way.

Ahh so this popped up in 5.3.2. I thought that got broken in 5.4, but that gives me someplace to go look. I'll see if I can find it.

-Mike

Fast351 · Post by **Fast351** » April 22nd, 2006, 9:41 am

Can you try this and see if it works now?

http://home.fast351.com:4141/lcdsmartie.zip

Thanks!

xsnrg · Post by **xsnrg** » April 22nd, 2006, 1:06 pm

By default my Imon software (back in the day when I was running it) did something that I thought was very cool. It had a shutdown message you could set. That way when you shut down, it defaulted to this message. I just had it say Home Theater PC. It seems this would be fairly easy to do, as long as the program was exited gracefully.

Post by **IFR** » April 22nd, 2006, 9:14 pm

Perhaps we should have an option to let the user choose its own custom message or clear the screen before shutting down lcdsmartie...

erlis · Post by **erlis** » April 25th, 2006, 10:10 pm

Fast351 wrote:Can you try this and see if it works now?

http://home.fast351.com:4141/lcdsmartie.zip

Thanks!

Yep, that works fine. Now the display gets blank on shutdown/reboot.

IFR wrote:Perhaps we should have an option to let the user choose its own custom message or clear the screen before shutting down lcdsmartie...

That would bee cool, but also a bit annoying

b00sfuk · Post by **b00sfuk** » May 8th, 2006, 11:00 am

I would like the option to have a message frozen on the display after a shutdown/standby. I currently use this with the prior IMON support provided by IMONSmartie that allows the contents of a text file to be displayed on shutdown/standby. This is great for a HTPC where you can display the next recording name/time while the PC is in standby (rather than a blank screen with the new native IMON support).

Fast351 · Post by **Fast351** » May 8th, 2006, 11:36 am

It's coming, be patient...

b00sfuk · Post by **b00sfuk** » May 8th, 2006, 1:19 pm

Fast351 wrote:It's coming, be patient...

Great, thanks for quick reply. I guess this is obvious but I assume you will be able to choose in configuration which screen is used when going into standby/shutdown and it won't just freeze the one being displayed at that time?

Fast351 · Post by **Fast351** » May 8th, 2006, 1:57 pm

Actually, no. You will be able to select static text that will be displayed (doesn't have to be the same as any of the screens, mine for example says "Fast351 Home THeater PC").

Reason you cannot use a screen, is because that would allow plugins, which can take some time to return a result, especially http requests, etc. When Windows tells you to shut down, if you don't do it in a timely fashion, it's rather rude about just dumping your app, therefore a simple write static text to the screen and close seemed like a more sensible method.

b00sfuk · Post by **b00sfuk** » May 8th, 2006, 3:39 pm

Right, so how is the static text stored? If it is just in a normal text file (or if I can use the $file variable) then I'm happy as I can keep that updated dynamically. I.e. currently I have an app that writes out 2 lines of text (next recording name/day/time) to a named text file (in this case usbportexit.txt). This is done with any changes to HTPC details while PC is on.
Thanks again.

Post by **mattcro** » July 17th, 2006, 10:08 pm

I just "upgraded" to 5.4b3 (was using 5.3.2 release) and I notice that Smartie doesn't shut down gracefully now - the screen is usually left frozen with whatever was last displayed.

I never had a problem with 5.3.2 - I think it always blanked the LCD.

I tried the version you linked to, fast351, and it seems to consistently shut down nicely, blanking the screen and turning off the backlight.

So for me, anyway, it was OK in 5.3.2 and broken in 5.4b3, but fixed in fast351's test build.

And I too would like to be able to define a shutdown screen, even if it is just a fixed, static message like "Shutting down...". It's not a big deal though - in my case there's not much point in displaying any message since the LCD is powered from the PC supply and loses power pretty soon after Smartie is stopped anyway, and I don't usually use suspend/sleep.

Fast351 · Post by **Fast351** » January 4th, 2007, 3:18 pm

Check the new 5.4 RC2 release guys, all code changes made in the test build now are incorporated...

b00sfuk · Post by **b00sfuk** » February 14th, 2007, 11:48 pm

I can only find the option to use static text on Shutdown/standby with this new beta. Is there going to be (or am I missing something) the option to have the contents of a text file displayed (see my post a few up)? In my case I need it to display when the next recording will start when my HTPC is in standby. Thanks

Post by **mattcro** » February 19th, 2007, 7:21 pm

Static shutdown message is working fine for me in 5.4 RC2.

Allowing the shutdown message to be read from a file (maybe first 4 lines or whatever) could be handy, but accounting for reading from large files, long lines, etc could cause the same shutdown delay problems as getting info from plugins.

Post by **limbo** » February 19th, 2007, 9:02 pm

mattcro wrote:Static shutdown message is working fine for me in 5.4 RC2.

Allowing the shutdown message to be read from a file (maybe first 4 lines or whatever) could be handy, but accounting for reading from large files, long lines, etc could cause the same shutdown delay problems as getting info from plugins.

Ok but i think its possible to add a function while the program is closing.
Consider one line with the date time of shuntdown.

I need an indication to have the shuntdown time.

LCD Smartie

5.3.2 doesn't shutdown gracefully on restart

5.3.2 doesn't shutdown gracefully on restart

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