[Orange Pi 3 LTS] Freezes

    hello, running new orange pi3 lts since some days and i have seen random freezes.

    I m 99% sure that this happens only with h265 videos and this can happend 2-3 times in a 120-150min streaming movie, lest say one freeze every 40-50 min or so.

    Temperatures are usually below 50 celsius and free RAM normally its about 50-40%, even less if no buffer setting has been done.

    I tried to do search about this isse but nothing (only old posts) so, may be I need to do some configuration or any setting to libreleec or kodi?, I tried to use different buffering settings (ROM, RAM, no buffer...), video HQ rescaling and render mode with no sucess, sudenly and ramdomly image freezes and sound enters in a fast loop, only power off/on can be done.

    cheers.

  • Go to Best Answer

    thanks, I tried 2 things:

    -DRM prime: off, HW:off = video stuttering, like slow-motion.

    -DRM prime: on, HW:off = same as with my RPI3b+, unable to handle HEVC so only sound, no video.

    however i have to say this is not really bad or very annoying (to me so far) because only occurs from time to time, last saturday I detected 4 freezes, yesterday nothing happened... for me is better to "live" with this small issues than not been able to play many videos or waching them in poor quality with de RPI3b+

    thank you again.

    hi again, sorry, i dont mind to bother here, just reporting the issues i found: after 2-3 hours no use, just powered on (tv off), it hangs, frozen, not responding and need power off/on cycle.

    hello, thanks a lot, working fine, too many hours plugged on this weekend with no lockups so far, and by the way... no more video freezing for now.

    thank you again.

    hello, lockups still happening, sometimes playing vodeo otjers when tv is off for several time.

    the freezes happend quite less times than before disabling CEC, but still happening.

    btw, im confised because my tv is so old, so i think it wont understand about CEC.

    other thing detected is that ethernet connection is lost 2 of every 3 lockups after forcong reboot with a power cycle, then a second reboot is needed to recover ethernet conn. and even some times it requieres a second power cycle to get wired conn. working.

    Can any of you with CEC issues try if devmem 0x3001b10 32 0x80000000 helps? There is basically no HW connection between CEC and video decoding except one clock, but that shouldn't matter since clock rate isn't changed by CEC driver.

    I re-enabled CEC on one of my OP3LTS and executed that devmem command. I will post updates on what happens.

    On the topic of CEC, for my own curiosity as a tinkerer, where can i find more information and/or block diagrams on how CEC is implemented on these Allwinner beasts?

    What confuses me is that when enabling CEC i get the message about connecting to the "pulse-eight CEC adapter". But google seems to indicate that a "pulse-eight CEC adapter" is a small external physical black box. Is the same decoding chip inside that black box embedded on the OPI's circuit board? Or does the CEC pin from the HDMI connector wired directly to a pin on the allwinner SOC? Does the SOC have some sort of hardware CEC decoder, or is it all done in software as a driver/KO/addon?

    I asked a question about this on the http://github.com/Pulse-Eight/libcec forum once, and they claimed their driver only supports the PulseEight branded hardware, and the Broadcom SOCs used in Rpi, but not allwinner. I'm confused...

    As always, thank you to the developers for your work and education!

    Well, documentation is scattered around. You need board schematic, which can be found on orangepi.org. Then you will probably want to see Allwinner H6 user manual, which can be found on linux-sunxi.org. Last but not least, you'll want to see CEC registers description. Unfortunately, you have to get creative here and find leaked DW HDMI documentation.

    In any case, none of that will tell you anything about Pulse Eight adapter. You have to approach that one from Kodi perspective. Pulse Eight libcec library was first attempt at trying to make standard CEC library which can be used by applications. At that time, there were absolutely no standard kernel interface for CEC, so every device and SoC manufacturer did something hackish and incompatible with other solutions, even if same underlying HW was used. As you can imagine, Kodi used that to have any hope of supporting CEC on multiple devices. Later on, when Linux kernel finally got common CEC interface, Pulse Eight libcec library was extended to support this interface. Since Allwinner SoCs expose CEC functionality over this common kernel CEC interface, Pulse Eight library naturally also supports Allwinner SoCs (when using mainline kernel).

    There is idea to get rid of Pulse Eight libcec dependency and use Linux CEC interface directly, but it's a lot of work that currently nobody wants to do.

    i re-enabled CEC, rebooted, then executed the devmem command via SSH.

    Its been running for over 24hrs with no lockups. That's not long enough to be conclusive yet, but its a very good sign!

    If this ends up being the solution, will I need to put that devmem command into a startup script?

    Thanks again,

    But does CEC work? Please test that. There is a reason why that register is set differently. In any case, devmem command could only be workaround, but not a solution. It needs to be solved on kernel level. However, I always had troubles even with original OrangePi 3, so there might be connection, HW wise. It's interesting that I never had any troubles with Tanix TX6. Unfortunately there is no schematic nor kernel source to compare what they done differently.

    Quote from jernej

    But does CEC work?

    yes, I was able to get CEC to work even after the devmem command.

    just to clarify though, does changing that timing register with devmem take effect immediately? Or do i need to disable/re-enable the CEC option or something?

    for what its worth, the Opi3LTS that i executed the command on has been running over 48hrs without freezing (and with CEC enabled). So it seems to have definitely helped.

    Quote from gadget_guy

    just to clarify though, does changing that timing register with devmem take effect immediately? Or do i need to disable/re-enable the CEC option or something?

    Yes, it directly writes to HW clock register. It switches CEC clock source from periph0(2x) clock to external 32.768 kHz crystal, but sadly not all boards have it. Still, there is no logic why it would help. In any case, I have also other ideas, for which I will make test images.