how to fix Screen('OpenMovie'.. leading to Matlab crash - matlab

Setup: Matlab Student 2014, Psychtoolbox 3.0.12, GStreamer 1.4.3, ATI Radeon 69xx, all on Windows 7, all 64bit.
Screen works with different arguments, only at Screen('OpenMovie' the whole Program (Matlab) crashes - sometimes with Error (unable to synchronize framerate), sometimes no error at all.
I know it is quite specific and I think it is somehow in my configuration (the code will work on a different system (lab)).
What I've tried so far:
Psychtoolbox 3.0.11, GStreamer SDK, GStreamer 1.4.1
renewed ATI drivers (complete catalyst control center,..)
removed multi-monitor setting (makes it harder to debug then..)
Matlab itself works, GStreamer too (tried playing movie with playbin)
anything SyncTrouble states: wait for vertical synch, triple buffering off
overriding sync-tests or skipping at all (also crash)
looking for missing dlls (for Screen.mexw64)
VBLSyncTest and PerceptualVBLSyncTest look fine and have results (for me)
It has to be either something very simple, or very specific - I'm somehow out of ideas. My guess would be that the Radeon vertical sync on setting does not work - for what reason ever.
ANY guesses, tips are apreciated. (even other ways to test Screen or vertical sync in Matlab/Psychtoolbox)

after hours of search, I think I've found a solution - oh Windows! (and oh, one simple line of code)
Screen('Preference', 'ConserveVRAM', 4096);
4096 == kPsychUseBeampositionQueryWorkaround
Tell PTB to always use the workaround for broken beamposition queries in
VBL on MS-Windows, even if the automatic startup test does not detect any
problems. This for rare cases where the test fails to detect broken
setups. [Psychtoolbox Docs]
I will do a recheck after some Videocache action and restarts.
edit:
well, that did only work once, and randomly a second time - it seems like the ATI Radeon driver behave not quite deterministically - I also checked on a Linux (Ubuntu 14.04.1). Specifically, the VSync rate seems to behave somehow strangely.
It generally works on that specified Linux with the open source radeon drivers (instead of the fglrx ones) though. -> The Problem on that Linux system: it can only be configured as one Screen (two monitor setup would be nice for debug on one Screen). (Yes, I've tried: Unity, Gnome, Xmonad, Gnome+Xmonad - but I guess that is another story)
Alright, I've written enough, my solution: use a Linux distro (quite unsatisfying though, as I could not accomplish for everything to work).

Related

Hyperpixel 4.0 strange behaviour of Touch driver error

I since a few months, I have been using a Hyperpixel 4.0 Touchscreen with my Raspberry 3B+ without any problems. Since a few weeks i use my touchscreen with the Raspberry Pi 4 Compute module and mounted both on my own designed PCB. Unfortunately, I’m facing some difficulties with the Touch function of my Hyperpixel 4.0. I have no clue how to solve these problems because the circumstances, which cause the fault don’t make sense to me.
Which System do I use?
Hyperpixel 4.0 in combination with Raspberry ComputeModule 4 with 2GB RAM and 8GB onBoard eMMC. Both is mounted on my custom PCB, which is supplied with 24V, stepped down by an «APP63300WU-7» Step down converter, which provides 3A # 5.1V continuous output. The measured Voltage over 2 Days of measurement is a maximum of 5.2V and a minimum of 5.05V. The software ist the latest Raspbian.
What error is caused?
I have been running a GUI on my Raspberry Pi. I have one Page on which i have three sliders for changing brightness of my room light, colortemperature and one slide is to regulate the speed of some fans. Everything works fine in darkmode, but if I change to lightmode and touch the screen for about 1.5 seconds, the touch- function hangs up. My GUI doesn’t move anymore and I have a still image. I know that it’s only the touch function beacause if I plug in a keyboard and mouse, I can open for example chromium or other stuff without problems. With «i2cdetect »-command I can detect the Goodix GT911 driver on Address 0x14. Even if the touch has hung up, i can detect the Goodix GT911. I know that the address should probably be 0x5D but I thought it isn’t necessary to care about this problem as long as it works. After a reboot, the touchscreen works fine again until i use the lightmode of my GUI. Interesting to mention is, that i can click a thousand times for around 0,25seconds and no problems occur. But if I touch the screen permanently for around 1,5seconds, I instantly get my above described problems. Generally considered, this problems seems very strange to me and it doesn’t behave like any physical law i know…
On the first view, the error seems like a software issue ? Hear this!
If i use the official «Compute Module 4 IO-Board » to mount my Compute Module and Touchscreen, I don’t get the issue at all… My actual designed PCB ist the 2nd version. On the 1st version It also worked fine without any problems. The only differnce between version 1 and 2 is the wiring, which I tried to improve on the 2nd version and viewer parts which I only put on my 1st version to evaluate some functionalities like ethernet or 2nd I2C-Bus, which I’m not using on my 2nd version. The wiring did not change between these two versions, i only tried to increase the distance between the GPIO-traces to improve signal integrity.
So it seems like a hardware problem? But why does the GUI work fine in darkmode? I don’t have any explanation to that.
What did I do to narrow down the error?
I flashed a new image on my Compute Module and also used another Compute Module, Custom PCB and touchscreen as well, but without any success. As far as I experienced, the issue is only caused on my GUI and not on any other websites or images, etc. An interesting thing was the interrupt line, which is typically only drawn to 0Volts if the touchscreen gets touched. After the touchscreen hung up, I measured 0,084V on that line and as long as I touched the screen, this voltage rised to about 0,2V, which for me seems also like a strange behaviour. I also checked the «dmseg» file and got some entries for failed i2c tests of the GoodixGT911. I also tried the github fix for the swapped i2c address, but without success. I used the command «git clone GitHub - pimoroni/hyperpixel4: Driver for the Pimoroni HyperPixel 4.0" Touchscreen Display -b pi4-i2c-fix » for that.
What do I try next?
I dont have any clue what to do next. My only solution in mind, is to undo the «improved» wiring of my 2nd PCB to get as close as possible my first PCB version.
Conclusion :
I really need help and hope, someone can do me this favour. I’ve never found my described error behaviour in any forum. Are there any other usable forums for problems with the Hyperpixel 4.0? Let me please know.
Update:
I tried to reproduce the errors and specify the error source. As above mentioned, the touchdriver hangs up on lightmode (nearly every pixel on rgb(255,255,255)). If i change the color in lightmode to around rgb(245,245,245) the error does not occur. I also noticed that there are two flatband cables on the Hyperpixel 4.0: One for displaying the image and another for the whole I2C-Communication to the touch driver. I plugged out the one for displaying the image and got no problems at all. Even if was theoretically in lightmode(if display would have been on). The touchscreen worked fine and transmitted everyting flawless:
Conclusion on my Update: It seems as the rgb(666) datalines for displaying the image on the screen cause some problems on the I2C bus. I also checked the bus and the power supply with an oscilloscope but I haven't seen any unusual behaviour in any case. Voltage ripple was around 200mV Peak to Peak and the I2C-Datalines rised and fell really sharp
I still need help from you!
Thanks, Manuel

Pyscipopt (in Google Collab) does not show/print any output for the large-size network optimization problem in Google Collab

I am working on a non-linear network-optimization problem. When I run a large problem instance on the lab high-performance computers (imposing the time limit of 1 or 2 hours), those computers give me the output when the time is exhausted.
I wanted to use Google Collab to run the same code and to share it with my supervisors (they don't have Pyscipopt installed on their computers). However, when the problem size is small – all is good, but when the problem size is large, it says that the execution is completed (on the bottom of the screen) along with the time it took and a small red exclamation mark BUT it does not show any output for the large-size network optimization problems (neither it prints the solution nor it explains what is the reason/error of this behaviour).
Again, the same code works perfectly fine on high-performance computers, so I do not think there are any problems with syntax.
Please let me know if there are any solutions to the problem described.
Kind regards,
Lidiia
I tried to change "None" in the hardware accelerator to GPU and CPU. I tried to proofread the code in order to find any mistakes. I tried to not leave the Google Collab to run the code at night (I read somewhere that kernel stops working if there is inactivity) so I tried to click on something there to prevent the execution from stopping. Nothing worked.

Why does my VSCode text get super blurry super quickly?

I've had this issue for years, and I'm not sure why.
As you can see from the right side of this first screenshot, my other apps aren't affected by this. Not a single one, actually.
When I move the cursor, some areas refresh and are perfectly fine! ...but that doesn't last long enough for me to hit printscreen, generally.
You can see that the text where my cursor is at is much more normal-esque, but quickly fades back into... this.
Since there's no other programs affected, I figured it might be a graphics driver; but switching from my GTX to my Iris didn't do anything at all. Nor did swapping an HDMI cable to the onboard card. In fact, it doesn't matter which of my 4 monitors VSCode is on, it's still being goofier than Jed Clampett.
I have no idea where or why to even begin diagnosing this issue.
I'll list my extensions just in case.
autoDocstring - Nils Werner (installed today)
FiveM Natives - fivem-vscode
indent-rainbow - oderway (installed today)
IntelliCode - Microsoft
Live Share - Microsoft
LUA - sumneko
Markdown All In One - Yu Zhang
Pylance - Microsoft
Python - Microsoft
Remote Development Pack - Microsoft
Sourcery - sourcery (installed today)
MyPy - Matan Gover
I'm now out of ideas. I'd rather not have to use VS22 for Lua and Python projects, as you can imagine!
It's been so long since I've sat and worked with it, I can't remember what all I've done to try to remediate this. One of the biggest suggestions is disabling font smoothing in settings, which of course didn't help at all.
Bonus points: What is this issue even called? 512x MSAA?

Generally what would cause Unity Editor freezes and not responding?

I have encountered a critical issue that Unity Editor freezes. I've spent many hours debugging step by step of my codes but still can't find where the problem is. So I think maybe I should try thinking from another angle, generally speaking what reasons would cause Unity Editor freezes and not responding?
I can't find a general case discussion about this topic.
From my experience, infinite loop is one reason for sure. Deadlock is critical issue, but not sure if it causes Unity Editor freezes. Unity Editor bug that I encountered only makes the whole editor crashes, instead of freezing. Any other experiences are welcomed. Thank you!
In such case, what kind of tools or methods could I use to debug it? Right now since the editor freezes I can't use "print" to find out what happens after it freezes. So I use Visual studio to debug the Editor thread, in this way I can see all the prints that I wrote. It appears the game is still running, only the editor not responding. And I can use VS click "attach to Unity and play" and put some debugging points, then debug step by step.
The first thing that I would check out is for an infinite loop. At the hang/freeze moment, you can attatch the debugger of your choice and pause the execution. In the case that it is an infinite loop that it is executing, at the exec time pause you might find the execution in a forever running while (true) {...}
Other thing that I would check is the plugins in use. Several Unity plugins like Parse, FMOD, UMP (Universal Media Player), ZFBrowser, or Embedded Browser are using native threads. It’s an issue when a plugin ends up attaching a native thread to the runtime, which then does blocking calls to the OS. This means Unity can't interrupt that thread for the debugger (or domain reload) and hang. Source
To check that you can check the active threads in the visual studio command window af the freeze is reproduced:
View->OtherWindows->CommandWindow and type in this command:
Debug.ListCallStack /AllThreads /ShowExternalCode
In the stack you can check if some thread is there with no need, or if its related with the plugins mentioned above.
Also an interesting point is to check in the windows task manager (in the case that you are using windows) if the CPU usage is to 0%. It can lead you to the type of hang that is taking place.
Good luck.
Edit: I forgot to mention, you need to check also the unity logfiles
I notice this all the time, and its super frustrating.
Unfortunately, this could be any number of issues. I notice this issue most often when working in projects that are made for the Universal Windows Platform.
Try using the Task manager to monitor specific processes / threads running.
Some follow up questions:
What platform is your project currently targeting?
What version of Unity are you running? Have you tried other versions?
What are your computers specs? Is the OS up to date? Graphics Drivers?
Does it happen (or happen more often) when an external code editor is open? Perhaps try going to Preferences>External Editor > Regenerate Project files.
Are you using Unity Collab by chance? I've had issues where collab is stuck trying to communicate with Unity Servers / looking for changes. Try logging out of your Unity account through the editor, and log back in.
Have you tried looking for a Unity editor crash dump, or error log files? I think they can be found here C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Unity by default. Those files may give you more specific data concerning your problem.
Unity's new versions are getting more slower and slower. From my experience 2019 versions are the best and more stable.
I solved my issue. It's fundamentally an infinite loop.
It's not a simple case such as "while(true)". I'll try to explain.
My game was a PvP game, and I'm making a local AI. Usually my design pattern works fine, however I just turned off the simulation of "AI thinking time", and since the AI codes and server codes all run in local mode, the transmitting of data between server and client are replaced by local method call(meaning instantly executed before everything else).
There is a loophole in my server code. I use "Update" and a flag on server to change a specific game state, however in this particular case, it got into an infinite loop because the local method call is executed before the "Update". And because my AI now doesn't need real time to "think", it "acts" and transmits the event data to server right away. And since the transmitting doesn't need time any more, it calls the server method instantly, hence forming the infinite loop.

Matlab openGL Warning

I'm tasked with upgrading a lot of legacy models and scripts made in an older version of Matlab/Simulink and have it running smoothly in R2018b. Among other requirements I'm not allowed to have any warnings issued upon execution of .m scripts or Simulink models. This is generally tedious but straightforward to comply.
However, there is a specific warning that Matlab does not give me hints on possible sources:
Warning: MATLAB has disabled some advanced graphics rendering features by switching to software OpenGL. For more information click here.
The link opens the Matlab Help page titled Resolving Low-Level Graphics Issues, which describes issues I'm not finding (or at least not noticing)
I do note that many scripts I run create and close figures, but this is done procedurally. I haven't been able to associate this warning with some specific function or feature. I'm working on a Windows Server machine.
Does anyone have an idea of how to narrow down which kind of function os Simulink block could cause this warning?
As datenwolf and Ander point out, the first thing to try is to update your drivers. If this doesn't work, and your only problem is that you're getting the warning but your graphics still render fine, then you have two other options to try.
First, you can simply modify your OpenGL rendering preferences using opengl. The following will set your preference to 'software' and save that setting for future sessions:
opengl('save', 'software');
Alternatively, you can just try to suppress that particular warning message. After you get the warning, issue this call to the warning function:
w = warning('query', 'last');
The w.identifier field will give you the ID for the warning message, which I believe will be 'MATLAB:hg:AutoSoftwareOpenGL' in this case. You can then add the following line to your startup.m file so that this warning is suppressed every time MATLAB is opened:
warning('off', 'MATLAB:hg:AutoSoftwareOpenGL');
Install the original vendor drivers for your GPU. The drivers that are installed by Windows by default lack full OpenGL support. Download the driver package directly from the website of Intel, AMD or NVidia, depending on what GPU you have.
If you don't have GPU, for example when running in a Virtual Machine, then you can not avoid that warning, because then Matlab has no other choice than falling back on the software OpenGL implementation that it ships with.
There's nothing you can do about that, other than making sure, that the system you're running Matlab on, does have proper OpenGL support!
It took me a long time to get it, so I'll put you here in case it helps how I managed to activate openGL in Linux:
If you haven't already (it's common for other problems), rename libstdc++ library from MATLAB:
mv _YOUR_MATLAB_ROOT_FOLDER_/sys/os/glnxa64/libstdc++.so.6 _YOUR_MATLAB_ROOT_FOLDER_/sys/os/glnxa64/libstdc++.so.6.bak
Create this link: sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/ /usr/lib/
Run export MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=YOUR_DRI_DRIVER;matlab -desktop -nosoftwareopeng
Your DRI Driver will be a file from /usr/lib/dri, removing "_dri" (in my case was the "radeons" driver for an AMD Vega graphic card.
Run MATLAB from a terminal using: export MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=_YOUR_DRIVER_HERE_;matlab -desktop -nosoftwareopengl. YOUR_DRIVER_HERE should be your driver, radeonsi in my case.
Check openGL with info = rendererinfo
If something went wrong, you will be able to see in the terminal which library was responsible. Executing 4) and 5) I was discovering what I had to correct, you can do the same if you have another problem that has not appeared to me.
So that it always runs correctly I put export MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=YOUR_DRI_DRIVER at the beginning of the script that runs matlab (_YOUR_MATLAB_FOLDER/bin/matlab), although I suppose it can also be set as an environment variable.
I hope this has been useful to you.