Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Users

Power recording rule for night time preference

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johan.vanderkolk at dommel

Feb 8, 2010, 12:13 PM

Post #1 of 14 (888 views)
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Power recording rule for night time preference

I discovered that my PC was the biggest power consumer in the household
(actually 70% of my power was consumed by my PC).

The machine was always on to record (combined BE/FE). I have
reconfigured Myth and some other settings to make it start 5 minutes
before the recording and shut down afterwards, using the PC's built in RTC.

Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per kWh)
and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was wondering if I
could force MythTV to record preferably shows at night time, without
excluding those at daytime.

Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.

This is the behavior I would like to have:
If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days (or
available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record the daytime
showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.

I'm not an SQL expert, but I assume some field must be added or modified
to achieve this. I know that the "Earlier" status prevents a recording
if Myth "thinks" it can record that episode at an earlier occasion.
Maybe a "Night" status could prevent Myth from recording a daytime
episode if the same episode is also run at night.

But as I said before, I'm not an SQL expert, but I believe there are
some reading this list.

Johan

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tom at furie

Feb 8, 2010, 12:47 PM

Post #2 of 14 (859 views)
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Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 09:13:40PM +0100, Johan wrote:

> Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per kWh)
> and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was wondering if I
> could force MythTV to record preferably shows at night time, without
> excluding those at daytime.
>
> Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.
>
> This is the behavior I would like to have:
> If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days (or
> available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record the daytime
> showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.

My first guess would be to set up two rules. One for night-time
showings, with a high priority, the other for day-time showings, with a
lower priority.

Cheers,
Tom

--
New customers only.

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philledwards at gmail

Feb 8, 2010, 6:50 PM

Post #3 of 14 (851 views)
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Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

> I discovered that my PC was the biggest power consumer in the household
> (actually 70% of my power was consumed by my PC).

How did you work that out? I'd be interested in doing something
similar to see if my PC is a electricity hog too.
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mythtv at theseekerr

Feb 8, 2010, 9:10 PM

Post #4 of 14 (845 views)
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Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Phill Edwards <philledwards [at] gmail> wrote:
>> I discovered that my PC was the biggest power consumer in the household
>> (actually 70% of my power was consumed by my PC).
>
> How did you work that out? I'd be interested in doing something
> similar to see if my PC is a electricity hog too.

Buy a cheap wattage meter, plug your PC into it. Find one which will
log kW hours rather than just display the current power draw. Leave
for 24 hours, then compare against your home power meter. Calculate a
percentage.

A quick and dirty worst case estimate: Take the rating of your power
supply, and multiply by the number of hours the machine is on - if you
have a 500W power supply, you'll struggle to use more than 12 kilowatt
hours per day - and if you do use that much, you need to look at
cutting down on the cpu load!

A typical number for a combined BE/FE would be around 4-5kW hours per
day. Adding more processor intensive jobs (say, transcoding) might
bring this figure up to 7 or 8kW hours per day. If this constitutes
70% of anyone's power draw, I'd be pretty surprised - unless you have
no fridge.

- Chris
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stichnot at gmail

Feb 8, 2010, 9:20 PM

Post #5 of 14 (844 views)
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Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Phill Edwards <philledwards [at] gmail> wrote:
>> I discovered that my PC was the biggest power consumer in the household
>> (actually 70% of my power was consumed by my PC).
>
> How did you work that out? I'd be interested in doing something
> similar to see if my PC is a electricity hog too.

Kill-A-Watt

My dedicated backend plus 2 HDHRs plus network switch run at 75 watts.
I think that breaks down into 35 watts for the basic PC, 10 watts for
each of its 3 hard drives, and 10 watts for the HDHRs plus switch.
The backend may draw another 10 watts when fully loaded, which is
rare.

The ION-based frontends idle at 15-20 watts each.

Lovely PG&E here in California has a tiered rate structure, and my
marginal rate is an incredible 38 to 45 cents per KWh. This means
each continuously operated watt costs me 3 to 4 dollars per year. On
the bright side, I get to justify buying new toys based on power
savings.

Jim
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johan.vanderkolk at dommel

Feb 8, 2010, 10:31 PM

Post #6 of 14 (835 views)
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Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

Christopher Kerr wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Phill Edwards <philledwards [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>>> I discovered that my PC was the biggest power consumer in the household
>>> (actually 70% of my power was consumed by my PC).
>>>
>> How did you work that out? I'd be interested in doing something
>> similar to see if my PC is a electricity hog too.
>>
>
>
> A typical number for a combined BE/FE would be around 4-5kW hours per
> day. Adding more processor intensive jobs (say, transcoding) might
> bring this figure up to 7 or 8kW hours per day. If this constitutes
> 70% of anyone's power draw, I'd be pretty surprised - unless you have
> no fridge.
>
My fridge is rated 300W, however during 24 hours it only consumed 0.4 kWH.
My PC is using 290W permanently (if not recording and throttled down)
290*24 = 6.96 kW = 2548 kWh per year minimal.

I have no airco, and on a yearly use of 4000kWh 2548kWh is about 70%.

This means that I would pay around 500$ per year to run my FE/BE if
night time power was not at 60% of the daytime price.

Johan
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Feb 9, 2010, 10:59 AM

Post #7 of 14 (800 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

On 02/08/2010 03:13 PM, Johan wrote:
> I discovered that my PC was the biggest power consumer in the
> household (actually 70% of my power was consumed by my PC).
>
> The machine was always on to record (combined BE/FE). I have
> reconfigured Myth and some other settings to make it start 5 minutes
> before the recording and shut down afterwards, using the PC's built in
> RTC.
>
> Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per kWh)
> and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was wondering if I
> could force MythTV to record preferably shows at night time, without
> excluding those at daytime.
>
> Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.
>
> This is the behavior I would like to have:
> If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days (or
> available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record the
> daytime showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.
>
> I'm not an SQL expert, but I assume some field must be added or
> modified to achieve this. I know that the "Earlier" status prevents a
> recording if Myth "thinks" it can record that episode at an earlier
> occasion. Maybe a "Night" status could prevent Myth from recording a
> daytime episode if the same episode is also run at night.
>
> But as I said before, I'm not an SQL expert, but I believe there are
> some reading this list.

Custom priority. Can even use "Prefer movies when shown at night
(complete example)" from the UI and then just remove the
"program.category_type = 'movie' AND " part of it.

Utilities/Setup|Setup|TV Settings|Recording Priorities|Custom Priority

Mike
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johan.vanderkolk at dommel

Feb 9, 2010, 11:29 AM

Post #8 of 14 (801 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

Tom Furie wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 09:13:40PM +0100, Johan wrote:
>
>
>> Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per kWh)
>> and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was wondering if I
>> could force MythTV to record preferably shows at night time, without
>> excluding those at daytime.
>>
>> Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.
>>
>> This is the behavior I would like to have:
>> If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days (or
>> available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record the daytime
>> showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.
>>
>
> My first guess would be to set up two rules. One for night-time
> showings, with a high priority, the other for day-time showings, with a
> lower priority.
>
> Cheers,
> Tom
>
>
Thanks, if that works it was too simple. I assumed priorities would only
come into effect if there was a conflict.

Now that I'm trying to edit the power search/recording rule I'm running
in to all kinds of problems. Nothing to do with the rules, but with the
edit box.

After a bit of editing my cursor is not near the character I am typing
(10 characters away), if I paste the example by pressing the OK key on
my remote (can someone update the
docs..http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html the "add this
example" key does not exist anymore) the text is not visible in the box,
or sometimes it is, but I can't get to the second line to edit. The
cursor key and the enter key move to the next field not to the next line
in the edit box.

Even though the text is invisible, the rule tests ok. The text must be
somewhere outside the screen. (Occasionally I see half a character,
outside the box on the far lefthand side of the screen).

Short queries seem to appear correct, but the ones that stretch over
multiple lines have those issues.

What is the trick here ?

Johan

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mtdean at thirdcontact

Feb 9, 2010, 11:36 AM

Post #9 of 14 (801 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

On 02/09/2010 02:29 PM, Johan wrote:
> Tom Furie wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 09:13:40PM +0100, Johan wrote:
>>> Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per
>>> kWh) and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was
>>> wondering if I could force MythTV to record preferably shows at
>>> night time, without excluding those at daytime.
>>>
>>> Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.
>>>
>>> This is the behavior I would like to have:
>>> If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days
>>> (or available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record
>>> the daytime showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.
>> My first guess would be to set up two rules. One for night-time
>> showings, with a high priority, the other for day-time showings, with a
>> lower priority.
> Thanks, if that works it was too simple.

See my other response for an even simpler method.

> I assumed priorities would only come into effect if there was a conflict.

Nope. Priorities always apply. :)

> Now that I'm trying to edit the power search/recording rule I'm
> running in to all kinds of problems. Nothing to do with the rules, but
> with the edit box.
>
> After a bit of editing my cursor is not near the character I am typing
> (10 characters away), if I paste the example by pressing the OK key on
> my remote (can someone update the
> docs..http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html the "add this
> example" key does not exist anymore) the text is not visible in the
> box, or sometimes it is, but I can't get to the second line to edit.
> The cursor key and the enter key move to the next field not to the
> next line in the edit box.
>
> Even though the text is invisible, the rule tests ok. The text must be
> somewhere outside the screen. (Occasionally I see half a character,
> outside the box on the far lefthand side of the screen).
>
> Short queries seem to appear correct, but the ones that stretch over
> multiple lines have those issues.
>
> What is the trick here ?

Write (the code to provide) support for a multiline text edit in mythui
and then submit the patch. (Or wait for someone else to do it.)

Mike
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johan.vanderkolk at dommel

Feb 9, 2010, 12:02 PM

Post #10 of 14 (804 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 02/09/2010 02:29 PM, Johan wrote:
>> Tom Furie wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 09:13:40PM +0100, Johan wrote:
>>>> Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per
>>>> kWh) and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was
>>>> wondering if I could force MythTV to record preferably shows at
>>>> night time, without excluding those at daytime.
>>>>
>>>> Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.
>>>>
>>>> This is the behavior I would like to have:
>>>> If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days
>>>> (or available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record
>>>> the daytime showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.
>>> My first guess would be to set up two rules. One for night-time
>>> showings, with a high priority, the other for day-time showings, with a
>>> lower priority.
>> Thanks, if that works it was too simple.
>
> See my other response for an even simpler method.
>
>> I assumed priorities would only come into effect if there was a
>> conflict.
>
> Nope. Priorities always apply. :)
My bad..
>
>> Now that I'm trying to edit the power search/recording rule I'm
>> running in to all kinds of problems. Nothing to do with the rules,
>> but with the edit box.
>>
>> After a bit of editing my cursor is not near the character I am
>> typing (10 characters away), if I paste the example by pressing the
>> OK key on my remote (can someone update the
>> docs..http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html the "add this
>> example" key does not exist anymore) the text is not visible in the
>> box, or sometimes it is, but I can't get to the second line to edit.
>> The cursor key and the enter key move to the next field not to the
>> next line in the edit box.
>>
>> Even though the text is invisible, the rule tests ok. The text must
>> be somewhere outside the screen. (Occasionally I see half a
>> character, outside the box on the far lefthand side of the screen).
>>
>> Short queries seem to appear correct, but the ones that stretch over
>> multiple lines have those issues.
>>
>> What is the trick here ?
>
> Write (the code to provide) support for a multiline text edit in
> mythui and then submit the patch. (Or wait for someone else to do it.)
Thanks. Not up to that yet, maybe one day. I assume this issue was
brought up before, but escaped my attention.
It was also mentioned somewhere that I could use Emacs key Combo's
(Ctrl-n to move to next line) in the edit box. Guess that was before
MythUI implementation.

I'll live with the limitation until I can fix it, or work around it.

>
> Mike
Johan
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ron at ronfrazier

Feb 9, 2010, 12:08 PM

Post #11 of 14 (800 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

> My PC is using 290W permanently (if not recording and throttled down) 290*24
>
> This means that I would pay around 500$ per year to run my FE/BE if night
> time power was not at 60% of the daytime price.

If powering it down and scheduling for night time doesn't improve
things for you significantly, you may want to look at the possibility
of building a PC based on something more energy efficient. My
diskless, basic core2 duo systems are about 35 watts at idle, and 65
at full load. Add another 6-10 watts per hard drive, a couple extra
watts if you have a lot of memory (mine is 2GB). A GeForce G210 idles
about 11 watts, or a G220 is about 20-30 watts (I think). It shouldn't
be at all unreasonable to build a system with about a third of your
system's power consumption. It could easily pay for itself in a year
or 2 at the prices you are talking about.

--
Ron
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mtdean at thirdcontact

Feb 9, 2010, 12:35 PM

Post #12 of 14 (793 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

On 02/09/2010 03:08 PM, Ronald Frazier wrote:
>> My PC is using 290W permanently (if not recording and throttled down) 290*24
>>
>> This means that I would pay around 500$ per year to run my FE/BE if night
>> time power was not at 60% of the daytime price.
>>
> If powering it down and scheduling for night time doesn't improve
> things for you significantly, you may want to look at the possibility
> of building a PC based on something more energy efficient. My
> diskless, basic core2 duo systems are about 35 watts at idle, and 65
> at full load. Add another 6-10 watts per hard drive, a couple extra
> watts if you have a lot of memory (mine is 2GB). A GeForce G210 idles
> about 11 watts, or a G220 is about 20-30 watts (I think). It shouldn't
> be at all unreasonable to build a system with about a third of your
> system's power consumption. It could easily pay for itself in a year
> or 2 at the prices you are talking about.
>

Agreed with everything--especially the suggestion that Atom/ION is not
the only way to get a power-efficient system! (And using a Core 2 Duo
or similar, you actually have a "real" CPU that's actually useful when
you need it.)

Only thing I have to add is to make sure you get a power-efficient power
supply (go 80 PLUS).
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/393806#393806

Mike
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johan.vanderkolk at dommel

Feb 9, 2010, 12:37 PM

Post #13 of 14 (791 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

Johan wrote:
> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 02/09/2010 02:29 PM, Johan wrote:
>>> Tom Furie wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 09:13:40PM +0100, Johan wrote:
>>>>> Since the price of electricity here is quite high (about 0.2$ per
>>>>> kWh) and about 60% of that during nights and weekends I was
>>>>> wondering if I could force MythTV to record preferably shows at
>>>>> night time, without excluding those at daytime.
>>>>>
>>>>> Forcing the recording time to 7PM to 7AM excludes daytime showings.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is the behavior I would like to have:
>>>>> If the show is aired during daytime, but within X amount of days
>>>>> (or available listing days) also at nighttime then do not record
>>>>> the daytime showing. Many shows are repeated during night time.
>>>> My first guess would be to set up two rules. One for night-time
>>>> showings, with a high priority, the other for day-time showings,
>>>> with a
>>>> lower priority.
>>> Thanks, if that works it was too simple.
>>
>> See my other response for an even simpler method.
>>
>>> I assumed priorities would only come into effect if there was a
>>> conflict.
>>
>> Nope. Priorities always apply. :)
> My bad..
>>
>>> Now that I'm trying to edit the power search/recording rule I'm
>>> running in to all kinds of problems. Nothing to do with the rules,
>>> but with the edit box.
>>>
>>> After a bit of editing my cursor is not near the character I am
>>> typing (10 characters away), if I paste the example by pressing the
>>> OK key on my remote (can someone update the
>>> docs..http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html the "add this
>>> example" key does not exist anymore) the text is not visible in the
>>> box, or sometimes it is, but I can't get to the second line to edit.
>>> The cursor key and the enter key move to the next field not to the
>>> next line in the edit box.
>>>
>>> Even though the text is invisible, the rule tests ok. The text must
>>> be somewhere outside the screen. (Occasionally I see half a
>>> character, outside the box on the far lefthand side of the screen).
>>>
>>> Short queries seem to appear correct, but the ones that stretch over
>>> multiple lines have those issues.
>>>
>>> What is the trick here ?
>>
>> Write (the code to provide) support for a multiline text edit in
>> mythui and then submit the patch. (Or wait for someone else to do it.)
> Thanks. Not up to that yet, maybe one day. I assume this issue was
> brought up before, but escaped my attention.
> It was also mentioned somewhere that I could use Emacs key Combo's
> (Ctrl-n to move to next line) in the edit box. Guess that was before
> MythUI implementation.
>
> I'll live with the limitation until I can fix it, or work around it.
>
>
>>
>> Mike
> Johan
For those interested: *Ticket #7192: Creation of *custom* rules is broken.
*If terminology changes between versions, (power search versus custom
rules) it is hard to Google. *
*
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

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johan.vanderkolk at dommel

Feb 9, 2010, 12:52 PM

Post #14 of 14 (797 views)
Permalink

Re: Power recording rule for night time preference [In reply to]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 02/09/2010 03:08 PM, Ronald Frazier wrote:
>>> My PC is using 290W permanently (if not recording and throttled
>>> down) 290*24
>>>
>>> This means that I would pay around 500$ per year to run my FE/BE if
>>> night
>>> time power was not at 60% of the daytime price.
>>>
>> If powering it down and scheduling for night time doesn't improve
>> things for you significantly, you may want to look at the possibility
>> of building a PC based on something more energy efficient. My
>> diskless, basic core2 duo systems are about 35 watts at idle, and 65
>> at full load. Add another 6-10 watts per hard drive, a couple extra
>> watts if you have a lot of memory (mine is 2GB). A GeForce G210 idles
>> about 11 watts, or a G220 is about 20-30 watts (I think). It shouldn't
>> be at all unreasonable to build a system with about a third of your
>> system's power consumption. It could easily pay for itself in a year
>> or 2 at the prices you are talking about.
>>
>
> Agreed with everything--especially the suggestion that Atom/ION is not
> the only way to get a power-efficient system! (And using a Core 2 Duo
> or similar, you actually have a "real" CPU that's actually useful when
> you need it.)
>
> Only thing I have to add is to make sure you get a power-efficient
> power supply (go 80 PLUS).
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/393806#393806
>
I think it's very well possible, but I was looking for quick wins. Use
of the RTC wake up works terrific.

I also have 3 receiver cards in the BE/FE (2 DVB-S and one PVR500 analog
card). Would be interesting to know if someone runs a low power BE with
3 receiver cards. (not firewire or USB external receivers).
Specially which MB is used.
Too bad that my savings can't go in to new stuff. Need the funds
elsewhere.... (advantage: no worries about WAF anymore)

Johan

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