How hot is too hot?

[RBernier]

Is the HomeTroller-SE unit supposed to get hot. The unit that I have is getting very hot. In fact, the bottom of the unit is almost too hot to touch - you can't touch it for more than a few seconds. It would seem to me that if the unit is getting that hot - first, it is a potential safety hazard and second, the unit will have a very short life as the components will fail due to excess heat.

Ron Bernier

[RBernier]

Interesting - 65 views and not one single comment/suggestion. Even worse, no response from support regarding the ticket that I submitted regarding this issue. I guess once you spend almost $800.00 for a product, you are out of luck if you have an issue which is potentially a safety hazard.

[Rupp]

Interesting - 65 views and not one single comment/suggestion. Even worse, no response from support regarding the ticket that I submitted regarding this issue. I guess once you spend almost $800.00 for a product, you are out of luck if you have an issue which is potentially a safety hazard.

Give support a change as you just put the ticket in yesterday and it takes a while to catch up on the tickets. Monday, Tuesdays are very busy days so it may be a day or so before on gets to this ticket.
Sounds like your unit is pegging the CPU causing it to heat up. Have you checked the cpu usages?

[RBernier]

Give support a change as you just put the ticket in yesterday and it takes a while to catch up on the tickets. Monday, Tuesdays are very busy days so it may be a day or so before on gets to this ticket.
Sounds like your unit is pegging the CPU causing it to heat up. Have you checked the cpu usages?

Unfortunately I do not have a spare monitor that I can hook up to this thing every time I have a problem. I had to disconnect my monitor from my computer and hook it up to the HomeTroller so I could find out why it wasn't rebooting. Obviously the HomeTroller isn't reliable if it has all of these problems and you need to keep a monitor hooked up to it. My Vera3 is much more reliable and much more problem free than what the HomeTroller has shown to be thus far.

[RBernier]

Give support a change as you just put the ticket in yesterday and it takes a while to catch up on the tickets. Monday, Tuesdays are very busy days so it may be a day or so before on gets to this ticket.
Sounds like your unit is pegging the CPU causing it to heat up. Have you checked the cpu usages?

I found out today that my monitor has dual connections - that solves the problem of needing a second monitor. In looking at the CPU usage it shows that my usage keeps shooting up to 100%. The CPU usage is fluctuating quite a bit - i.e. drops down to 4% then shoots back up to 100%, drops to 15% then shoots back up to 100%. I I have no idea how to determine what is causing the fluctuation. Other than running the software update, I have not added anything to Hometroller.

To me, I consider the fact that the HomeTroller is heating up as much as it is to be a fairly serious issue - i.e. safety hazard and definitely a detriment to the life of the unit. Unfortunately, support apparently doesn't see my reported issue as all that important. Thus far, I have had absolutely no comment at all from support regarding my ticket.

[NeverDie]

I've seen this type of behavior in laptops, where the fluctuating is the CPU is throttling itself to cope with the heat. Check that the fans are working and that the heatsinks aren't clogged with lint. You might want to put an active laptop cooler (one with a fan) underneath it, but try to power the fan with an external power supply rather than a USB port on your device. Admittedly, these are just band-aids until you sort out the root cause.

As a safeguard, most intel PC cpu's will try to kill the power and thereby instantly turn-off the system if they reach their thermal limit. That works if the power supply supports it. That threshold temperature is part of the CPU spec, and you can look it up on the intel website. For sure, that level of hot is too hot.

If it were me, I would start disabling all plug-ins (if you have any). If the problem persists (or doesn't), that would make it easier to assign culpability.

Sorry if any of these suggestions are off-point to your situation. If you understand the gist of it you can translate it to your particulars.

[RBernier]

I've seen this type of behavior in laptops, where the fluctuating is the CPU is throttling itself to cope with the heat. Check that the fans are working and that the heatsinks aren't clogged with lint. You might want to put an active laptop cooler (one with a fan) underneath it, but try to power the fan with an external power supply rather than a USB port on your device. Admittedly, these are just band-aids until you sort out the root cause.

As a safeguard, most intel PC cpu's will try to kill the power and thereby instantly turn-off the system if they reach their thermal limit. That works if the power supply supports it. That threshold temperature is part of the CPU spec, and you can look it up on the intel website. For sure, that level of hot is too hot.

If it were me, I would start disabling all plug-ins (if you have any). If the problem persists (or doesn't), that would make it easier to assign culpability.

Sorry if any of these suggestions are off-point to your situation. If you understand the gist of it you can translate it to your particulars.

Thank you for the reply. Actually, the HomeTroller SE Pro is a fan less unit. I have "disabled" any of the add-ons that I am not currently using - I.e. Media Player, iTunes, etc. this has helped the CPU pegging issue some, but the unit is still running hotter than I think it should. CPU usage is now running 2%-8% with an occasional "jump" to around 15%.


I do believe the only option is to place the unit on a laptop cooler.