Ok, I've spent all too much time over the past few days analyzing, testing, and debugging the AlarmSnooze applet.
I now have a significantly more stable applet that I'm running on a Radio with firmware version 7.4.1-r7915. I originally started with Ben's baseline version of AlarmSnoozeApplet.lua which was checked into SVN last Friday the 18th and made my modifications from there... There are still some minor problems remaining (most of which are systemic in nature and cannot, in my view, be fixed in a vacuum in the applet), but the core backup alarm functionality is much more deterministic now. I won't go into all the gory details unless people are interested (Ben??? :) ), but suffice it to say that it took many hours to understand the underlying system behavior because of the interaction between many separate layers of functionality in the context of alarms. This modified applet is also heavily instrumented, so the events that contribute to any alarm malfunctions will be clear and available in the system log for post-mortem analysis. The specific remaining problems that I'm cognizant of are as follows: 1) When a new alarm notification is sent by the server (web interface) while an existing alarm is actually playing out at the radio (including during local snooze) then the new alarm will not have a local backup timer associated with it 2) The backup alarm audio gain (volume) is fixed, and not configurable, as is the snooze time (9 minutes). Both of these characteristics are still as they were in the previous version of the applet. 3) The backup alarm audio gain (volume) is sometimes moved during server reconnection events (when network conditions are dicey) The benefits, as seen in my testing: If you set a one shot or repeating alarm now, or even multiple one shot alarms (as long as you don't set any while the Radio is actually in the middle of having had one go off) I expect you'll be much better protected when/if your server connection goes away. The backup timer protection for the next upcoming alarm (though not necessarily those coming after it) has been greatly enhanced. Also greatly enhanced is the likelihood that the backup on-board alarm audio will actually play when the backup timer fires off. The Squeezebox development team will still be needed to help clean up the remaining issues (presuming they are interested in starting with my modified applet to begin with, that is). The remaining issues appear to be systemic, as I mentioned, and relate to flow control between different entities in the system (server, SqueezeOS, and applet communication). I have worked around some of the systemic problems by making changes in the applet, but there's only so much that can be done exclusively in AlarmSnooze itself... To the Logitech team there: I still need information on licensing and distribution constraints to determine if it's ok to distribute this modified applet for testing by those who want to give it a try. Do you guys want to have a look at it in advance to examine and possibly run through a QA ringer? I'm also willing to talk about the specific issues that remain if you guys are interested... I believe I now have a firm understanding of what the remaining problems are and can share suggestions toward resolving them (not to be presumptuous). If and when Logitech approves the distribution of this modified applet for a group of interested Radio users to test, testers must understand that I have only been debugging this applet for 3 days now (albeit probably 30 hours in total by now). I've also only tested it in my environment, so it has had nothing near a real good shakeout yet. The optimal scenario would be that the Logitech guys have at it first, as I think it will provide them a good foundation for resolving the balance of alarm issues remaining. Ben, Michael, et al... Please advise how you'd like to proceed... Regards, Marc -- Marc ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Marc's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=34776 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=72956 _______________________________________________ Radio mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/radio
