OpenDCT, SageTV, and other Apps accessing tuners?

[phantomii]

I have two HDHomerun Prime tuners. My SageTV Server is set up with OpenDCT to use all six tuners and everything is working fine. I also have other Apps that can access these tuners directly. I do not believe I can specify which tuners the other Apps will use or how they will prioritize them. So if a different App is using the two tuners first in my SageTV Merit list but the remaining tuners are free, will Sage bypass these and use the first available tuners or will Sage have problems since it is not the app using the tuners and they appear to be busy?

One of the apps it the Android Version of the HD View app which again I can not seem to see a way to specific devices or tuners within the devices for use like you can in SageTV.

[Tiki]

Search the OpenDCT thread for "pooling". This feature is not enabled by default, but if you enable it, it will allow for what you are asking. OpenDCT will then keep track of which tuners are in use and grab the next available tuner. If all the tuners are in use, it can prioritize Sage and try to steal a tuner from another app.

[phantomii]

Thanks so much for the reply. Lots of good information. One other question on pooling that I did not see an answer to. If I have two devices and one of those is down or offline (My Ceton eth6 seems to do this periodically) will tuners which are not available (vs in use by something else) be bypassed in favor of those that are online and available?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by phantomii

Thanks so much for the reply. Lots of good information. One other question on pooling that I did not see an answer to. If I have two devices and one of those is down or offline (My Ceton eth6 seems to do this periodically) will tuners which are not available (vs in use by something else) be bypassed in favor of those that are online and available?

That will not happen currently. If the InfiniTV 6 ETH goes offline, that status will not be detected before a tuner from that device is selected. Pooling was not designed to be used for offline redundancy, but it wouldn't be hard to add, so I might do that in a future update. The only real problem is if you run out of tuners because some of them are offline, you're going to miss recordings anyway. The quirks of the InfiniTV 6 ETH were taken into account with the tuning and monitoring logic. That specific model is the reason OpenDCT does it's own halt detection. It tries to figure out if there's a problem in less than 15 seconds and will re-tune if one is detected.

Update: I just added offline detection via ping with an adjustable timeout feature. It will be in the next beta release. I usually like to get at least a few changes in before releasing unless something horrible needs to be addressed, so it might be a few weeks before you'll see this released.

[phantomii]

Thanks so much. Greatly appreciated..... I assume this will work for all devices and not just the Ceton? Never had an issue with my HD Homeruns but it seems like something that would be universally useful....

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by phantomii

Thanks so much. Greatly appreciated..... I assume this will work for all devices and not just the Ceton? Never had an issue with my HD Homeruns but it seems like something that would be universally useful....

This feature was already implicitly there for the HDHomeRun devices. If you're pooling and we can't determine if the device is locked or not because of a communication failure, it's assumed to be locked which gives you the same effect.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by phantomii

Thanks so much. Greatly appreciated..... I assume this will work for all devices and not just the Ceton? Never had an issue with my HD Homeruns but it seems like something that would be universally useful....

Did you ever get this set up? I'd like to give Plex DVR a try, and I'd like to have it share tuners with Sage, since I don't plan to use Plex regularly.