HD Homerun issues...

[SomeWhatLost]

so, I get a call from my mom about the SageTV setup I have over at her house...
the "support" call was mostly unintelligible non technical while trying to be technical gibberish that roughly translated into sage isn't recording her shows, and live TV didn't work...

anyway, I go over, seems both HDHR's I set her up with are constantly rebooting... one old v1 HDHR and one of the newer HDHR3's...
nothing networky seems to be going on as the reboot even with the network cable unplugged...

I am guessing power supplies?

why would both supplies go bad at the same time though?

just in case it is not the supplies, I also ordered a new HDHR, but now they are calling them the connect or something? is that still plug n' play/compatible with sage? do they work the same as the old HDHR's?

[waynedunham]

It does seem odd that they'd both go bad at the same time, but if I had to guess why they would constantly reboot then power supply would be a good guess. Maybe a power surge could have blown the power supplies. I got a lightning strike once that blew out the power supply in a TV and a VCR.

I guess you should also check the outlet/power strip with a meter to make sure you aren't having power issues from the wall to the units. Or maybe just plug them into another outlet/power strip that you know is good.

There were issues with the original V1 power supplies dying, but I surely think you would have seen that already. I had to replace them on my V1s years ago. (bad parts from a supplier according to Silicon Dust)

Also, how long have they been installed? I wonder if maybe the firmware might be way out of date. I don't think I've ever heard of it causing reboots, but just another point to check.

I had 2 of the original HDHR's and one of the tuners died on one of them so I had to replace it. I also went with an HDHR connect and it indeed does work almost identically to the old V1 HDHRs. Bonus, now you only need one cable input to feed both tuners so you can do away with a splitter that you needed for the old V1s.

[dstrahler5]

There is a firmware version that would cause this. I think it was 20140604.

I purchased a HDHR-US on ebay that was supposed to be in GOOD WORKING CONDITION, ( it probably did work for the seller) but when I hooked it up to my router it would reboot every several seconds.
I read somewhere about a firmware bug causing it to constantly renew its IP address, and that disconnecting the internet from the router would stop it so I could do the upgrade, and that solved the problem

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by dstrahler5

There is a firmware version that would cause this. I think it was 20140604.

I purchased a HDHR-US on ebay that was supposed to be in GOOD WORKING CONDITION, ( it probably did work for the seller) but when I hooked it up to my router it would reboot every several seconds.
I read somewhere about a firmware bug causing it to constantly renew its IP address, and that disconnecting the internet from the router would stop it so I could do the upgrade, and that solved the problem

Interesting, I didn't know about that. Hopefully that is the issue and he can just update his firmware to fix the issue.

[dstrahler5]

Here is a link to the silicondust forum that covers this issue in detail.

https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/...ic.php?t=62920

[wayner]

I have a strange issue with my HDHR tuner where it seems to go down for a minute or two around the top of the hour. I wonder if this could be related to this issue or other DHCP-types of issues with the HDHR described here: https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/...ic.php?t=63510

[SomeWhatLost]

fwiw, the power supplies where fine...
I did not have time to try the Firmware fix, but next time I get over there seems like an easy enough thing to at least try... and it seems to fit the symptoms perfectly...
in hindsight, I probably should have tried the FW fix first...

[SomeWhatLost]

just a fwiw, it was in fact the firmware...
thanks for the heads up dstrahler5...

[SomeWhatLost]

now I am wondering about my HDHR's firmware...
I am using the unraid/docker setup... how is HDHR firmware handled in this case? does the docker/linux just take care of it? do I need to upgrade them manually?

[MacDaddy]

Interesting point. I just joined the unRaid/Docker club and I don't think I'll ever go back. However before migrating off my windows machine, I took the opportunity to upgrade firmware on all my HDHR devices with the windows setup tool.

There is a Silicondust Linux config tool that looks like it will upgrade firmware. However it requires a development environment to make the tool. I don't think unRaid in its natural state will support that.

Seems there is are a few ways to go at this.
1) Use a different machine running Windows with the config tool loaded. Make sure the HDHR devices are on an accessible LAN segment (issue for me as I run all the HDHR devices on an isolated NIC) and upgrade as documented.
2) Spin up a Windows VM. Load the config tool and upgrade as documented (would remove the NIC issue, but seems a lot of overhead for the task). At least you wouldn't need an extra PC to run Windows.
3) Make a "development" docker that loads all the right packages. Download the sources from Silicondust. Make the config tool and run as documented.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make a light weight docker development environment? I'm assuming slackware would be the path of least resistance, but if I understand correctly I think the docker engine would let you run any Linux flavor?