[mythtv-users] Lower power usage ideas? (for backend)

[johnny at fishcounts.com]

When the cpu is idle it's not eatting up power anyways. So if that's the
case then there's no problem with the way it is? You can however have the OS
shut itself off at a certain time and have a remote machine wake it up with
WOL (Wake On Lan). Just send the machine the magic packet to wake it up and
make sure the machine's network card is configured to wake the machine up on
magic packet and you should be fine. I do it all the time. I SSH to my linux
box then I remote wakeup my winxp machine then I remote desktop into it.
When I'm done I shut my pc off.  


 
________________________________

Johnny Lee


-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of colliepon
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 6:19 PM
To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
Subject: [mythtv-users] Lower power usage ideas? (for backend)

Just curious both what other people are doing, and feature discussion (not
b*tching :) on other methods of reducing the power use of a myth box since
it can build up over awhile. (and my next move may very well be off grid -
satellite TV, running off solar or wind, so power use is critical but i'd
prefer an alternative to the VCR) A few examples i'm thinking of:

Could you schedule an expected time-on and time off to work with a normal
block of programming?  By shut down time I mean to properly suspend all
tasks like commercial flagging without screwing up data or not doing them
during the week at all.  This would let you use a standard analog or digital
wall timer to turn on the computer and satellite receiver for a given block
of time (for instance 6:30pm to 10pm if you mostly like the evening block,
or 11pm to about 3am if you like Adult Swim) since I don't know any other
way to tell a computer to turn on at a given time.  :) (though if someone
knows of a computer-programmable wakeup solution please tell me!)

Or perhaps having a C3 machine with a PVR500 for 24hr recording which can
wake up a P4 with another card for overflow during peak hours, and also to
do things like commercial flagging or recompression. (which also might need
to schedule file moves, for instance a 120gig drive on the C3 and 500gig on
the P4 as primary storage)

Or maybe speed throttling certain cpu's might work - some of the new
Centrino motherboards for desktop use
http://www17.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20041224/index.html, laptops with
a USB grabber, or even the underclocked Athlon XP
http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041001/index.html - does anyone use
anything like this? (or have any experience/insights worth sharing?)  I've
no clue how/if throttling is supported in linux, or mythTV or anything else,
but it would be nice to let the cpu idle during daily recording and to speed
up for flagging and transcoding.

Is anyone else using a lower power design or strategy with Myth?


Colliepon