Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

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TheMonopluralist
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Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by TheMonopluralist »

Hi. (Firstly, thanks for this amazing software.)
I will try to give as much information as possible that may be relevant...

Running: RPI3, Raspbian Jessie OS, qjackctl, and a2jmidid, with sunvox raspberry pi version.

Other Hardware = Beringer uca222 usb audio interface, usb qwerty keyboard, usb midi controller (akai lpd-8), and official 7" touchscreen.

Background: with some excellent help from transient (noisyvagabond) before I had access to this forum, I dealt with a midi-to-audio latency issue I was having by running Jack, and using a2jmidid to connect the midi controller.

Problem: I start sunvox (from terminal), but even when running sunvox's basic default template, the core temperature appears to rise within a few minutes (about 5 minutes) to over 80 degrees Celsius! I noticed because a "thermometer" icon appeared in the top right. I confirmed this by running a command in a terminal which returned the CPU temp as 80.6 degrees Celsius. I stopped sunvox, and then ran the terminal command a few times over the next few minutes and saw the temperature drop through the 70s and 60s, until it levelled off at about 54 (then I turned off WiFi and it dropped a couple more degrees).

Further info: I never noticed this behaviour before I started using Jack and a2jmidid with sunvox (although in theory I guess the temperature could have risen to anything up to 79.9 degrees Celsius without displaying any warnings).

So:
1) Is there anything I can do to deal with this? (Heatsink already ordered but I imagine that this behaviour is unexpected and thought it best to report it, even if a heatsink makes it usable.)
2) Is there any further diagnostic test you would like me to run, or any further information that you would like me to provide?

---
Edited a sentence for clarity. (Edit 1)
---
I am using the 2.5A raspberry pi power supply, from RS components. I have not seen any "low voltage" symbol or any other error related to power. (Edit 2)
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NightRadio
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Re: Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by NightRadio »

Please show me the SunVox log output from Terminal.
TheMonopluralist
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Joined: Tue Jul 04, 2017 12:40 am

Re: Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by TheMonopluralist »

Hi. Thanks for the reply.
I have been unable to replicate the overheating exactly since I have now fitted a heatsink, which seems to keep it a lot nearer 70°C, (at least under reasonably light usage).
Anyway, here is the terminal log from the latest run, with some comments to explain what I was doing at different times:

#Ran sunvox from terminal, assigned some midi CC
#controls and started playing sounds via midi for a while,
#using midi notes and midi cc data.

Language: en_GB.UTF-8
SunDog Engine / Nov 4 2016 06:59:13
WM: device start
WM: screen_zoom = 1
WM: screen_ppi = 110
WM: screen_scale = 360 / 256
WM: screen_font_scale = 419 / 256
WM: screen size = 1280 x 760
WM: font_zoom = 2
WM: flags SCALABLE OPTIMIZE_MOVE_EVENTS FRAMEBUFFER
WM: system palette init...
WM: initialized
Audio buffer size: 2048 frames
ALSA lib pulse.c:243:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused

ALSA ERROR: Can't open audio device pulse: Connection refused
ALSA ERROR: Can't open audio device default: Device or resource busy
Switching to jack
JACK: restoring previous connection a2j:LPD8 [20] (capture): LPD8 MIDI 1 -> SunVox:Keyboard1 ...
JACK: restoring previous connection a2j:LPD8 [20] (capture): LPD8 MIDI 1 -> SunVox:Keyboard1 ...
Stack ptr: 0
Stack is clean

#Loaded new project (still a fairly simple project, with
#some generators, filters, samplers, etc, as modules,
#but with sequences running too).
#Pressed play and messed about with midi notes and
#midi cc data again.
JACK: restoring previous connection a2j:LPD8 [20] (capture): LPD8 MIDI 1 -> SunVox:Keyboard1 ...

#Tried to close sunvox via GUI menu, sunvox GUI
#remained on screen and I could not interact with it,
#alt-tab still showed it and I could select it like any
#other window but still not interact with it.

#Stopped Jack and quit qjackctl in case that helped
#(It didn't seem to make any difference).
Cannot read socket fd = 7 err = Success
CheckRes error
JackSocketClientChannel read fail

#Ctrl+Alt+Delete showed sunvox running (with 0% of
#CPU usage). "Stop" had no effect, but "kill" seemed
#to end it...
[1]+ Stopped /home/pi/sunvox/sunvox/linux_arm_armhf_raspberry_pi/sunvox
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NightRadio
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Re: Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by NightRadio »

Thank you!
Two thoughts
1) JACK is good for HQ routing of different apps. But of course it's a more difficult task for CPU: higher sample rate, low latency, etc. I don't think the overheat is something abnormal in this case.
2) Please try to decrease the window size of SunVox :) It was the reason of audio glitches on my old RPi, because the Linux version of SunVox uses pure software rendering of its GUI
TheMonopluralist
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Re: Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by TheMonopluralist »

Thanks for the feedback and advice.
My two thoughts:
1) I intend to drop the sample rate in JACK from 48000 to 44100 anyway, for various reasons, but I also guess that reducing buffer size would be likely to increase the stress on the CPU?
2) Is there a default (or standard) setup that would be likely to work well with the official 7" touchscreen? The truth is I spent a long time playing with various options in the sunvox preferences in order to have it load in a way where it filled the display and was usable (buttons and text were appropriate sizes), and it still isn't perfect. Some of the menus within sunvox still displayed in such a way that they go beyond the bottom of the display, for example. If you would like me to open this up as a separate thread (either as a bug thread or in a different subforum) just let me know - I do think it would be good to have a basic default setup for people using the raspberry pi with this screen, even if that just means creating a thread with some settings that work.
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NightRadio
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Re: Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by NightRadio »

1)
reducing buffer size would be likely to increase the stress on the CPU?
I'm sure it is so.

2) Is this your display? https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ra ... h-display/
Could you please show me the screenshot of SunVox on your RPi
TheMonopluralist
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Re: Raspberry Pi 3: Temperature Spike When Using Sunvox

Post by TheMonopluralist »

Hi again, thanks for the replies. That is the correct display, yes.

Unfortunately I ended up installing a newer OS and starting from scratch before I worked out how to take screenshots in Raspbian. Previously I had played with various of the settings to get the display how I liked it, but probably didn't need to, as making the button size larger while leaving the rest completely unchanged provided a better result than I previously had anyway!

One thing I have noticed is that I seem to be unable to scroll down through the parameters for a module using the touchscreen, without dragging the sidebar all the way to full vertical size. This makes it difficult to see (e.g.) the envelope displays at the bottom of the parameter list without making the parameter boxes too small to edit easily. It doesn't make it unusable or anything, but is slightly irritating. I also haven't found a menu that is too tall yet, but will find out how to make screenshots for you, in case I encounter this or any other problems.

Sunvox is still excellent.
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