Sleeping
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Overview
This is possibly the most complex feature to set up for use with ARGUS TV.
The user is encouraged to ensure they are fully familiar with the aspects of sleep/resume of PC's and has satisfactorily tested the appropriate HTPC(s) to function as required before ARGUS TV is configured to control the PC. Unlike configuring ARGUS TV's other features in this instance we are asking for ARGUS TV to fully control an almost infinite combination of hardware and software platforms, each of which can prevent the consistent operation of PC sleep/resume. Very often problems occur due to USB and or graphics cards, but sleeping disk drives have also been known to cause problems.
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Fortunately there are a few utilities available for download which will help users tame some of the more common problems. |
As mentioned previously, it is essential that the PC platform be configured to ensure reliable and consistent sleep/resume operations before ARGUS TV control. The requied method of Power management (S1,S3 orS4 ) has firstly to be enabled within the BIOS of the selected machine and all the appropriate drivers for motherboard and cards installed. Situated within the Windows control panel is an icon labelled Power Options, here the desired method of sleep is firstly configured ie either Standby or Hibernate (S1,S3 orS4 ). More often than not users adopt the Sleep (S3) mode. This brief introduction is associated with Windows XP, Windows 7 and later editions have more elaborate settings, but the principle is the same.
It is advised to use one the above mentioned command powercfg _ENERGY or the available download (ie. 
MCE Standby Tool (MST)) to test power management ahead of ARGUS TV usage. The user should be able to configure settings whereby the PC will go to sleep after a pre-determined period of inactivity and can be resumed after user intervention, normally mouse, keyboard, WOL (Wake On LAN) or programme intervention such as ARGUS TV. It cannot be be over stressed how import it is to ensure consistent sleep/resume operation can be achieved prior to ARGUS TV control. See forum → http://www.degroeneknop.nl/forum/index.php/board,93.0.html?&language=english
How it runs
Once set up, a ARGUS TV record server (in this example a ARGUS TV Recorder) will be woken up from sleep by the core ARGUS TV server (this also has to be on the same PC platform) which is constantly looking ahead for the next scheduled recording.
Wake up
The core services will wake ARGUS TV Recorder xx minutes ahead of the recording, where xx = pre-record time+ power management time+ ARGUS TV Recorder init time.
The pre-record time is set in the main ARGUS TV Scheduler Console under the setting tab... it's normally a global setting but can be overridden for each recording.
Power management is again set in the main ARGUS TV Scheduler Console under the Settings' Tab / Power Management. This is a global setting.
ARGUS TV Recorder initialization time is set within the ARGUS TV Recorder Console under Card / Properties / Setting's Tab and is associated with ensuring tuner cards are suitably initialized following a resume.
Return to Standby
Once a sucessful recording(s) have been completed the record server will wait the pre-determined period of inactivity and enter the selected sleep mode after which the process is repeated thereafter for all new recordings.
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Note: It should be noted that aside from all the potential problems of resume mentioned above, unsuccessfully processing batch files can also cause sleep/resume problems. In addition, whilst this whole process can be seen to function very effectively, some users have experienced timeout event errors in the system event log. These do not seem to affect operation but as of the latest ARGUS TV build seem to be an artifact of the sleep/resume operation. There are also isolated reports of SQL database errors associated with certain sleep/resume configurations, but again with suitable system adjustments the feature has been proven to work well. |
