#241 Activate video card nvidia GT 330M

[Anonymous]

On my MBP mid 2010, after alarm starts and stop, in order to take the picture it activate the nvidia GT 330M video card, instead of getting back to the intel one. The result is that the battery lasts less than 3 hours with nvidia! And more than 7 hours with intel graphic card. So it should never use the nvidia card, maybe just for the 2 seconds needed to take the picture... see attachment

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Ialertu uses nvidia 330 card

[Peter Easdown]

I don't own a macbook pro, so this will be hard to test. My initial suspicion is that the isight is in some way connected/integrated with the nvidia card. I can see your point of view though I'm not at the moment sure how to deal with it. If you disable the isight image capture, and then trigger the alarm, does the problem still occur? I'm just wanting to confirm that it's definitely the use of the camera causing the problem.

iAlertU asks the system for the default video input device. Now given that I don't have a mac with more than 1 device, I can't be sure, but I'm wondering if the isight is somehow able to be associated with one or other video display device. If it's associated with the nvidia card, then perhaps getting the "default" video input activates that card???

Could you look at the settings/options on the two video cards to see if you can associate the isight with one or the other? does this affect what happens with iAlertU uses the camera?

If you are on the intel, and you run something like photobooth, does that also swap to the nvidia card? If so, does it swap back when you close photo booth?

Regards

ezsource

[Aldo Aldini]

I am not a developer, anyway my job is to test ERP software and I'll try to help the best that I can :)
1) When I open PhotoBooth, the Nvidia graphic car gets activated, but when I quit photobooth, the Nvidia turns off, and the basic intel graphic card gets in use;
2) I open iAlertU, intel graphic card was used, inter graphic card keeps being used.
3) I arm the system, trigger the alarm, the Nvidia gets activated (use of iSight enabled)
4) I unarm the system and that's the fact, the Nvidia stay in use, Intel graphic card doens't get back (differently from photobooth which uses nvidia as long as it is used.
5) I disable use of iSight, trigger the alarm and the Nvidia is not activated! unarm the system and I see that for a half of a second the Nvidia is activated but immediatly gets back to intel graphic card so I would say it's ok

Conclusion: in the only case the I have enable using iSight, iAlertU uses the Nvidia in order to make iSight work during alarm, but then it is unable to "release!" the Nvidia (like photobooth does) and activated the Intel card.

I run 10.6.3.

[Peter Easdown]

Hi. thanks for your excellent set of information. that narrows it down very nicely. I can now look at the right area of code to see what is happening.

Thanks again.

ezsource

[Peter Easdown]

I found that the video capture code was not closing the video device completely. This may be what is causing this. Without a similarly confgured MBP, I can't reproduce the problem or test this solutiion.

v0.60 will include this correction.

[Aldo Aldini]

Thank you, I was happy to help :) I'll be testing this again as soon as v 0.60 is out, bye.

[Peter Easdown]

Changing resolution back to None as it hasn't been fixed.