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Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)

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Offline jules

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Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« on: 26 / January / 2014, 00:15:42 »
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BIG thanks to everyone involved in CHDK and script development and the great forum information.
Fantastic to find ultimate intervalometer script is exactly suited to my purpose. I started monitoring bird behaviour (research project) using this script on Powershot D10s with external power supply. The setup works well but I have a major problem. Reboot fails sometimes (not always) and I cannot find the cause.

When reboot fails, log ends like this:
Thu Jan  2 00:55:02 2014: --no shot: tv:1/500  [t871|a292|s507|b656|V3426!T30]
Thu Jan  2 01:00:02 2014: --no shot: tv:1/500  [t871|a292|s507|b656|V3426!T30]
Thu Jan  2 01:00:06 2014: set shooting mode on
Thu Jan  2 01:00:06 2014: switching to record mode
Thu Jan  2 01:00:07 2014: switching to playback mode
Thu Jan  2 01:00:07 2014: === Scheduled reboot === : lens retraction wait
Thu Jan  2 01:01:19 2014: rebooting now

Intermittent success/failure occurs with three different D10s.
Intermittent success/failure occurs with several different external power supplies. I don't think low power caused failure. Log shows consistent adequate volts prior to reboot attempt. External measured voltage was also good.
Intermittent success/failure not related to reboot interval - so far tried 1 to 6 days.

Can anyone suggest how to trouble-shoot this? How to fix the problem?

Many thanks!
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #1 on: 26 / January / 2014, 01:28:57 »
Quote from: jules on 26 / January / 2014, 00:15:42
BIG thanks to everyone involved in CHDK and script development and the great forum information.
Fantastic to find ultimate intervalometer script is exactly suited to my purpose. I started monitoring bird behaviour (research project) using this script on Powershot D10s with external power supply. The setup works well but I have a major problem. Reboot fails sometimes (not always) and I cannot find the cause.
What is the behavior when reboot fails?

If the camera is crashing, there might be a romlog, see http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Debugging#Camera_crash_logs_.28romlog.29

If there is one, post it here.

What CHDK build are you using?

Reboot is something of a hack, depending how long you need to run the camera for, you might be better off not rebooting. I would expect stuff to break if it runs more than a couple weeks, but it could be OK for less.

There are also hardware approaches, if you can control the power supply, you can keep the power button held down mechanically and power on just by turning on the PSU. In this case shutdown should still be down using Lua so you get a clean shutdown.
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Offline jules

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #2 on: 26 / January / 2014, 17:25:07 »
Thank you reyalp. Cameras in remote locations and difficult access, ideally should be able to run 2 weeks or more. For that I improve my power supply. But first need to resolve the reboot problem, else no point in lugging more/bigger batteries.

Hardware control sounds potentially good but I have no idea if/how I could do that, need to search for info.

In each case that reboot failed, the camera simply appeared to have been turned off. I was unaware of rom logs, will check and post what I find.
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #3 on: 26 / January / 2014, 17:30:44 »
Quote from: jules on 26 / January / 2014, 17:25:07
Cameras in remote locations and difficult access, ideally should be able to run 2 weeks or more.
There is no data available to say how long a CHDK equipped Canon camera can run without a reboot.  The internal 32 bit tic timer is good for about 25 days before it "goes negative" and 50 days until it wraps.  If the reboot function is not working for the D20 then running for two weeks without a reboot could be quite possible.

Still,  a ROM LOG  of the crash wouldl be nice to see.

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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #4 on: 26 / January / 2014, 18:07:13 »
Quote from: jules on 26 / January / 2014, 17:25:07
Thank you reyalp. Cameras in remote locations and difficult access, ideally should be able to run 2 weeks or more. For that I improve my power supply. But first need to resolve the reboot problem, else no point in lugging more/bigger batteries.
What I was getting it is if you reboot manually every 2 weeks or so when you change the batteries, you might be able to avoid the software reboot. I don't know this for sure, it's quite possible some other problem would crop up and make the camera crash.

Quote
Hardware control sounds potentially good but I have no idea if/how I could do that, need to search for info.
The general idea is you use a micro-controller or possibly even some kind of dumb timer to turn the power supply on and off.  Doing this should give you better reliability, since the camera would get hard rebooted even if it crashed or hung.

This thread might have some useful info http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=10733.0

This thread  http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=10218.0 has some discussion of the "clamp down the power button" strategy. From some limited testing, this should work on D10.

edit:
I should add that making reboot work reliably would be the ideal solution, but there's no guarantee we can make that happen. Also, as noted above a hardware power cycle would make it less likely you'd lose a bunch of data if the camera crashed for other reasons not related to the reboot.
« Last Edit: 26 / January / 2014, 18:09:46 by reyalp »
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #5 on: 26 / January / 2014, 18:22:53 »
Quote from: reyalp on 26 / January / 2014, 18:07:13
edit:
I should add that making reboot work reliably would be the ideal solution, but there's no guarantee we can make that happen. Also, as noted above a hardware power cycle would make it less likely you'd lose a bunch of data if the camera crashed for other reasons not related to the reboot.
A further refinement if you are using a microcontroller could be to monitor the camera AF lamp and reboot the camera if it stops shooting.
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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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Offline jules

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #6 on: 26 / January / 2014, 20:51:49 »
Lots more info, thank you reyalp and waterwingz. I need a while to absorb what you have said. I'm a newbie on a steep learning curve!

Regarding CHDK version - in case this relates to my reboot problem:

I'm using several SD cards. All cards prepared with STICK (very nice utility thanks to Dave) that I believe selects current version for the camera. Prepared over several weeks so might have different CHDK versions I guess.

All recent logs confirm version CHK 1.2.0 and say "CHDK version 120 okay"
Some logs report extra four-digits after the version e.g:
Sun Dec 22 16:04:05 2013: CHDK 1.2.0-3155 d10 100a Oct 13 2013

Some logs don't report extra digits e.g:
Sun Dec 29 09:32:54 2013: CHDK 1.2.0 d10 100a Dec 19 2013

Since starting this project I've used Ultimate Intevalometer versions 1.7 to 1.10.
Recently the logs written by Ult Int changed format slightly. Possibly extra digits in version reflect different Ult Int versions? Or maybe the extra four digits indicate a variation in CHDK version?

[Aside: Possible enhancement to Ult Int log would include in header info its own version and what reboot interval was set. That would help with troubleshooting an intermittent problem like mine, when it's necessary to look at number of previous logs spread out in time.]

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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #7 on: 26 / January / 2014, 22:08:13 »
Quote from: jules on 26 / January / 2014, 20:51:49
Regarding CHDK version - in case this relates to my reboot problem:
Good information - thanks.  But none of those changes would affect the reboot code in any way.  If there is an issue,  it's not with the script code but with how the call to reboot() actually work.

I'll look at adding your logging updates the next time I roll a new version out. Thanks for the feedback!

Any luck getting the ROMLOG ?
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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #8 on: 26 / January / 2014, 22:34:54 »
Quote from: jules on 26 / January / 2014, 20:51:49
I'm using several SD cards. All cards prepared with STICK (very nice utility thanks to Dave) that I believe selects current version for the camera. Prepared over several weeks so might have different CHDK versions I guess.
Yeah, you would have different versions on the cards. I don't think there is there have been any changes directly affecting reboot in a long time, but it would be worth keeping track of whether the reboot issues affects all the versions you have equally.

The way build numbers were set in the autobuild changed around the end of October, which probably explains why some of the logs don't have it.

A romlog will be more useful if it's from a build I have debug info for, so I've attached one here. If you have romlogs from the old builds I'd still like to see those. It's possible the problem will be obvious, or that it doesn't generate a romlog at all.

The build says 100a, but it will also work on 100b cameras.
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Offline jules

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Re: Ultimate Intervalometer - intermittent reboot faiure (powershot D10)
« Reply #9 on: 27 / January / 2014, 01:48:49 »
I've just extracted ROM.LOG for the most recent reboot failure. Hope I've attached it correctly here.

ROM.LOG is a mystery to me but I see "ASSERT!! ... occurred time" is 12 seconds after "rebooting now" time for the failed reboot.

ultimate.log beginning and end copied below:

Sat Jan  4 16:26:00 2014: === Started: 16:26 ===
Sat Jan  4 16:26:00 2014: CHDK 1.2.0 d10 100a Dec 19 2013
Sat Jan  4 16:26:00 2014: CHDK version 120 okay
Sat Jan  4 16:26:03 2014: starting a new day
Sat Jan  4 16:26:03 2014: start time : 05:00 stop time : 19:25
Sat Jan  4 16:27:03 2014: set shooting mode off
Sat Jan  4 16:27:03 2014: switching to playback mode
Sat Jan  4 16:30:03 2014: --shot: 1 tv:1/250  [t774|a292|s371|b694|V4435!T38]
Sat Jan  4 16:30:06 2014: switching to playback mode

... shots at 5 min intervals by day, noshots at night ...

Sun Jan 12 01:00:02 2014: --no shot: tv:1/250  [t774|a292|s371|b694|V4514!T28]
Sun Jan 12 01:00:06 2014: set shooting mode on
Sun Jan 12 01:00:06 2014: switching to record mode
Sun Jan 12 01:00:07 2014: switching to playback mode
Sun Jan 12 01:00:08 2014: === Scheduled reboot === : lens retraction wait
Sun Jan 12 01:01:19 2014: rebooting now

Does this ROM.LOG contain any useful clues about the failure/crash?

Thank you all for your help and expertise!
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