Topic: Pandora quits

I think this might be normal for Pandora.
I know they have their "still listening" prompt, but maybe not on chumby.

So I have been noticing that Pandora just quits, in fact the whole music control quits and widgets resume.
Come to think of it, I don't see how they could quit that far out.

Is this normal?

Re: Pandora quits

BTW, I just checked, the alarms are off. Says off on the alarm screen and in the dark screen.

Re: Pandora quits

What device is this? The C8 control panel has a memory loop and reloads the control panel after a while, and both my CC and I3.5 control panels have to reload after a while.

Re: Pandora quits

It's an insignia 3.5.
I have had Iheartradio on it for months, and never noticed it quitting, nothing like that.
Just since I started listening to Pandora.

Re: Pandora quits

It's definitely just quitting. 
It quits all the way out to playing widgets. 
I don't see how they can do that.

Re: Pandora quits

The would typically be a symptom of the Control Panel crashing and restarting.

Re: Pandora quits

Well, it never happened before when I left the I 3.5 on my desk on Iheart for months.

Pandora is deliberately crashing the control panel to save bandwidth?
It's a conspiracy.

Re: Pandora quits

I don't know why your device is doing what it's doing.  I'm not seeing the same behavior here.

Pandora and iheartradio work in entirely different ways - iheartradio is a single simple audio stream, while Pandora delivers a customized playlist, and each track is played individually.

Re: Pandora quits

It's definitely odd, I will test with another unit and see if the problem is with this one.

I know if you use Pandora on android or on a computer, they ask you "Still listening? occasionally, to save bandwidth of course.

I wonder if they wish they had that on chumby, and found a solution?

Re: Pandora quits

I have another unit, I left it on pandora paused for 12 hours, no issues.
So I just power cycled the original one, which has been on my desk for three years.
See if it does the same reboot thing.

Re: Pandora quits

Stevo, while you're checking it out, also check whether the power supply might be implicated. I have had some funny behaviors due to PSU issues with my C1.

Re: Pandora quits

Heh. I powercycled the suspect unit, and left it on pandora but paused for 4 days.  The problem did not reoccur.
So maybe it was the powercycle.

Re: Pandora quits

One more thing I noticed.  On the computer, I added a channel to Pandora. 
I have channels in Pandora on chumby that I have added. But I didn't get the new channel.
I quit pandora and restarted it. No difference.
Only by power cycling the chumby unit did the new channel appear.
That seems odd.  Chumby is caching the pandora stuff, such that a new channel does not get added.

14 (edited by Steevo 2014-08-14 22:51:07)

Re: Pandora quits

Well, this is interesting.
I quit Pandora. I ran Iheartradio.
I thought that might wipe out what was being cached.
Quit that, restarted Pandora.

No difference, the new channel does not appear.

I just power cycled the unit, an Infocast 3.5.
I just restarted Pandora, and now the added channel appears.

Seems so odd. Something about Pandora only occurs at bootup time.

Re: Pandora quits

As to the power supply, yeah, that's a problem for me.
I have no more original power supplies, so I have been using ones that "work" and fit the weird plug. 
Hard to find today.

Re: Pandora quits

there are some type C C1/I3 adapters in the store if you need a new one.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Pandora quits

Well, I just clicked on pandora, I was going to change the channel.
I had been listening.

It quit before my eyes.
Checking network, initializing. It did not download the control panel.
So it does not seem to have crashed and reloaded.

Then widgets started playing. 

So I dunno.

Re: Pandora quits

"checking network", "initializing", etc is a Control Panel restart.

It does not download a new one on a crash or restart.

There are three reasons this can happen:

1) the Flash Player crashes - i.e., out of memory, or other failure
2) the Control Panel quits - this really only happens during updates
3) the Control Panel hangs.

The Control Panel periodically updates a "heartbeat" file in /tmp.  There's a daemon that watches that file to make sure it gets updates regularly - if not, then it assume the Control Panel has hung and will kill the Flash Player.

The shell script that launches the Control Panel has a loop that simply restarts the Control Panel if the Flash Player exits.

Re: Pandora quits

I love option 3.  Now don't get me wrong; this is good engineering design.  The thinking goes "consumer device, we might have a bug that causes a hang; if this happens try and recover".  It's good and forward thinking. 

But, of course, "this shouldn't happen.  WTF?  Why is this happening!!!" is what the engineers say after they get reports of heartbeat restarts.

As the saying goes; "all software sucks... including the stuff we write ourselves!"  (and I include myself in that list).

Re: Pandora quits

I have three Chumby 8s.  All three are quitting Pandora and restarting the Control Panel.  The restart happens after about 1-3 hours of listening.  It is happening on all three.  Any ideas?

Re: Pandora quits

It still quits and restarts, but only on using Pandora.  FWIW I have only been listening to Pandora on Chumbys for a couple months, before that I used Iheart radio and I never saw any of this.

Since I started using Pandora, it's almost daily.

That is interesting that you guys put a watchdog timer in there.  That's very cool.

I imagine that is what is restarting it because something in Pandora us running it out of memory over time.

Re: Pandora quits

Pandora still quits a couple times a day.  That's annoying!
Are there logs that can help figure out what the problem is?

Re: Pandora quits

I have also noticed Pandora just stopping. I restart or refresh and it is okay for a while.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.

Re: Pandora quits

Something has changed since the service restart.  Before I subscribed and got the new control panel, Pandora ran all day long. Now with the new service it quits several times a day. Hmmmmmm.

Re: Pandora quits

The current theory is a Flash Player memory leak that happens *between* widgets, nothing specific for Pandora.  This probably didn't manifest itself before widgets were restored because there was just the one widget that never exited, so no leak.

Chances are this issue actually dates back to the Chumby days.

One way to test this theory is to run a channel with a single widget and see if that helps.