Picframe just ends randomly

[jlederma]

I installed picframe on my raspberry pi zero W a couple of weeks ago. At this point, I have it setup to run as a service at startup, I loaded like 1500 pictures and it works beautifully. Except for one little issue, after a period of time, usually at least a few hours I have seen as few as 5 and as long as 17, it just stops and I am left with the command prompt. I have tried using various logging levels and so far have not managed to capture any error messages at all. It's as though the service has just been shut off.

Any thoughts about a possible cause or suggestions for investigating/troubleshooting?
Yes, I did do a system update and that hasn't made any difference.
I should note that I installed picframe without the heif pre-req but I only have jpg files so I don't think that should be causing a problem.

[jgodfrey]

Hmmm... I'd probably first suspect something in a specific image (or set of images) that's causing an unexpected abort. How long are your images being displayed? More to the point, is it reasonable that a complete play-through of your 1500 images would take at least 17 hours?

Assuming your image order is randomized with each pass, the variable abort time is likely due to the position of the offending image(s) within the new playlist.

I haven't looked at the logging info in a long time, but is it possible to tell what image is being processed at the time of each abort?

[jgodfrey]

Assuming the above is on the right track, it'll likely be easier to track down if the image order isn't shuffled each time. You can turn that off in the config file via the shuffle property (set it to False). With that, it should then abort at a consistent time within each run, and make it easier to find any offending image(s)...

Related, you could make the show run faster (via time_delay) to speed up finding the problem...

[jlederma]

I am finally getting back to this after a few months... I did set it to run in the same order every time and I sped up the cycle time but I was never successful in identifying a specific offending image. Other than pulling all of my images out and then adding them a couple at a time and then cycling completely through every time, do you have other thoughts about how to address this issue?

It would be really nice if there was a log option to record the picture file names so that I could track it down faster.

edit
I should note that when I started messing with this again, I did run sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade and restart.

[paddywwoof]

Hi, you can set logging on in configuration.yaml with a file name to log to. I suspect with it set to DEBUG you will get too much text (but you only need to look at the last few lines) However I will check that the file name would be logged before you try that. If not it would be an easy enough temporary hack to add a logger line to output the image name at WARNING level.

EDIT I see in your original post that you probably did try logging to file so, presumably the image name isn't outputted. Will show you how to do that tomorrow.

[jlederma]

Thanks, if I can get the photo file name in the log, I can at least identify the offending files and deal with them.

[jlederma]

There is no logging level where it logs anything other than the names of missing image files. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 6:23 PM, ***@***.***> wrote: Hi, you can set logging on in configuration.yaml with a file name to log to. I suspect with it set to DEBUG you will get too much text (but you only need to look at the last few lines) However I will check that the file name would be logged before you try that. If not it would be an easy enough temporary hack to add a logger line to output the image name at WARNING level. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[paddywwoof]

Hi, I added three lines to my controller.py file around line 317. This is the installed version (located on the pi generally somewhere like /home/pi/venv_picframe/lib/python3.11/site-packages/picframe but before bookworm and use of venv probably in /home/pi/.local/lib....) Hacking the installed version is not officially recommended but if it all goes pear-shaped you can always re-install picframe!!

                if pics[0] is None:
                    self.__next_tm = 0  # skip this image file moved or otherwise not on db
                    pics = None  # signal slideshow_is_running not to load new image
                else:
                    self.__logger.warning(f"next file is {pics[0].fname}")        ####### <
                    if len(pics) > 1 and pics[1] is not None:                     ####### <
                        self.__logger.warning(f"... paired with {pics[1].fname}") ####### <
                    image_attr = {}
                    for key in self.__model.get_model_config()['image_attr']:

Don't let the log file get too big and remember to take this hack out once (if) you find the cause of the problem.

Paddy

[jlederma]

Thank you very much. I made the changes you described, turned off the shuffle mode and set it to switch pics every couple of seconds.
my goal is to run with this setup until I can weed out all the bad files.
Then I can switch to normal operation while I try to determine what the issue is with the specific files.

I really appreciate your help. Will let you know what happens.

[jgodfrey]

my goal is to run with this setup until I can weed out all the bad files.

Once you've identified the image(s), perhaps we can better bullet-proof picframe so they 1) just work or 2) at least don't cause a crash. Looking forward to your findings.

[jlederma]

Ha Ha! That was fantastic. I am continuing to run through pictures but so far it has crashed on three panoramic pictures. Would be nice if the software could have either made the pic fit on the screen or just skipped it but it is easy enough to remove them from the set.

I will let you know if I encounter issues with any other photos.

[sapnho]

That‘s really strange. I have a lot of panoramic photos and they all show up brilliantly. I guess the problem lies elsewhere. I recently had a problem with a new Apple color profile that Lightroom wouldn‘t recognise. Took me days to find out.

[jlederma]

I think that these specific panoramas were all likely taken with iphones, once I finish identifying all of the problematic images I will start looking more deeply into where they come from and other details. At least I am identifying the images that are causing problems now..

[jlederma]

Wahoo! It was just three panoramic photos causing the issue. I removed them and now it can loop through all my pics with no trouble. I will start looking into the specific images to see if I can find out what might be unique about them but leaving out panoramic photos is no issue so I am now pretty happy.

Thank you all for your help!

[paddywwoof]

Great. We would, of course, dearly like to know what was causing the problem too. Panoramic photos aren't an unlikely occurrence!