Air Player on Raspi blanks out when assuming it lost the connection to the plugin

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wohnlich
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:11 pm

Air Player on Raspi blanks out when assuming it lost the connection to the plugin

#1 Post by wohnlich »

Symptom
I have Air Player 4.0.3 running on a Raspberry Pi 3B. During longer flights, it often suddenly blanks out the screen (as if it was going into sleep mode). Up to that point everything works well. I have made triple sure that screen blanking is set to off using raspi-config.

Debugging info

When looking at the log file, prior to blanking out the Air Player starts to report that it can't connect to the Simplugin. I'm attaching the log file. SimNavClient seems to poll the flight sim PC every 37 seconds, and when it receives an error too often, it seems to blank out.

Observations
Two things make me think that this isn't really a network problem:
  • During all the time period with the reported network problems, the panel works just fine, constantly displaying the right values without delays. (I fly VFR without autopilot and have to monitor course and alt constantly.)
    After the panel goes black, the Raspi is still reachable through Air Manager on the PC, as can be demonstrated by the fact that a new panel can be loaded and shows correctly. You see in the log file that at 16:18:32 I've loaded another panel from the Air Manager program on the PC. (It generates some LUA errors in the log). When I switch the monitor off and on again, the new panel becomes visible (bust most often blanks out after a short period again.


Remedies tried
To rule out a connection problem, I have switched the Raspi from wifi to a wired Ethernet connection. The connection is active (as can be seen on the LEDs at the back) and pingable and I can ssh into it even while the problem is happening, so it really doesn't seem to be a true network problem.
The Raspi is not going into sleep mode. When it does, the monitor goes blue and displays "no source" and after a while goes into energy saving mode. This isn't happening here - the monitor goes black, but stays on.
Switching it off and on again seems to trigger the Raspi to start displaying its screen content again, but that usually doesn't last long.

My (unqualified) root cause assumption
My suspicion is that the Air Player starts to observe (erroneously) that it can't connect to the flight sim PC (as shown by the error msg every 37 seconds) and after a certain number of error messages it blanks the panel.

Question to @Ralph:
Is there any such code in the Air Player that blanks out the panel when the player throws too many network timeouts?

I work in SW development myself so I know that it's close to impossible to recreate an intermittent problem on another person's PC. It would help if you could confirm or deny that there is this functionality that AirPlayer blanks the screen after a certain number of connection errors, and make that optional or switch it off because it causes more harm than good.
Otherwise, it would help to give me a hint into which other logfiles to look in order to analyze the problem and pinpoint other potential causes.
air player log.txt
(13.23 KiB) Downloaded 104 times

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