2015-08-17, 23:23
Ok guys, This post is going to be a wall of text. Sorry
So today I was thinking about how can I reduce my electricity usage at home. And one of the ways I feel would be good was to learn to turn off my PC. I only have one PC and it does all my gaming when I am gaming and so on,. But it also happens to be my home entertainment system for watching movie. And it is also my torrent box (Don't ask what I download, I won't tell you). So my PC is powered on 24/7/365. It has been like this for over ten years (yes my PC has been switched on almost all of that time). So sure I have power management shut down the screen when there is nothing playing in Kodi. And the only thing working away in the background is the torrent software. My storage drives are all setup nice to power down when nothing is going on. And to date I am very happy about how little electricity I use since I updated my main HDD drive to an SSD. (I have saved over £30 a month doing that alone in electricity bills). But I am coming to the point where the games I wish to play means I am going to have to update my motherboard and ram and CPU and so on. So I was thinking that this would be a good time to maybe setup a NAS box maybe something like FreeNAS or UnRAID from the parts of my current PC setup. No point wasting good hardware if I can save on electricity usage. So the plan is to build a NAS box out of my gutted PC parts. Stick in the cupport and set it up for minimal electricity usage. This should not be too hard. Then it got me thinking that the only time my storage drives spin up and take power is when Kodi is used to navigate around to the likes of TV shows and Moves. And the main reason for this is because I love having all that lovly "ExtaFanART" and ExtaThumbs" folders with all that artwork. The thing is. None of that artwork is stored in the Kodi database file of "texture13.db" (think that is the file anyway). And that file is in the main Kodi AppData folder of the main operating system that happens to be the SSD. So what I am trying to say is, And I know this is a very long and hard thing to work out. Would a roadmap for the DEVs of MadNox to get together with the DEV's that make the "Artwork Downloader" addon and come up with a way to make "Artwork Downloader" store the nice artwork that is currently not put into the "texture13.db" database of Kodi so that the MadNox skin could then make lookup calls for that set of images is called form the database and not from the moive/TV show folder. The goal here is to reduce calls by the skin to display images from a folder on a storage drive. It would be better (in my opinion only) to get it from the "texture13.db". The end result would mean less storage drive spin up. That in turn would mean even less electricity usage. I could then have my main Kodi/gaming PC switched off when I am not using it. As the new NAS box would do all my storage and torrent needs. UnRAID has a system for using Torrents software and not spinning up your drives but uses a single SSD, so more saving of electricity.
Now before anybody says,. "Well just don't use that feature of the skin". I know I could do that. But for me. Kodi + MadNox (ShedNox before that) is all about making your home entertainment system look as wonderful as possible by presenting all the extra lovely artwork for your TV Shows and Movies and Music. And for me to stop using the feature would be a great loss to my e-pean when my friends come round to have movie nights.
Again. I am not saying this has to happen. I am just asking if you guys would take this on board as something to look into at some point.
Thanks for taking the time to read my wall of text.
Oddsodz
So today I was thinking about how can I reduce my electricity usage at home. And one of the ways I feel would be good was to learn to turn off my PC. I only have one PC and it does all my gaming when I am gaming and so on,. But it also happens to be my home entertainment system for watching movie. And it is also my torrent box (Don't ask what I download, I won't tell you). So my PC is powered on 24/7/365. It has been like this for over ten years (yes my PC has been switched on almost all of that time). So sure I have power management shut down the screen when there is nothing playing in Kodi. And the only thing working away in the background is the torrent software. My storage drives are all setup nice to power down when nothing is going on. And to date I am very happy about how little electricity I use since I updated my main HDD drive to an SSD. (I have saved over £30 a month doing that alone in electricity bills). But I am coming to the point where the games I wish to play means I am going to have to update my motherboard and ram and CPU and so on. So I was thinking that this would be a good time to maybe setup a NAS box maybe something like FreeNAS or UnRAID from the parts of my current PC setup. No point wasting good hardware if I can save on electricity usage. So the plan is to build a NAS box out of my gutted PC parts. Stick in the cupport and set it up for minimal electricity usage. This should not be too hard. Then it got me thinking that the only time my storage drives spin up and take power is when Kodi is used to navigate around to the likes of TV shows and Moves. And the main reason for this is because I love having all that lovly "ExtaFanART" and ExtaThumbs" folders with all that artwork. The thing is. None of that artwork is stored in the Kodi database file of "texture13.db" (think that is the file anyway). And that file is in the main Kodi AppData folder of the main operating system that happens to be the SSD. So what I am trying to say is, And I know this is a very long and hard thing to work out. Would a roadmap for the DEVs of MadNox to get together with the DEV's that make the "Artwork Downloader" addon and come up with a way to make "Artwork Downloader" store the nice artwork that is currently not put into the "texture13.db" database of Kodi so that the MadNox skin could then make lookup calls for that set of images is called form the database and not from the moive/TV show folder. The goal here is to reduce calls by the skin to display images from a folder on a storage drive. It would be better (in my opinion only) to get it from the "texture13.db". The end result would mean less storage drive spin up. That in turn would mean even less electricity usage. I could then have my main Kodi/gaming PC switched off when I am not using it. As the new NAS box would do all my storage and torrent needs. UnRAID has a system for using Torrents software and not spinning up your drives but uses a single SSD, so more saving of electricity.
Now before anybody says,. "Well just don't use that feature of the skin". I know I could do that. But for me. Kodi + MadNox (ShedNox before that) is all about making your home entertainment system look as wonderful as possible by presenting all the extra lovely artwork for your TV Shows and Movies and Music. And for me to stop using the feature would be a great loss to my e-pean when my friends come round to have movie nights.
Again. I am not saying this has to happen. I am just asking if you guys would take this on board as something to look into at some point.
Thanks for taking the time to read my wall of text.
Oddsodz
