Weird HS waiting to speak - causes HS to hang

[bruce l]

I recently added a KIOSK pc to my system. I have Message server announcing CID for me on the remote PC (KIOSK) and HS speaking it locally. I am using sapi-msgtoclient to send the remote speak events. They have been working fine until yesterday.

Yesterday when I got home I noticed HS was not running the normal routines. The KIOSK was in screen saver mode. After I "woke it up" ie tapped the screen to get the desktop view, HS started announcing multiple messages as if all the messages had been placed on hold. After about 15 to 20 different speach events everything was running normal.

Has anyone ever had anything like this happen to them? I realize it sounds like a Message Server issue as it really seemed the Msg Svr was waiting for the KIOSK to wake up and take the speak events.

Any ideas are welcome as to investigation or fixes.

Thanks,

[cyvinec]

Bruce,

What is the operating system of that KIOSK?
Normally can you send SAPI messages when the screen saver is on?
What HomeSeer version are you running?

All messages are queued on both ends to not make anything waiting. I can’t see how this could happen there should be something else.

Will see if someone else had this problem it could help me.

Thanks,
Christian

[bruce l]

It's a Celeron 1.4Ghz runnning XP Pro. To applications it's just another PC. The touchscreen info comes in on an internal serial port. Voice announce usually works fine when in screen saver mode.

I had screen saver, monitor power saving and hard disk power saving enabled. Would that make any differences ?

Of note today when I got home the KIOSK was in power saving mode (screen & HD off) and all was working fine. I tapped the screen and the KIOSK came up fine and HS was fine.

Dunno maybe it was a fluke but was really weird to hear 20 announcements back to back

HS 1.7.7
MS client 2.4.12
MS server 1.4.16

[bruce l]

This keeps happening!! When ANY client on the network hangs, message server prevents HS from making any further announcements. HS can still turn on lights or answer the phone.

When I power off the hung client PC then message server detects the client is gone and will start working again. The CPU usage on the server PC keeps spiking to 90 - 100% then back to idle when a client is hung.

It seems like the message server is waiting on a response from a client, ie. no time out on the connection.

I can not reproduce this at will but it happens at least every other day. Tell me how I can help you find the problem and I'll be glad to send you info.

[cyvinec]

Bruce,

Why your computer hangs?
Do you send the speech message to all connected client? If yes how many?
Do you have any error message client or server?
Is this happening on different client computer or always the same one?

Sorry for all the questions but I don’t know where to start with this one.

Thanks,
Christian

[bruce l]

1) The KIOSK PC tends to hang because of the TV program I run. The kid's PC hangs because of games they run on it.

2) Speach is always sent to all clients. I usually always have 3 clients connected and sometimes 4.

3) I've never seen any errors on the client or the server. I do get messages on the server about clients connecting and dis-connecting.

4) It usually happends when the KIOSK PC hangs but will happen when the kids PC hangs.

Thanks for checking,

[cyvinec]

Bruce,

This will not be easy for me to debug. The only way I found to pretend a client had problem is to unplug the network wire. Message Server is not waiting for any confirmation in fact that is the part I’m not proud of. I need to send a test command and it took sometime 2 minutes to get the confirmation that the client was not connected.

Do you have sometimes Message Server log telling that a client was removed because it was not longer connected?

Could you add a debug writelog at the end of your script to make sure is not the script that old all you speak command.

Thanks,
Christian