Do you power off your Webcaster X2?

Do you power off your Webcaster X2 after every use? We have our Webcaster connected to Switchboard Cloud which handles simultaneous streaming. We normally stream for about 1 hour/day. This Easter weekend we had a longer 1 1/2 hour Saturday evening and then another 1 hour stream Sunday morning followed by a 2nd 1 hour stream an hour later Sunday morning. We have not been turning off the X2 daily. We do stop streaming to Switchboard, but leave the X2 powered on with no camera (hdmi) or audio (usb) connected. On the 2nd session on Sunday the unit turned itself off mid stream. We were able to start up again missing many minutes of our live stream. So question is, do you have to power off after each use? And if so, do you risk losing any of your configurations? We want the start of streaming to be done by people who have no idea what they are doing other than start the camera. We can start and stop the Webcaster encoder remotely with Switchboard but cannot power the unit on and off remotely.

Hello,

There shouldn’t be any significant issue leaving the unit left on. Though it will certainly extend the life of the unit if you turn it off when not in use, as it would with any electronic device.

The unit shouldn’t shut itself off, there isn’t any such function in the software. The hardware likely has a safety to prevent overheating that it would shut down in that case, probably a good idea to make sure that the unit is sitting in a location with some amount of airflow to prevent overheating.

Thank you for the quick reply. No repeat of the issue this week. Did learn that the Webcaster was moved to get it closer to the camera and audio mixer and the side with the vent may have been up against the back of a chair cutting off air flow. And if it makes any difference, we use the hdmi connection for the video and use the usb connection to bring in audio from 3 or 4 microphones that connect to a mixer. Didn’t know if the mixture of hdmi and usb made any difference. Hoping it’s blocking the air vent that caused the issue…