I want to use deep standby for a few months and track power usage but as I have never used it what should I be aware of? Will it record as per normal and remain in deep standby? Or must I set up power timers to turn box on and off?
Any guidance gratefully accepted.
A box will wake up from deep standby to record and and should return to deep standby if you have configured the "after recording" parameter in the timer/autotimer.
If you have autotimer(s) setting the timers you will need to switch on the box occasionally in order to fetch the 7 day EPG. Also the box needs to be (fully?) on for a period for the autotimers to actually search in the epg. The autotimer is only a mechanism for setting a timer - effectively it's a epg search engine requiring then box to be working and not in a very low power (less than 1 Watt) power down mode.
Set up some power timers:-
Hello, is there somewhere a setting that at power failure the box will boot to standby ? At OpenPLi the setting can be found from Main menu/Setup/System/Customize/
Those detailed in that thread/post (POST NUMBER 6) would be the insurance.
A recording may be with the box full on or in standby.
If in standby one of these power timers will put the box into deep standby BUT only after the recording has finished.
On a power cut the box may/will boot into full operational mode when the power is restored and one of those power timers will detect that a button on the remote hasn't been touched for X amount of time and puts the box into standby mode. One of the other power timers then kicks in and puts the box into deep standby after 10 minutes (again waiting for recordings to finish)
I also have a couple of timers set up to to record at around 6:30am for 15 minutes every day. I record from BBC1 in order to fetch the epg for Freeview (or Freesat) and from the IEPG data channel to fetch the epg for Sky free to air. The recordings are routed to .trash so no hard disk space is used. Note: I have two terrestrial tuners and two satellite tuners in my box hence different sources of epg fetch.
My box is regualrly left to its own devices for 2/3 weeks at a time when i'm away from home and my power and epg fetch timers have been ultra reliable. My box sits in deep standby for most of its life.