After integrating a roon nucleus with a C4 on 2.10.6, we had random slowness in the Control4 app and remote. As an example, it would take ~4 seconds for a command to be sent once a button is pushed on the Control4 App or remote. We also had issues with certain commands in a custom program for power on or off not working.
When working with C4 support and enabling advanced logging in their system, they saw that these delays and “misses” were occurring when the CPU of the processor would spike sporadically. We were able to get a C4 support person online during one of these times and he found that if he disabled the roon core C4 driver from the composer, the processor would immediately go back to normal levels. When this core driver was re-enabled, it would immediately spike the C4 processor CPU.
We are using the latest version of the roon control4 drivers as well as the latest version of the 2.10.6 C4 OS. Is there any suggestion as to how to track down this problem?
Thank you for your reply. Here are the answers as best as I can, but please let me know if there is more that I can provide.
How many Roon zones do you have active in the Control4 app? - 4
Are you using a Nucleus or a Nucleus+? - Nucleus
What is your network setup like? Can you list the model/manufacturer of your gear? I have a mix of Meraki, Sonicwall and Dell equipment.
Can you let me know the audio devices in this setup? - I am not using roon much (or even at all) at this point. This was put in place and I haven't started playing with it much. We have a couple AppleTVs, an Oppo and a Squeezebox setup as roon zones.
What kind of C4 remotes are you using? - We use a mix of the stick C4 remote, iOS app on an iPhone and iPad and a couple C4 touch panels.
Would you be able to provide any of the advanced logging information that the C4 support found? - I am not sure which logs the guy looked at, but he was clear that he found literally nothing about roon in the logs. He said that he saw errors on all (or maybe most) other drivers, but the roon core and zone drivers didn't show any errors. The issue was that he found that the CPU spikes (which appeared to be coming from when the roon core as when the roon core was disabled the spike went away imediately) caused the C4 processor to be unable to respond to the driver requests.
What were the exact buttons that you were pressing when this behavior occurred? - Any button pressed on any remote would be delayed if the CPU was currently spiking.
Did only some button presses trigger this behavior or did it seems to happen regardless of which button was pressed? When the CPU would spike, any button press would be delayed and there was no determinable reason why the CPU would be sporadically spiked.
Thanks again for your questions and let me know if there is anything else we can answer.
I can’t say what exactly regarding the module is causing the spikes since I have not seen this on my end before, but I do have a few troubleshooting ideas here to see if we can narrow this behavior down further.
If this behavior occurs again, let’s try to simplify things. By this I mean, if you connect just the C4 processor and a few endpoints directly to the router (or to the first unamanaged switch after the router), do you still experience this behavior?
Likewise, if you start limiting the number of active Roon zones and Control4 remotes and leave just one zone + one remote active, does the same issue still occur?
If there are any aspects of your setup that you think is part of the issue and is needed to get this reproducible on our end please do let me know and I can take a look.
Do note though, we have upgraded our Control4 equipment to OS3 already, it would be interesting to know if the behavior is the same on your end after upgrading to the newest C4 OS if possible.