[Linwood]

I feel like I am missing a very obvious setting, but searching both online and in the menus yielded nothing.

I have a very vanilla install on Ubuntu 22.04.3 of 19.4 on a player piano system.  This is not really used interactively, but is controlled remotely via my home assistant server to play Pianodisc music.  It works great.

I have what appears to be a new problem (but "new" here could be a year or two, it is not that frequently used, mostly holidays):  Ubuntu is set to blank the monitor (not suspend the machine) after 15 minutes.  The monitor is used, not much much with Kodi, but with a sheet music reader program, so it is desirable that it blank and sit waiting for a touch to come back.  That also works fine.

But now when the monitor blanks, Kodi pauses.  It is a pause, not a crash (I see lots of posts about crashes, hangs, etc.).  As soon as I touch the screen, it picks right back up at the note upon which it stopped.

Running over every 15 minutes to restart it is a pain, and in its more frequently used mode (a music reader display) I WANT it to blank, not just sit with the screen on for weeks at a time.

In Kodi I see nothing set for screen saver, no power or other timers, nothing that I can find that looks related.  in linux it set to blank screen, that's all (and that's all it does, the CPU remains awake, I can access it from ssh for example). 

I know this worked in the last, notably I could start Kodi playing with the screen black (from the Home assistant server). 

Am I missing a setting, some update perhaps?   Though the copyright date makes it look like it is old (it was set to auto-update, but it must not be). 

Linwood

[izprtxqkft]

seems like a ubuntu setting rather than a kodi setting

kodi should be keeping the screen on during playback afaik

[Linwood]

seems like a ubuntu setting rather than a kodi setting

kodi should be keeping the screen on during playback afaik

Well, Ubuntu is doing what it should I think.  It blanks the screen but keeps the computer active.  Which is what I want, just to prevent screen burnin (the computer stays up 24x7). 

But back to Kodi -- to be clear I am not playing video, only audio.  Is there some setting to cause Kodi to keep the screen on?  No human is touching it, but it is playing actively when it pauses. Keeping the screen on would be just fine, I have no objection to it staying on if the player system is in use.   Some kind of log or debug I can invoke or examine to find out why it is not?

[izprtxqkft]

sure running a Debug Log which is running when the screen turns off resulting in audio pausing may yield something
would just have to try and see if it has any indicators

[Linwood]

So I think I've figured part of this out, and it is something of a mea culpa.   I had so much trouble getting Ubuntu to "stick" to one output through the audio port on the computer, I moved to using audio from the HDMI connection to the monitor.

I was wrong about it picking up where it left off. The music was similar enough I thought it did. Tonight I noticed it moved on to a completely different track -- Kodi was still playing, it was the audio that cut off when the monitor cut off -- which is somewhat sensible with HDMI blanking.

Now... if I could convince Kodi to keep the screen from blanking while it is playing... so I'll try the debug again and see.

I did find that I needed to add the launchpad PPA to the sources list, and did an update.   So now on 20.2, will see if that makes any difference and try logs.  Probably tomorrow, been a long day .

[gujal]

Enable music visualization and Kodi will keep the screen on when playing audio and will be displaying psychedelic patterns

[Linwood]

Enable music visualization and Kodi will keep the screen on when playing audio and will be displaying psychedelic patterns

I wish I had seen this before I did all the work (for reasons unknown I am not getting email notifications). 

I gave up keeping the screen on, and got a USB to Audio plug, and hooked up the player piano that way, now it does not care if the screen is on or not.  

But I may try visualization anyway, might look nice while it is playing.

Thank you for that, sorry I didn't notice it (and besides being busy had to order the adapter).