skimmer decoding capacity

[M3ect]

Hi All
I'm running cw skimmer with log4om v2 but its a problem I also had in V1. after about an hour of use CW skimmer starts to max out its decoding capacity (bottom left of skimmer screen). Once it hits about 90% it then crashes. The only way to lower the capacity reached back into a more normal range is to restart log4om, restarting skimmer does nothing. My setup is radio connected to microkeyer 2 . log4om and cw skimmer. It displays this behaviour in my icom 7600 and my ftdx 5000. Any ideas would be gratefully received.

[G4AON]

CW Skimmer (and Skimmer Server that I run) behaves exactly the same as a DX Cluster as far as a log program is concerned. By default, Log4OM displays the last 60 mins of spots, you can change that under settings (if that is the issue). My Log4OM (ver 2.6.1) has been running for over 90 mins this morning and is collecting CW Skimmer Spots quite happily and scrolling the Cluster window.

Have you tried using a DX Cluster and does that behave the same?

73 Dave

[M3ect]

Hi Dave
Thanks for the reply. Yes log4om is working fine as far as I can tell. Its cw skimmer that is failing. I'm just using it to decode cw i'm not using it to forward any spots. I'm trying to work out why skimmers decoding capacity starts to max out and possibly how I can reduce that so I don't have to keep restarting log4om.

[KD0ZV]

This has been a battle for me since I bought CW Skimmer and was an issue when the PC was short on resources. Really had nothing to do with Log4OM except that of course Log4OM uses resources too.

I was running an i7-4760 CPU/32 gig and SSD drives. Was not a slouch by any means but still would do the same. Usually started out with some smearing on the CWS waterfall and finally have to restart things.

I built a new 12 core Ryzen CPU machine about a month ago and has not happened since.

I really do not understand the decoding capacity. Even on a dummy load with no signals mine runs at 60%. Closing Log4OM might drop the usage about 2% but opening about any substantial program on the machine raises it 2% as well.

Sorry dont have a solution for you but in my experience its been more of a skimmer problem over the years than anything.

Rich

[M3ect]

Hi Rich
Cheers I was beginning to think it was just me. I'm running a quad here with 16 gig of ram. So I think the problem definitely lies in skimmer. I've given up with it now. Its to distracting when I'm trying to do morse staring at it in anticipation of it crashing out. Ill have another go at it next year

[KD0ZV]

Couple things you might try.

In skimmer tell it to only decode the CW portion of band and possibly mess with the Max # of CW decoders.

No idea if that will help you or not, but worth a try


Rich

[M3ect]

Cheers Rich
I already have the decodes set to the minimum which is 50. I've just set it to decode only cw but it seems to be doing the same. What seems to be happening is every time I click on a spot in log4om cluster to move me to the spots frequency it seems to go up a couple of percent. after 50 clicks on a spot its starting to redline and crashes. I upped the priority in windows to high but its not made any difference. Task manager tells me I'm only using about 50% cpu and 40% ram. I've just noticed if I move frequency manually using the radio dial it goes up from say 25% to around 35% but then it drops back down to 25% but clicking on a spot in log4om cluster increases the % but it never drops back down. I guess not clicking on spots is a work around but tbh its annoying

[G4AON]

Have you checked in Windows Task Manager to see how much of your resources are used by Skimmer? I am running Skimmer Server ver 1.6 with a QS1R SDR receiver and 7 x 96 KHz bands simultaneously decoded. The number of decoders obviously varies but is around 140 ~ 150 at the moment, CPU used by Skimmer, as reported by Task Manager, is around 3.5% to 5%, total CPU use is around 6%, memory used by Skimmer is around 25 MB. The memory used by Skimmer doesn't increase with time, or if it does, not by any significant amount.

System is 64 bit Windows 10 Pro, i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM and an SSD Drive. Log4OM is ver 2.6.1

FWIW, I mix the output of Skimmer with a DX Cluster using the free utility program WinTelnetX by K1TTT, http://www.k1ttt.net/software.html

With the above, you can configure the Log4OM cluster setting to point to the WinTelnetX local IP address and turn on/off either the cluster, or your skimmer (or use both combined) in WinTelnetX without needing to change the settings in Log4OM.

73 Dave

[M3ect]

Hi Dave
thanks for the info. I really only bought skimmer to decode morse as its pretty good at decoding low signals with minimum errors. I'm really not looking to forward spots or indeed run log4om server. However at this point I may give it a whirl just to see if I can nail why windows doesn't seem to be allocating the cpu resource properly. Right now i'm thinking omnirig has something to do with my problems.

[KD0ZV]

For what it is worth. Here is my system resources usage.

Skimmer is by far the most intensive. I am aggregating my skimmer and also spots from a telnet server online. My skimmer is set at 192K of bandwidth.

As you can see Log4OM is idling along.


Hoping the next version of CWS is improved.