[drivera]

Hi!

First of all, let me congratulate you Kodi! What a great package it is! Solves all my problems for home entertainment! I currently have two fairly nice setups:

• Upstairs:
  • Sony KDL-60EX645 TV
    
  • Zotac ID-80-U HTPC running Kodibuntu (Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS with Kodi 16.1 "Jarvis", fully updated) on the TV's HDMI-1 (using Pulse-Eight CEC adapter)
    
  • Sony DAV-HDX275 DVD Home Theater on the TV's HDMI-2
    
• Downstairs
  • Sony KDL-46V4100 TV
    
  • Zotac ID-80-U HTPC running Kodibuntu (Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS with Kodi 16.1 "Jarvis", fully updated) on the TV's HDMI-1 (using Pulse-Eight CEC adapter)
    

The HTPCs are twins for all intents and purposes. Same hardware (SSD, RAM, etc.). The only differences are in IP address and some display position tuning that the downstairs TV required. In both setups, when I turned off the TV, the HTPC and DVD (upstairs) would both go into sleep mode. When I turned it back on, everything came back on without a hitch. I could control Kodi using the TV's remote without an issue. All the buttons worked fine. Sometimes sync was lost but this was easily recovered by rebooting the HTPC.

About a week ago, however, things went inexplicably haywire upstairs only. Turning the TV on no longer results in the HTPC or the DVD coming on. Furthermore, if I power-on the HTPC and DVD manually, and unplug the TV from the power outlet, and re-plug it, everything works fine again...until the next time I power the TV off via the remote...

Downstairs is 100% fine.

My workaround so far is to keep the upstairs HTPC on at all times and to turn the DVD on manually, which I dislike. But I can live with that until a solution is found. This is why I'm writing to you - I'm hoping you can help me figure out what the issue might be.

Here is some information I've gathered, as well as issues I've ruled out:

• On June 16th, I changed out the HDMI cables (TV-to-CEC), HDMI "stubs" (CEC-to-PC), and USB "stubs" (CEC-to-PC) after a failed USB stub downstairs caused sync to be irrecoverably lost. I purchased two "whole" cable sets to replace everything, everywhere, such that I'd have the original cabling as a backup.
  • I've since switched back to the original cables, one by one and as a whole, with no change in the broken behavior
    
• I've swapped CEC adapters between the setups, in hopes of isolating a damaged one, with no change
  
• I've swapped HTPC's between the setups, in hopes of isolating a damaged one, with no change
  • Apropos: I've run comparisons between the two instance's filesystems and did clearly identify any differences. These were immaterial (temporary files, logs, appropriately different configurations, etc. - crucially, all binaries and DLLs checked out)
    
• Activating CEC debugging in Kodi I can see that remote control signals do reach the HTPC - just for some reason don't get processed.
  • More on this below
    
• If I remove the HTPC from the loop (unplug the HDMI cable from the CEC adapter's TV port), then turning the TV on and off does have the desired effect - the DVD comes on and goes off as it did before
  

So in summary:

• It doesn't appear to be the TV (test without HTPC in the HDMI network was successful)
  
• It's not the CEC adapter (swapped them, no change)
  
• It's not the cabling (swapped them with the originals, no change)
  
• It's not the HTPC's hardware (swapped HTPCs, no change)
  
• It doesn't appear to be the HTPC's software (identical on both instances, but
  

Regarding CEC debugging:

• For some reason, when things aren't working the Kodi logs are riddled with entries such as this
  
  Code:

  CEC transmission - received response - TRANSMIT_FAILED_ACK
• I've produced four Kodi logs (debug logging on, component logging just for CEC):
  
  1. Fresh boot, everything working fine all the way up to a TV powerdown via remote
     
  2. Manual power-up after TV power-up failed to bring the HTPC up, Kodi can't be controlled via CEC
     
  3. Unplugged the TV from the power outlet, waited a bit to log what Kodi did in the interim
     
  4. Re-plugged the TV to the power outlet, everything working again
     
  You may download them from here.
  
  
• Even when things are broken, I can see keypresses reach the computer (notable in the logs as well) - but for some reason Kodi still thinks the TV is off (not-present, I believe, is the CEC status)...and thus will ignore the keypresses (either that, or the thread that consumes them and passes them along to the UI is blocked on "something")...
  

Can you help me figure this out? I'm fairly well versed in Linux (I'm a professional software developer) and can certainly help provide more information as well as perform additional testing.

Thanks!

[drivera]

Forgot to mention: I did try rolling back to the code that was running 3 weeks ago (I take regular, image-level backups of each machine), and that had no effect either.

[__B__]

I'm having the same problem. I need to restart the box. Really sucks.

[Morphy99]

I had this problem and it was due to using hdmi_edid_file=1 in config.txt

[isamudaison]

I have a basically identical setup to you (same brand TVs, and mini PCs), and had the exact same problem (was the upstairs setup as well!)... I believe this is due to the pulse8 cec adapter's firmware version... v7 completely breaks the wake on TV power on feature, while v4 it still works.  Note there's a v8 firmware you can 'find' on their site, but that one is broken as well... I think we just have to wait until the next version gets released (which will have the updated cec library instead, at least in libreelec).

[drivera]

I couldn't find the v8 firmware - can you offer up a link or a description of how you found it?