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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end?

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msmall at eastlink

Aug 28, 2012, 9:42 AM

Post #1 of 8 (489 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end?

On August 28, 2012, Tyler T wrote:
> Note, this is with 0.23. Someone mentioned that 0.25 requires more CPU
> on the BE but I have no hard numbers. I want to upgrade to 0.25 but as
> usual, personal life interferes with geek projects! Maybe someone else
> here has run 0.25 on ARM and can report.
>

I'm also running my MBE on ARM, and I'm also waiting for somebody else to try
0.25 with it. I haven't dared yet.

My MBE is a QNAP TS219P NAS box. It's basically a sheevaplug with 3 USB
ports, 2 SATA bays and 2 eSATA ports. I need one computer on all the time to
run my mail server, print server, file servers, and several other functions.
I like it to draw as little power as possible.

If you take the plunge and try 0.25 on your sheevaplug, please let me know how
it works. I'm just a little scared. My WAF has been comfortably high for
quite a while.

Mark

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gregcope at gmail

Aug 28, 2012, 10:37 AM

Post #2 of 8 (470 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

On 28 August 2012 17:42, Mark J. Small <msmall [at] eastlink> wrote:

> I'm also running my MBE on ARM, and I'm also waiting for somebody else to
> try
> 0.25 with it. I haven't dared yet.
>
> My MBE is a QNAP TS219P NAS box. It's basically a sheevaplug with 3 USB
> ports, 2 SATA bays and 2 eSATA ports. I need one computer on all the time
> to
> run my mail server, print server, file servers, and several other
> functions.
> I like it to draw as little power as possible.

Can you tell me more - I have considered doing this. What do you record
(DVB?) Many tunners?

<snippage>

msmall at eastlink

Aug 28, 2012, 12:20 PM

Post #3 of 8 (482 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

On August 28, 2012, Greg Cope wrote:
> On 28 August 2012 17:42, Mark J. Small <msmall [at] eastlink> wrote:
> > I'm also running my MBE on ARM, and I'm also waiting for somebody else to
> > try
> > 0.25 with it. I haven't dared yet.
> >
> > My MBE is a QNAP TS219P NAS box. It's basically a sheevaplug with 3 USB
> > ports, 2 SATA bays and 2 eSATA ports. I need one computer on all the
> > time to
> > run my mail server, print server, file servers, and several other
> > functions.
> > I like it to draw as little power as possible.
>
> Can you tell me more - I have considered doing this. What do you record
> (DVB?) Many tunners?
>

I'm still living in SD with on old 27" CRT as my primary TV. The MBE has 1
Hauppauge USB-PVR2 and an IR blaster controlling a cable box. I have this
tuner set to the lowest priority so it is basically reserved for live TV. I
also have a slave backend that does the heavy lifting (scheduled recordings,
commercial flagging). It has a PVR-500 (2 tuner) and dual IR blasters to
control 2 cable boxes. The slave backend is off unless it is recording or
commflagging.

My cable company is all digital, and there is no cable card here in Canada, so
there is no way around using 1 cable box per tuner with IR blasters.

I wish I could record OTA, but in my little river valley town in the middle of
nowhere, I would need to build a rooftop or tower antenna to pull in 3
channels in 2 directions.

Mark
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RossBoylan at stanfordalumni

Aug 28, 2012, 12:39 PM

Post #4 of 8 (467 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

On Tue, 2012-08-28 at 14:05 -0500, rsh1k wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 1:30 PM, Simon Hobson <linux at thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:
> > rsh1k wrote:
> >> Plus, it opens up new charging opportunities -
> >> solar, wind, etc - things that with an up-front investment could lower
> >> the annual operating costs even more. Hmm......
> >
> >
> > Why do I have visions of the cash registers going wild !
> >
Don't forget your time! If you like tinkering, I suppose it could be a
benefit, not a cost.
>
> Yep, that's a very real concern!
>
> With my current electric bill, I have a modest budget at hand if
> averaged out over a few years. But if the payoff period is too long,
> then it wouldn't be worth the effort to build something exotic. And
> there is a curve to it - where it becomes more and more expensive to
> save increasingly smaller amounts of power, and the additional return
> for the investment lessens.
>
> ... which brings me back to Netbooks and the combined frontend /
> backend setup. :-)
I'm also interested in the ultra-small since my furniture and my family
both think the case I was thinking of (Antec NSK 2480), and even some
smaller variants, is too big.

I was punting on the optical drive anyway, mostly because blu-ray is
unavailable on linux (for "protected" disks) and even in windows the
software costs as much as a player, and apparently requires ongoing
payments.

Zotac boxes with ION2 are said to work. But quality and support sound
poor. newegg comments on Antec ISK cases are filled with remarks about
poor quality, bad fit, and physically altering components to jam them
in. Nor is it the only ultra-small with such comments.

>From an earlier thread I found http://www.logicsupply.com/, which looks
interesting. They have remarks on which boards fit in which cases. I'm
concerned about ventilation with the small cases. The thread also
references mini-itx.com, which I haven't looked at.

Ross

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roland.sh1000 at gmail

Aug 28, 2012, 1:34 PM

Post #5 of 8 (467 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Ross Boylan
<RossBoylan [at] stanfordalumni> wrote:
> Don't forget your time! If you like tinkering, I suppose it could be a
> benefit, not a cost.

Absolutely. In the end, it pretty much has to be considered a hobby.
I consider it a time shifting exercise - you spend time building the
MythBox so that you DON'T have to waste time watching commercials, or
pay for on-demand content. It may or may not balance out. :-)

> I'm also interested in the ultra-small since my furniture and my family
> both think the case I was thinking of (Antec NSK 2480), and even some
> smaller variants, is too big.
>
> I was punting on the optical drive anyway, mostly because blu-ray is
> unavailable on linux (for "protected" disks) and even in windows the
> software costs as much as a player, and apparently requires ongoing
> payments.
>
> Zotac boxes with ION2 are said to work. But quality and support sound
> poor. newegg comments on Antec ISK cases are filled with remarks about
> poor quality, bad fit, and physically altering components to jam them
> in. Nor is it the only ultra-small with such comments.
>
> >From an earlier thread I found http://www.logicsupply.com/, which looks
> interesting. They have remarks on which boards fit in which cases. I'm
> concerned about ventilation with the small cases. The thread also
> references mini-itx.com, which I haven't looked at.
>
> Ross

Yeah, that's a pretty big case. A bit bigger than mine, which I
typically try to hide behind or under furniture. I think there was
a time when those sort of HTPC cases were "required"... remember when
the WMV9 format first came out, and it took a furnace of a CPU / GPU
to decode it, with three small hurricanes worth of fans to keep it all
cool? Now look at what tiny devices like the Apple TV can do -
silently without any fans.

Unless you need a lot of drives and a lot of cards (graphics, tuners,
etc), I would personally go with something a lot smaller. In the
past, I would have instinctively gone for a Shuttle XPC... but there
are smaller and quieter options now.

Don't necessary skip out on the optical drive though - I have used
mine a lot more than I had thought. Playing DVDs, importing music,
and most importantly - burning DVDs to archive recordings. Also, It's
handy to be able to boot from a CD for maintenance, if required.

- rsh1k
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jedi at mishnet

Aug 28, 2012, 2:23 PM

Post #6 of 8 (459 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 12:39:16PM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-08-28 at 14:05 -0500, rsh1k wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 1:30 PM, Simon Hobson <linux at thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:
> > > rsh1k wrote:
> > >> Plus, it opens up new charging opportunities -
> > >> solar, wind, etc - things that with an up-front investment could lower
> > >> the annual operating costs even more. Hmm......
> > >
> > >
> > > Why do I have visions of the cash registers going wild !
> > >
> Don't forget your time! If you like tinkering, I suppose it could be a
> benefit, not a cost.
> >
> > Yep, that's a very real concern!
> >
> > With my current electric bill, I have a modest budget at hand if
> > averaged out over a few years. But if the payoff period is too long,
> > then it wouldn't be worth the effort to build something exotic. And
> > there is a curve to it - where it becomes more and more expensive to
> > save increasingly smaller amounts of power, and the additional return
> > for the investment lessens.
> >
> > ... which brings me back to Netbooks and the combined frontend /
> > backend setup. :-)
> I'm also interested in the ultra-small since my furniture and my family
> both think the case I was thinking of (Antec NSK 2480), and even some
> smaller variants, is too big.

Pshaw! My first Tivo was bigger than that.

It's not a bad case if you've got room for it. The main problem with
normal PC cases is depth. A lot of cabinets aren't deep enough. In terms
of the front plate footprint, the Antec is not out of line at all.

[deletia]
> Zotac boxes with ION2 are said to work. But quality and support sound
> poor. newegg comments on Antec ISK cases are filled with remarks about

I just get ready made boxes and just use them. Since they are low
profile machines, they probably are a bit like a swiss watch on the
inside. I don't know really. I haven't ever taken one of my low profile
machiens apart.

> poor quality, bad fit, and physically altering components to jam them
> in. Nor is it the only ultra-small with such comments.
>
> >From an earlier thread I found http://www.logicsupply.com/, which looks
> interesting. They have remarks on which boards fit in which cases. I'm
> concerned about ventilation with the small cases. The thread also
> references mini-itx.com, which I haven't looked at.

The larger black boxy Asrock systems seem able to keep themselves
pretty cool despite being fairly tiny. Probably have more room to work
with than a Zotac Mac or a Revo.
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Jens.Peder.Terjesen at devoteam

Aug 30, 2012, 12:07 AM

Post #7 of 8 (431 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

-----Original Message-----
On: 28. august 2012 8:07 rsh1k wrote:

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 1:44 AM, Simon Hobson <linux [at] thehobsons> wrote:

> Lastly, what sort of climate are you in ? Or more importantly, what
> sort of temperatures does your UPS live in ? The VRLA (Vale Regulated
> Lead Acid) batteries they use really don't like heat and despite
> what's claimed about them they will dry out. If the batteries are
> still running, it may be worth prising the cover off to get at the
> rubber caps on the cells, and putting a tiny amount of distilled water
> in - only a couple of ml, a small syringe is good for that - to rehydrate them and see if they improve.
>
> --
> Simon Hobson

I was out in the Northwest USA at that point, so I doubt it was heat
or cold that killed it. I didn't check the battery acid levels, but
to be honest, I wasn't particularly thrilled with it even when it was
new. I bought it (a mid-grade APC unit) because our building had a
lot of small power fluctuations... 1/2 second brownouts, that sort of
thing. About once every week and a half, I would come home from work
to find the computer off. With the UPS, the computer would receive a
signal via USB when the battery level was low, and do a controlled shutdown, preventing any issues with filesystem or database corruption. It seemed like a good setup.

But in practice, it ended up being rather annoying. At best, when new, it had about 15 minutes of runtime and would continue on with only a brief warning squeal to indicate that the power had been
interrupted. But once the batteries started to weaken, it would
trip, estimate that it had <5 minutes of runtime left, and signal the computer to turn off almost immediately. So even those short power
dips would end up turning the computer off completely. I started
coming home from work and finding the computer off more often than
before. Even turning on a hair dryer in the bathroom would turn off
the TV!

I thought about getting new batteries, and I thought about upgrading to a bigger UPS. But in the end, I didn't want to spend hundreds of $$$ and have a massive UPS that was twice the size of my computer, all
sitting on display in the living room. I got rid of that UPS when I
moved...

- rsh1k
-----Original Message-----

To me that looks like a less than optimal setup for a UPS.

I have a small UPS with only about 10 - 15 minutes of runtime that works perfectly well for my combined BE/FE.

It is configured to signal the computer to turn off 30 seconds after power loss.
This prevents short power dips from shutting down the computer.

My BE/FE uses about 30 seconds to shut down, so the UPS is also configured to shut off the power 60 seconds after signaling the computer to shut down.

The BIOS is set to start the computer at return of power.

So short power dips does not influence the BE/FE at all.
Longer power outages leads to a controlled shutdown, and automatic startup of the BE/FE when power returns.
This setup also prevents deep discharge of the UPS battery.

I also have one lamp connected to the UPS which gives me 90 seconds emergency light, enough to go fetch a torch.

Jens

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Jens.Peder.Terjesen at devoteam

Aug 30, 2012, 11:29 PM

Post #8 of 8 (422 views)
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Re: Netbook as low-power combined back-end / front-end? [In reply to]

-----Original Message-----
On: 30. august 2012 8:56 rsh1k wrote:

On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 2:07 AM, Terjesen Jens Peder <Jens.Peder.Terjesen [at] devoteam> wrote:
>
> To me that looks like a less than optimal setup for a UPS.
>
> I have a small UPS with only about 10 - 15 minutes of runtime that works perfectly well for my combined BE/FE.
>
> It is configured to signal the computer to turn off 30 seconds after power loss.
> This prevents short power dips from shutting down the computer.
>
> My BE/FE uses about 30 seconds to shut down, so the UPS is also configured to shut off the power 60 seconds after signaling the computer to shut down.
>
> The BIOS is set to start the computer at return of power.
>
> So short power dips does not influence the BE/FE at all.
> Longer power outages leads to a controlled shutdown, and automatic startup of the BE/FE when power returns.
> This setup also prevents deep discharge of the UPS battery.
>
> I also have one lamp connected to the UPS which gives me 90 seconds emergency light, enough to go fetch a torch.
>
> Jens

Thanks for the detail - that sounds like a great setup, and if I ever get a UPS again, I will keep this in mind and try to set up something similar.

With my old setup though, I had a few additional constraints: we kept the wireless router, cable modem, and cable TV box on the UPS as well.

The cable TV box was on the UPS because any time the power glitched, it would forget its settings and lose the guide data as well - and it could take 20+ minutes to fully recover once power was re-applied. So that was on the UPS to keep it from losing its memory.

The cable modem and wifi router were on the UPS so that we could keep using the internet on our laptops during the longer power outages.
So once the MythTV box shut down, the cable modem and router would actually run for a pretty long time (30+ minutes?) without issue.

- rsh1k
-----Original Message-----

The time between signaling the computer to turn off and the UPS shutting off power is configurable.
So it can easily be set to be much longer.
The possible downside of this is that the UPS will probably not power cycle the outlets if the power returns within this period, and thus the BIOS based automatic startup of the computer will not work.

Jens

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