LED notification problems
 

Hey guys,

I've had my n900 for a few days but I have an annoying problem with LED notifcation failures for SMS and charging.

It's a vanilla UK handset running the latest UK firmware (I updated OTA with app manager).

It's not been modified, and I've only enabled Maemo Extras repo.

Apps installed are a few games from Ovi store, Foreca weather widget, personal dataplan widget, Facebook & sharing widget (but it was not displayed on desktop) and Xchat.

Notification settings have LED set for calls/sms/charging.

Yesterday I noticed the LED failed to flash when I had an incoming SMS. Also when the unit is on charge, it didn't glow orange.

I rebooted, still same problem. I then enabled all notifications and the LED flashed for missed call, and Device On worked but still no SMS or charge light.

I took out the battery and I still had the same problem. I then did some searching on here and looked at the mce.ini file.

This was timestapped Dec so it's not been touched. I had a look in it anyway and it has the relevant LED pattern bits so SMS should work.

I then reflashed the firmware via NSU and charge/SMS LED light worked ok again. I added all the same apps back and today, it's failed again for sms/charge notifications.

Did the same reboot / take battery out step but still nothing.

There's a thread here with a script to test LEDs via dbus. I ran that to pulse the LED for SMS notifcations for 10secs, still nothing.

Tried restarting mce, nothing. Device On, missed call notifications worked OK.

I then uninstalled all the apps, rebooted, took battery out and it's all been fine for the past few hours. I have installed the games back from the Ovi store but nothing from Maemo Extras.

I'm running the dbus script to pulse the LED for SMS every half hour or so and it's been working OK. The orange charge light is also working fine.

I'm not sure what's going on, if I had a LED problem I'd expect it not to flash at all. I don't know for sure if the apps are causing a weird problem, does not sound likely they would only affect charge/sms notifications.

Anyone come across this?

Cheers.

Re: LED notification problems
 

might be worth listing all other apps you have installed?

Re: LED notification problems
 

Hey,

The full list was:

Ovi store / Maemo Select

Angry Birds
Airport Touch
Disks Touch
Facebook for Nokia
Fifteen
Electric Beams Touch
Documents To Go Viewer
Foreca Weather Widget
Personal Data Plan Monitor

Maemo Extras

Xchat
rootsh
Battle Gweled
Gweled

Currently installed are:

Ovi Store

Angry Birds
Airport Touch
Disks Touch
Fifteeen
Electric Beams Touch
Documents To Go

Extras

Gweled
rootsh.

Cheers.

Re: LED notification problems
 

hmmmmm wouldnt have expected any of those to cause an issue :|

Does sound like a really odd problem :| - best to keep an eye on what you do/change for a few days :P

Re: LED notification problems
 

Yeah it's really weird and a total pain in the butt. I'm goin to keep it in this state for another day or so and see how it behaves.

The test script I use is:

#!/bin/sh
pattern=PatternCommunicationSMS
dbus-send --system --type=method_call --dest=com.nokia.mce /com/nokia/mce/request com.nokia.mce.request.req_led_pattern_activate string:$pattern
sleep 10
dbus-send --system --type=method_call --dest=com.nokia.mce /com/nokia/mce/request com.nokia.mce.request.req_led_pattern_deactivate string:$pattern

Is there a command or a flag for dbus-send to make it much more verbose? When it works I can obviously see the LED pulse.

When I have this problem, the script runs as normal but I'd like to see some debug info. Might help to shed some light on the failure.

Cheers.

Re: LED notification problems
 

don't think you can debug the dbus calls.... tis a pity though :(

Re: LED notification problems
 

Couldn't see anything related to verbose output except for a "--print-reply"

Sticking that in the script and running it while my SMS notifications work results in:

method return sender=:1.7 -> dest=1.310 reply_serial=2

Will see what that does when notification is broken.

Cheers for your help.

Re: LED notification problems
 

Just to follow up, looks like the culprit was Personal Dataplan Monitor.

I've put back all the original apps (and new ones) except the Dataplan monitor and I've not had any LED problems since my original posts.

K.

Re: LED notification problems
 

Thanks for the update :D :D

Re: LED notification problems
 

I have the same problem but i don't have Dataplan installed on mine? I must be honest it doesn't bother me that much as it starts working again for no reason? I can see why it annoys ppl. When i put mine on charge the orange doesnt work, instead i get a really dim white flash?? Power on flash doesnt work but all other notification does. Really wierd? I just leave it n it starts to work again. Heres my installed apps...

3g/2g/duel mode selection app
anglemeter
angry birds
bounce
camkeyd
datetoday home widget
drnoksnes
extra decoders support
fapn
fmms
forca installer
forca widget
ioquake
ogg support
open arena
petrovich
picodrive
qtirecco (which i'm having big problems with btw)
rootsh
sharing plugin for fmms
speedometer
systeminfowidget
transmission
vncviewer
toutube video uploader

If i can remember i had this led problem quite early on before i installed any apps so i'm sure its nothing to do with what i've done?
Anyhoo, it works fine 90% of the time and its such a small problem that i can live with it.

Re: LED notification problems
 

That's a load more apps than I have Nate :)

I thought it might be Foreca weather widget as I had installed that along with the Dataplan widget but that has been running OK for days now.

It is really weird as nothing changed mce.ini so it should be honouring all the notifications set in the options.

I guess something is blocking the notifications under certain circumstances.

I did a full wipe and installed firmware via NSU early on when I had this problem and it ran fine. Did you install any of the widgets that came with an installer pre-installed?


K.

Re: LED notification problems
 

I too got a similar problem: After some time the notification light seems to stop working.

But if you go to a dark room you can see that it is still flashing very low. Almost not noticeable in normal daylight condition. Mostly restarting mce helps, I've also seen it working again from one second to another almost by itself.. really strange... anybody got an idea what could cause this?

Edit: Installed fmms recently, could that cause any trouble? That at least seems to be a program that messes with the notification led ^^

Re: LED notification problems
 

It is weird, I did a firmware reinstall and put back the apps one by one until I found the problematic one.

K.

Re: LED notification problems
 

if u use the backup app, it will backup the problem too, i had this happen to me a bit

Re: LED notification problems
 

I do believe the issue with the subtle flashing is either driver or MCE related. I've always had this sporadic problem, hopefully it gets fixed.

Re: LED notification problems
 

If it persists after PR1.2 I'll file a bug on that (couldn't find one on the bugtracker)

Re: LED notification problems
 

I've just had this issue on my phone, thanks to this thread I noticed that the led actually flashes but with extremely low light as described before. I've had the N900 since release and never experienced this issue, it persists between reboots (but works fine while powering on the device :confused:) and to be honest I have no clue why it's happening now, I haven't done any significant changes since the last time I charged the battery :confused:

Re: LED notification problems
 

Driver issues. I do believe that Matan has LED bug-patches and titan has incorporated them into his kernel @ http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=43420

Re: LED notification problems
 

I fixed it (for now) entering settings, disabling all LED notifications, rebooting, and setting the notifications back to what they were before. I hope this does not repeat again but I guess it can happen again anytime...

Re: LED notification problems
 

It's good to hear that it is a software issue. I have experienced the problem, too. In my case, it has ocurred about three or four times, always after a long charge, i.e., after the LED was on for a long time. Rebooting has helped once, but then it did not. So I just let it be and the next time I got an SMS, normal operation resumed...

Re: LED notification problems
 

mayb try the program to config the led patterns? ididnt have probs but with d program i made d led flash cooler :P

Re: LED notification problems
 

I had problems with the notification LED since Feb 1 when I got my N900.
Reboot sometimes helped sometimes not.
The problem persisted through all the OTA updates up to PR1.2

Finally I found out:
When ambient light is low when locking the screen, the LED works as it should.
When ambient light is high (outsides) when locking, the LED only blinks almost invisible or is OFF alltogether.
Very simple and 100% reproducible.

But more a bug than a feature!

(by locking I mean switching the lock slider switch on the right side of the N900)

So when you are in bright light situation, and want to lock your N900, first hide it under your coat, the use the slider... :D

Re: LED notification problems
 

my LED is also giving me problems, it won't light up when I get an sms notification or missed call.I deleted some apps, but I dunno what could be causing this problem. It goes away sometimes when I restart my phone, but then later on the problem comes back.