[rs] Remote Scheduling Portal

[Black Hole]

You'll have to explain that one to me (it's early!)

Another Douglas Adams reference. From memory:

The rudest word in the known universe is only in common circulation on one planet - where they don't know what it means.

 

[Ezra Pound]

Sorry to to get back on topic but ...

time to launch the Automatic Scheduling feature which has been in beta test up to this point.

I know this is a bit ‘devil’s advocate’ but do you think the three characters rule here :-
Rule Elements

The only mandatory parts of a rule are the Name and Synopsis fields; at least one of them must contain over three characters of text.

Will cause a problem for programs like 'QI' ?

 

[af123]

Will cause a problem for programs like 'QI' ?

Yes! I've updated it so that the name must be at least two characters and synopsis must be at least 3, and removed the sentence from the wiki. That should cater for most people..

 

[Black Hole]

AF123 knows where his towel is.

Let's hope no programmes come along called "I".

 

[oijonesey]

Let's hope the sci fi series 'V' doesn't need looking for by anyone

 

[neilleeds]

I have a feature suggestion for RS:

I've just been browsing my scheduled recordings for series which have finished. I'm going to set them up as searches so that if they come back they can be recorded (or emailed to me). It would be great if there were a button in the grid to set up a scheduled item as a search, pre-popped with all the correct info, you could then edit it if required and save.

Cheers

Neil

 

[SiHa]

Let's hope the sci fi series 'V' doesn't need looking for by anyone

Not me, got the box set for my birthday last year!

 

[SiHa]

Just been fiddling with the auto-scheduling, and noticed that 'Frozen Planet' has not scheduled.
It is set to match the name "Frozen Planet" on BBC1 and schedule the series, but has not, I've just realised...

 

[af123]

Just been fiddling with the auto-scheduling, and noticed that 'Frozen Planet' has not scheduled.
It is set to match the name "Frozen Planet" on BBC1 and schedule the series, but has not, I've just realised...

Ok - that's a very interesting one. The RS Portal sent the schedule event down to your box as soon as it appeared in the EPG (8 days ahead) but, when your box woke up and processed the command it had not yet updated its own EPG so it couldn't find the event to schedule! I'm going to have to think about how to handle that one since it's going to be the norm for events to appear at the tail end of the EPG data.

 

[SiHa]

Ah, I see. I thought I had received the email, but when I realised it hadn't scheduled thought I'd imagined it.

Maybe the RS component on the box could buffer events for a day or so and keep trying. In the case of an eventual failure, it could report back to the portal which could email a failure report??

 

[oijonesey]

Ok - that's a very interesting one. The RS Portal sent the schedule event down to your box as soon as it appeared in the EPG (8 days ahead) but, when your box woke up and processed the command it had not yet updated its own EPG so it couldn't find the event to schedule! I'm going to have to think about how to handle that one since it's going to be the norm for events to appear at the tail end of the EPG data.

I case it helps the investigation it worked for me - I'd had Frozen on the Auto feature during the pre-release testing and it scheduled up and set the recording ok for me

I got this email at 8:00am on the 19th

BBC One HD [Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:00:00 +0100]
Frozen Planet
New series. 1/7. To the Ends of the Earth: A journey from
the North to South Pole across the least known wildernesses
on our planet. [HD] [AD,S]
=== Scheduled successfully. ===

And at the next reboot at 4:30am the next morning in it went.

20/10/2011 04:31:06  Successfully scheduled event.
20/10/2011 04:31:05  Found event - Frozen Planet
20/10/2011 04:31:04 Processing command 'schedule auto'

HTH

 

[SiHa]

I case it helps the investigation it worked for me - I'd had Frozen on the Auto feature during the pre-release testing and it scheduled up and set the recording ok for me

I got this email at 8:00am on the 19th

BBC One HD [Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:00:00 +0100]
Frozen Planet
New series. 1/7. To the Ends of the Earth: A journey from
the North to South Pole across the least known wildernesses
on our planet. [HD] [AD,S]
=== Scheduled successfully. ===

And at the next reboot at 4:30am the next morning in it went.

20/10/2011 04:31:06  Successfully scheduled event.
20/10/2011 04:31:05  Found event - Frozen Planet
20/10/2011 04:31:04 Processing command 'schedule auto'

HTH

Yes, I remember seeing your post about it. At the time I thought "Yes, I had an email as well"....but I didn't think to actually check.

 

[Kev_w]

I'm having a small issue with the rs package. My Hummy seems to have stopped regularly connecting to rs.hummypkg.org.uk, it only seems to connect when I first boot the box.

For example yesterday I set up a schedule followed by a reboot command from work but when I got home it hadn't picked it up. I manually rebooted the box and after a few seconds it rebooted again by itself due to the rs command and the schedule was updated as usual.

The same has happened today, a command is queued but wont move onto pending and the rs website says it hasn't seen my Hummy since 19:00 last night (when I booted my box).

Any ideas?

 

[oijonesey]

Hmm interesting - I tidied up my schedule and added a couple of new recordings this morning but they didn't sync - nothing odd there the box was probably off. However at lunchtime I updated all packages and rebooted the box a couple of times (to get the portal bit working) - but I've got some of them in Pending and the rest still in Queued. The rs page tells me the box was last seen at 12.57 which would be about the time I re-booted. Ah hang on while typing this I remember now - I left the portal trying to access Picasa and switched off the TV - maybe it's still trying to load that?

 

[Kev_w]

The same has happened today, a command is queued but wont move onto pending and the rs website says it hasn't seen my Hummy since 19:00 last night (when I booted my box).

This seems fixed now after the rs package update. Thanks af123!

 

[af123]

Ah, I see. I thought I had received the email, but when I realised it hadn't scheduled thought I'd imagined it.

Maybe the RS component on the box could buffer events for a day or so and keep trying. In the case of an eventual failure, it could report back to the portal which could email a failure report??

The new version of the rs package handles this properly now. If the on-box EPG data isn't up to date, it defers the scheduling attempt until later.

 

[Chris Green]

I'm really liking the new Auto facility and am using it to trap all F1 races rather than have them all filed under the name of the first race to occur after you set a series timer. However, a simple wildcard search for 'Formula 1' finds:

a) Practice sessions on Friday on 301
b) Qualifying sessions on Saturday on BBC1 HD
c) Two doses of the race, one live, on Sunday on BBC1 HD and
d) Recorded highlights on Sunday on BBC HD

I can eliminate a) and d) by simply specifying BBC1 HD in the parameters, but I'm looking for a global way of eliminating Saturday's qualifying sessions without resorting to setting a specific date as a parameter, which would need changing before every new race.

Two thoughts occur to me - could it be made possible to exclude the word 'qualifying' in the synopsis with some kind of 'not including' syntax, like MyStuff, or alternatively, could it be possible to specify 'Sunday' without being specific about the actual date? Again, like MyStuff.

I don't suppose there's anything that can be done to separate out the two Sunday recordings unless the word 'live' starts to appear in the synopsis

 

[af123]

I get stuff on R5 Live too.

could it be made possible to exclude the word 'qualifying' in the synopsis with some kind of 'not including' syntax, like MyStuff

Yes, that shouldn't be too hard to implement. I'll have a look at that.

or alternatively, could it be possible to specify 'Sunday' without being specific about the actual date? Again, like MyStuff.

Again, yes, I'll add that. I'm surprised it schedules both of the main race showings, I'd have expected the BBC to give them the same event CRID which would stop the Portal from scheduling the second copy - (I just checked and they haven't given any of them a CRID : ().
The second showing is shorter - would a 'minimum duration' option help?

Alternatively I could say "don't schedule if an event with the same name is already scheduled.." but that would be harder to implement. It would, however, be perfect for cases like this.

 

[Chris Green]

Many thanks, af123.

The exclusion parameter would meet most of my needs, and being able to specify a day of the week rather than an actual date would be the icing on the cake. You're right - unfiltered, R5 Live also comes up.

Yes, a minimum duration setting would also be useful, as this would filter out the non-live versions like the shorter 'copy' later in the day which I assume is there for races that start at ungodly times vis-a-vis GMT. I don't think they do it when the race comes from Europe as these tend to be over our lunchtimes or in the afternoon anyway.

I can see the RS access becoming my timer-setting of choice even when at home at this rate! It helps that I live in London and am in Hereford this week. Been able to give RS a really good work out.

Only problem I have is that I can see my disk filling up but can't edit the existing recordings - that'll have to wait for coming home. Should have done it before coming away. Do you have any plans to include existing disk contents in the RS site, or will that remain strictly something for the webif? I realise that this would be of minority interest as after all, why would you want to delete files you haven't gone home to watch yet!?

 

[SiHa]

The new version of the rs package handles this properly now. If the on-box EPG data isn't up to date, it defers the scheduling attempt until later.

Great stuff, thanks, af! (ooh - Bladerunner flashback...)

Will try and update stuff asap - still haven't upgraded to 1.12 yet.