Audrey Images with HA Hacks Applied

[Michael McSharry]

I have two Audrey images with all HA hacks applied to support the mcsAudrey plugin. I do not have a location to host them. I will make them available to any current users that have 30 Meg available and would like to provide the host.

One image is based on Infinity Special 1.1s. The other is based on a stock Audrey.

These images are not required to run mcsAudrey plugin, but they do provide a convenient mechanism by which the necessary updates can be accomplished.

The hacks applied to both of these are documented in a keystroke-by-keystroke approach in the plugin manual. The functionality needed to support the plugin can be achieved via the Audrey keyboard and these instructions rather than installing a new image. The hacks are an extension of those previously documented in the Script library under Audrey Hacks. The script library post has been removed since the same info is now available from the updater.

[huggy591]

Michael, I can host them on my system, but it would be a fairly slow download for folks as I'm on ADSL at home. Tell me how to get them and I'll pull them down and post them to my web site.

- Gordon

"It said Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux..."

[gdyrdave]

Michael,

I have been using your utilities faithfully for almost a year noe or better. These routines have been the root of my system + Audreys and wondered what changes I would have to make. here are some features you mentioned that will definately be of some use to me. Will the transition from the old Audrey Utilities to the plugin be smooth or is a lot of work involved. You have done a lot of GREAT work on the additions to HomeSeer and your Audrey stuff has been excellent. I welcome the task of using the plugin, but don't want to sacrifice the system if have allready in place. This look dog gone good. !!!!!

[paugusto]

Michael,

Is one of these hacked Audrey images the same one hosted here? That site was posted in this thread.


Paul

[huggy591]

For the moment, Michael's Audrey images are posted on my web site at:

Original Audrey HA Hacks 5-01-03
Infinity Special 1.1s with HA Hacks 5-01-03

HTTP download only. I'm on ADSL, so downloads will be a bit slow compared to a professional web site, but better than nothing!

Will set up a page with links tonight.

- Gordon

"It said Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux..."

[Michael McSharry]

Thank You Gordon for providing an access point for others. Others are welcome to copy from Gordon's site to provide some alternate access points.

The image posted in the link referenced by Paul is similiar to the original Audrey HA Hacks with updates made for the most recent ACID, volume control, and slightly modified toggleBrowser. The zip file downloaded with the plugin contains the latest hack files. One could look at the date of these files and see what updates may be needed to their Audrey. The manual that comes down with the updater contains the step-by-step for each.

The new Infinity Special image was posted on Audrey hacking with the AIM client about a month ago. To my knowledge nobody else has applied the HA hacks to this image. I use this image just like the stock image and have seen only a differnce in the power-up time. Stock is about 60 seconds and Infinity is about 1/2 of that. Infinity also has many programs added which may be desirable to others, but I have not used them.

The intention with the plugin was to provide backward compatibility with AudreyUtilities and extend this capability by using resources available in a compiled application. I'll address this in a separate thread at AudreyUtilities Migration

[Michael McSharry]

I've only been using the infinity image for a short whilc and have found two of its attributes to not be very desirable.

When a power cycle is performed the volume control returns to 100% on. This would not be a problem if the volume control hack worked. Typically any audio going to Audrey will be at 100% and this results in poor sound quality.

The slideshow, and I suspect any browser-intensive appications will cause homeseer to get backed up (or wait) with 100% CPU utilization for periods of 30 plus seconds. I suspect it is making multiple requests and homeseer gets confused. This is true no matter what the max connections settings is on Audrey.

The positive attributes of the infinity image is its short boot time and wealth of applications already installed.

I'm going back to the hacked stock image on both my Audreys.

[huggy591]

Michael, the images I've added the HA hacks to (from the original Audrey image) seem to have issues with OFF and/or SLEEP modes. I read your other post about some sort of problem with the Audreys in this respect. Have you found a solution to or been better able to define the problem?

I'm seeing the same thing here... somehow the process of making Audrey sleep or checking status from HS locks it up to a point where you have to use the power button to wake her. Maybe its the memory defragmenting or system reset that occurs overnight? Normally, you can wake audrey by touching the screen or pressing a key on the keyboard, but at some point this stops working.

I'm using the channel function for my main page on most Audreys, which load an HS page (thru IIS) at power-on or thru the channel knob (channel 0). Every 10 minutes HS commands them to sleep. I'm using the plug-in server. They are still on the net even when they "lock up". I only occasionally need a hard power cycle to get them working again.

- Gordon

"It said Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux..."

[Michael McSharry]

Seems you are seeing the same behavior that I see. I know that I ran without the Sleep/Awake hacks before Sketchy made them available. The problem that I would observe is that Audrey would lockup and need a power cylce after some number of hours of browser refreshes. At that time I had the hack to defeat Audrey from ever going to sleep and used backlight control to control the screen. Changing the memory defrag period did help back then but every morning a power cycle was till needed since I would awake to a frozen Audrey. If I was running without browser refreshes then Audrey did not seem to have lockup problems.

I have not tried to do any controlled experiments to better understand what is causing what, but I suspect it will boil down to use of memory. If audrey is doing nothing then memory does not get used up. If she is doing something then it behaves as if there is a memory leak somewhere and it runs out in a ungraceful manner.

The Stock image that I uploaded also has the channels set to request links_touchscreen from my homeseer server on power-up. It has the normal sleep mode operation enabled so Audrey will put herself to sleep after 5 minutes of no screen or keyboard activity.

I have the plugin configured to poll for sleep status every 5 minutes and use the lack of response to automatically cycle power. When the sleep device is set to "Always Awake" then an awake command is sent to Audrey every minute to keep her from going to sleep in the normal 5 minute timeout. I have tried it with both UDP and TCP/IP delivering the "always awake" and I know lockups eventually occur with either approach. This seems to imply that ACID and Audrey's Slinker Server do not appear to be the culprit.

I do not have answers to the problem and can only provide my experiences and how I deal with it. What I intend to do is add a database to the plugin that will keep track of each Audrey's unexpected behaviors so I will know how often power cycles occur and how often the sleep mode changes. Additional data cannot hurt the investigation process. I would also like to be able to get a hook into homeseer's server so I know when an IP makes a server request. I am not aware of any mechanism to get this info except from the homeseer log and then it only happens when there is a change in the IP being serviced. If I'm the only one wanting it there is not much incentive for HST to provide this hook.

[huggy591]

I'm interested in helping to find this issue as well. I think you are correct in that HST will not want to supply a hook for the IP polling, but you can sniff the network from another machine and get the info in a capture using ethereal or similar open-source software. RickT might give us a hand here.

I have ethereal and other networking tools readily available here, so if I could set up a similar testing scenario I could monitor the packets on the net from my 4 Audreys and the HS box, and see what/when it went over the edge. I also have a network management system here that regularly polls the Audreys to make sure they are "up", plus HS uses a ping script to do the same for a network status view I use in UltraView2. That traffic may also add to the problem, but I rarely see the Audreys actually drop off the net - they just need to be powered up using their power button.

My management system has polling history for each device. Each Audrey is polled at 3-minute intervals. In looking at the services it polls on each Audrey, which includes the web server, the Audreys have a failure in the web server (fails to respond within timeout = 60 seconds) about every 6th attempt. The Audreys reply fine to actual pings during this time. The interesting thing is the web server timeouts only occur between 1:00am and 2:00am each morning! Other "outages" I can account for, but occasionally (not very often) I see a lockup and the Audrey goes off the net. One Audrey I regularly do NOT touch for days at a time and it still is on the net. HS polls each Audrey for status every 5 minutes, plus I have HS trigger the LEDs when I have a voicemail message waiting.

I have yet to try to add the full QNX 6.0/6.1 as a mounted file system, but I did grab a copy of it a while back and it is loaded on a local Windows machine capable of sharing out. I was thinking if there are tools available for Audrey to determine memory statistics (or even something like sar on unix), we might be able to at least get closer to the actual source of the problem. If it was something we oculd live without, then we could rip it out of the system and stabilize Audrey.

What do you think?

- Gordon

"It said Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux..."

[duncan_ellison]

Hi Guys,

I've just acquired a new Audrey (3 1/2 months in the post from the US !) and since I had trouble getting UltraCID to talk to my exisiting Audrey, I'm looking to flash from a known good image ... and mcs's image would pretty much be known to be good :-).

Question : I know how to get the image into Audrey, mcs documented this a while back, but do I need to do anything special with the .cf file other than copying it via a PC and a CF reader onto the target CF card ? (unzip / untar etc etc ??)

[Thickman]

I struggled with my Audrey for days before i was able to get it working. Following this doc explains it all.

[Michael McSharry]

Gordon,
I've got to digest everything about your post. Need more time for that.

Duncan,
The cf images I provided are in binary format that can be directly copied to a cf. The instructions contained in the manual assume you have a window mount on Audrey and use the built-in CF writer in Audrey.

Terry,
Just not to confuse the community, the instructions that you posted require an external CF writer. The advantage is that it does not matter what state the original Audrey is in. The instructions contained in my document assume no external equipment, but the Audrey has to already be hacked to the point of getting access to a shell and then a windows mount command can be issued to get access to the file on the PC.

I did let a CF float with a startup image for those who could not get to the shell and did not want to buy external CF burning equipment. To the best of my understanding the travelling CF stopped traveling.

[Michael McSharry]

Gordon,
As best as I can see your observations are that an Audrey that is left alone continues to work, but ones that are in more active use exhibit some form of undesired behavior.

If I had to guess, the early morning snooze is part of the update process by which Audrey gets its daily dose of whatever 3Com setup as part of its online support. The software upgrades and any subscription services fall into this category.

Audrey has a limited memory and the fact that it has a memory defragmentation procedure that is recognized by the browser indictates that the engineers recognized that memory use was going to be a problem. She has had a very short life during which time the software has not had the opportunity to mature.

The home appliance featrures of the address and date books likely do not have any memory use problems and the target audience will do only occasional browsing so the memory management approach employed is probably adequate for the product. I believe we are trying to use the product in a manner for which it was not intended and taking it beyond its design capabilities. If we want to rip something out that is causing problems, then the web interface is probably what needs to be removed. Of course that is not a good alternative. A second approach is to fix the web interface, but I think that that effort is beyond general hacking capabilities.

During stress testing with the plugin I could lock Audrey up in a matter of a few minutes using either UDP or TCP/IP communications. This makes me believe that the root problem is closer to the OS than to a specific application. QNX does use an elaborate tasking model. I suspect that the stack is heavily used to support this design. When most of the activity is managment of the keyboard and screen then there is plenty of time. When constantly hitting the USB at computer speeds then Audrey may not have enough horsepower or memory to do everyting that is in her scheduled list of things that need to be done.

I think the best we will be able to do is characterize the problem as best we can and make the management software cognizant of the behavior that it needs to manage. The list of /config options are some of the things we can tweak from the inside. From the outside all we have is the IP content and timing.

You indicated that you had sniffing tools. Did you try to apply these understand what might be happening at 1AM or when the power button had to be pushed?

[huggy591]

I'm working on that now. I've been busy with other work-related tasks, and of course the holiday over the weekend, but will set something up to gather more data tonight.

- Gordon

"It said Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux..."