Tricking a set-top box to wake up?

[tvmaster2]

I've got a cable set-top CISCO box that's being triggered by Sage via 1394. It all works great, except for...

The cable company (Cox) builds in a six-hour kill rule on their set-top boxes, to stop us evil, paying customers from hogging their precious digital bandwidth. So, the box goes to a splash screen after six hours of no-channel-changes.

I have always set "Always Tune Channel" in Detailed Setup / Customize, and it is currently set to "Yes", but lately, if I have a recording set to fire that falls OUTSIDE the six-hour screen saver window, Sage doesn't seem to be waking up the CISCO box. Strangely, Sage DOES seem to be changing the channel, but the box isn't waking up properly, and I get 90 minutes of no-audio, black screen.

Any idea what to try next besides doing a hard-power-down-reset on the set-top box?

The only other thing I can think of is that when the CISCO goes into screen saver mode, the channel change from Sage is causing the HDPVR to get disrupted somehow, maybe a power supply issue? When the CISCO box hasn't shut down to its screensaver, channel changes don't cause a problem for the HDPVR

[wnjj]

Maybe create some recurring timed 1 minute recordings every 5-6 hours to keep the box alive? Not sure how easily you can keep them away from your regular recordings though.

[JustFred]

Many cable boxes have a menu option to disable that annoying power-save timeout.

In the case of the Motorola DCX3200, it's found under Settings -> Timers -> Power Save Mode. This box also has a setting to enable an "auto power-on timer".

Armed with the model number, it should be possible to locate the STB's technical manual online, either at the cable co's website or via Google. It usually includes info about other options within the box itself.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by JustFred

Many cable boxes have a menu option to disable that annoying power-save timeout.

In the case of the Motorola DCX3200, it's found under Settings -> Timers -> Power Save Mode. This box also has a setting to enable an "auto power-on timer".

Armed with the model number, it should be possible to locate the STB's technical manual online, either at the cable co's website or via Google. It usually includes info about other options within the box itself.

I seem to remember that with the old, Motorola boxes. But on this newer Cisco, I can’t find a way to turn off Power Save. I remember talking to a Cox CSR once who said there’s no way. One caveat - I think it only happens if the box is left on a ‘Premium’ channel, like HBO, Starz, etc. Which is stupid - bandwidth is bandwidth. I suppose if there were a way to have the box reset to CBS for example, when not recording, that may work. However, save for doing what WNJJ mentioned, aka setting up tiny recordings, that’s out of my programming ability

[Zogg]

I have this same issue with a Samsung STB in my upstairs office closet, which despite the settings continues to turn itself off regularly. There also isn't a serial or firewire port to control it with, so I'm limited to an IR blaster to control it.

When the STB is on, the display is noticeably brighter than when off, so I've been thinking about trying to use a cheap camera aimed at the display to take regular pictures, and then working out an algorithm to examine the picture and determine if it's on or off. I know I've seen something like this in the past but don't remember where. It might be as simple though as looking at the raw data in the image file. I think a low resolution image might be fairly easy to examine.

The things we do to make this stuff work...

[KryptoNyte]

What does it take to manually wake the box up, and how long before it will accept the channel change? When I was using this method (only via IR), I seem to recall setting Sage to lead the channel change with an "enter" key command to alleviate this problem, just not sure your condition will work this way. Maybe even put a pause of some kind in between the "enter" command and the actual channel change.

Additionally, it be wise to increase your tuning delay time for the HDPVR.

[wayner]

I have some older SA boxes (Cisco bought SA in 2005 and then sold them to Technicolor in 2015) and they have a setting called Power ON or something like that. Change it so that it powers on when channel changes. Hopefully your box has that setting.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

What does it take to manually wake the box up, and how long before it will accept the channel change? When I was using this method (only via IR), I seem to recall setting Sage to lead the channel change with an "enter" key command to alleviate this problem, just not sure your condition will work this way. Maybe even put a pause of some kind in between the "enter" command and the actual channel change.

Additionally, it be wise to increase your tuning delay time for the HDPVR.

I believe you have to take the remote and either change a channel, hit the guide button, or one of the other control keys. I’ll confirm that.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by Zogg

I have this same issue with a Samsung STB in my upstairs office closet, which despite the settings continues to turn itself off regularly. There also isn't a serial or firewire port to control it with, so I'm limited to an IR blaster to control it.

When the STB is on, the display is noticeably brighter than when off, so I've been thinking about trying to use a cheap camera aimed at the display to take regular pictures, and then working out an algorithm to examine the picture and determine if it's on or off. I know I've seen something like this in the past but don't remember where. It might be as simple though as looking at the raw data in the image file. I think a low resolution image might be fairly easy to examine.

The things we do to make this stuff work...

I finally got around to looking at this, and I have a Rube Goldberg-esque method to turn the STB back on using VLC to take a picture of the front panel display, ImageMagick to crop and analyze it, EventGhost to send the command if necessary to the USB-UIRT, and mailsend to notify me via email sent to text on my cell phone.

I can post the details if anyone wants them.

[JustFred]

Please, do post up the details of your solution. I've got one Sage system with an STB that may benefit from this.

I would never be one to badmouth Rube Goldberg! (Although I do sometimes look cross-eyed at him).

[Zogg]

By popular demand, here is my method for determining if my STB has turned itself off. A batch file runs at X:25 and X:55 of each hour (I run Win 7) that takes a picture of the front panel display, uses a quick image analysis to determine if the STB has turned itself off, and if so then send a blaster command and send a text message. This particular STB display is dimmed when off, so I use a test to determine if the brightness threshold is above a certain amount as an ON or OFF test.

I chose to do this in a regular DOS batch file, but it could be done in Powershell as well I'm sure and probably better. It should also be easily translated to Linux since both VLC and ImageMagic have Linux versions available, and there are Linux blaster and email programs.

cd \scripts

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --dshow-vdev="Logitech Webcam 600" --dshow-size=320x240 -V dummy --intf=dummy --dummy-quiet --video-filter=scene --no-audio --scene-path=C:\scripts --scene-format=jpeg --scene-prefix=snap --scene-replace --run-time=5 --scene-ratio=24 "dshow://" vlc://quit

"C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.8-Q16\magick.exe" convert snap.jpeg -crop 45x45+215+115 -colorspace HSB -separate -delete 0,1 -threshold 80%% -format "%%[max]" info: >STBresult.txt

set /p VAL=<STBresult.txt

if "%VAL%"=="0" (

	"C:\Program Files (x86)\EventGhost\eventghost.exe" -event  "HTTP.STBPWR"

	mailsend -to Zogg@vtext.com -from Zogg@gmail.net -port 587 -smtp smtp.gmail.com -user Zogg@gmail.net -pass "ZoggZogg" -sub "EventGhost" -auth-login -starttls -dispostion "inline" -mime-type "text/plain" -msg-body "EGstbpwrmsg.txt"

)

I keep things like this in folder called scripts, so I change to that directory. I use mailsend in several things so I have a local copy in that folder, but all other programs have their full default paths in the batch file.

First, VLC runs and takes a picture from a webcam pointed at the STB display, as seen in snap.jpeg. You would need to determine the exact device name to use by doing "Open capture device" from within VLC. The resolution can be fairly low and makes the analysis quicker I think, so I chose 320x240.

Then, ImageMagick analyzes the picture. An example cropped image is attached, but there's no need to actually store the cropped image since IM does it all in one command. I determined how to set a threshold for brightness detection HERE and set it at 80%, which for my purposes seems to be spot on. The result is either "0" or "65535" which gets stored into a file.

The set command reads the value into a variable. This is necessary because in DOS you can't send a program result directly into a variable (I believe you can in Powershell), but it's pretty quick to store a simple result code into a file and then read it back.

If the result is "0", then the brightness of the picture is below the threshold so the STB must be off. So, time to "press" the power button. In my case, I couldn't get any command line program to work with my USB-UIRT, so I just send an event to EventGhost which is set up to send the command. I absolutely love EG, it is so powerful, and I continually find more things to do with it. Essentially, it will decode keystrokes, remote commands from IR/X-10/etc, network commands, and then can do almost anything, and it has plugins to interface with most remotes, home automation, webserver, etc. It also has a SageTV plugin so I use it for my remote control handling. Did I say that I love EG?

Finally, I decided to send a text to my cell phone to let me know that this process fired off. I use a program from Github called mailsend, which can be a bit tricky to set up so I left an example with changed personal info in the code above. In the text file that contains the message body it just says "STB Power command sent" but you can put whatever you want in the text file.

I hope you find this helpful or gives you an idea on how to automate some process. Let me know if you have any questions.

[wayner]

Brilliant - I love stuff like this!

I tried a similar strategy in the past by doing a test recording in SageTV and running it through comskip via SJQ as comskip will give you an average brightness. If the brightness was below the threshold then you fire off a power toggle.

[EnterNoEscape]

This is really clever. I like it.