PhotoBridge HD1000 Tech Note

What to do if your PhotoBridge HD1000 "locks up"

We have spent considerable effort ensuring the HD1000 software is of high quality. However, it is very complicated software, and like all complicated software, has the occasional "bug".

Since the release of the 1.5.18 software, we have become aware of a few issues that affect some customers. These can cause the HD1000 to "lock up" or "hang". We have documented these known issues here so that if they affect you, you can avoid them. We will be fixing these known issues in our next software update.

Low Memory
If the HD1000 runs low on internal DRAM memory, it can slow down to the point where it appears to hang or lock up. The following activities can trigger this issue:
  • Running certain third party applications. Many of the third party applications that are developed using our SDK for the HD1000 use more memory than is commonly available. For the work around, see the discussion on "swap space" below. In addition, third-party applications are not tested or endorsed by Roku and may be unstable. If this is the case, please report the bug to the creator of the application.
  • Playing Music and viewing photos at the same time. In the 1.5.18 software release, we added the ability for you to run "listen", start music playing, and exit with the music still playing (and listen still running in the background). You can then go to the photo browser or slide show. Unfortunately, after we released 1.5.18, we discovered that there is often not enough memory to do this, and the system will lock up. See options below for work-arounds. We will address this issue in our next software update.


You can increase the available memory on your PhotoBridge HD1000 with the following methods:
  • Mount fewer network shares. Each network share consumes approximately 700KB of memory. Use of fewer network shares may free up enough memory to allow the hang-inducing operations to be carried out without failure.
  • Enable a swap file (see the advanced section, below for more information)


Scanning Networks for Shared Folders Can Take a Very Long Time
Under some circumstances, the unit may appear to freeze because a network scan is taking a long time. This can happen when the unit is first powered on or when the user initiates a scan under the "Network Shares" setup panel. The system is not locked up. If you are patient, the unit will finish the network scan and resume. We will speed this up in our next software update.

Booting with a Wi-Fi Adaptor
A small percentage of our users have reported that their PhotoBridge HD1000 hangs while trying to boot with a USB Wi-Fi adapter connected. If this happens to you, please reboot without the Wi-Fi adapter connected. Once the HD1000 is up and running, plug the USB Wi-Fi adapter back in to your HD1000. Next, go to the Wireless setup panel and fill in the network name and password if needed. Finally, choose "Done" and once it connects to your network, ignore the instructions requesting that you reboot your HD1000.

Advanced 
Creating a Swap File
It is possible to add more memory to your PhotoBridge HD1000 by using a Compact Flash card as a "swap file" (so called because the Linux kernel "swaps" unused portions of programs into and out of DRAM to the "swap space").

A swap file may be advantageous in certain situations where a user desires to use the PhotoBridge HD1000 in certain memory-intensive ways or use third-party applications that use a lot of graphics or require cataloging a lot of data. We have created a Roku application that you can download that will allow you to use a Compact Flash card in this way.

To use your Compact Flash card as a swap file, first download the program "Swap.roku" < right-click, save as to download >. Place the downloaded program on a Compact Flash card with at least 64MB of space available (128MB recommended), insert the card in the HD1000, select the Compact Flash card from the main menu, and find the SwapOn icon in the "Roku Applications" section of the UI. Highlight the icon and press [SELECT] to turn on the swap file. There will be no user feedback when doing this, so please wait at least 2 minutes before doing anything else to allow this program to complete. Note: to write to a Compact Flash card from a PC you may need to purchase a low cost USB Compact Flash read/writer.

Once you have turned on the swap space, you must leave the CF card inserted. If you remove it, the PhotoBridge HD1000 will need to be rebooted. This means that you can not use your CF slot for other purposes, if you are using it for swap space.

Please Note: If you have the space available on the Compact Flash card used for the swapfile, you may put additional applications or files on the card.