Bug report (very minor) - Comm port 1

[k6ccc]

This one has existed since the beginning of the S6 beta.  Pretty sure I mentioned it in passing early on, but saw it again with 6.0.12 and was reminded...

This computer will never be used to control a show, and has no USB adapters connected.  As such, the network config is the default Regular network is set as Comm port 1 at 57.6K.  The network page shows that network is alive and active.  However, Comm-1 on this computer is a real RS-232 serial port with nothing connected to it except a 6 foot DB-9 extension cable.  It's can't possibly be seeing anything out there.  Although I don't really know what the software is checking for, I do know that on the computer that is running my shows, it will detect a network failure if I disconnect one of my USB to RS-485 adapters.

http://www.newburghlights.org/images/Comm-1.png

Light-O-Rama S6 Control Panel (64-bit)
Version 6.0.12 (BETA)
Copyright 2022 Light-O-Rama, Inc.
Pro Edition
Registered to: Jim Walls

Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB 64-bit
Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-1603 0 @ 2.80GHz
NVIDIA NVS 310
 

And the Network log:

2022-09-07 07:07:55    Listener    Information    Listening on 127.0.0.1:8837
2022-09-07 07:07:55    LOR-Reg    Information    COM1 opened as Regular with speed 57.6K
 

 

[MattBrown]

Built-in serial ports are always shown as connected since the serial port is always there. The software doesn't check whether anything is attached to the port.

There is no way to detect if the LOR serial port adapter is attached, so we don't plan to change the current behavior.

Matt

[k6ccc]

Sounds like it is working as expected.  And I changed it to Comm-4 and shows as a failure.

Thanks Matt.

 

[Steven]

It probably tries to open COM1, which works, and then tries to configure it to 57.6k, which works, then maybe even tries sending data, like a heartbeat, which also works. Since the LOR protocol is mostly one-way, there is no way of knowing that there's nothing connected.

On the other hand, when it tries to open COM4, it fails, because that port doesn't exist.

The Hardware Utility has this "Auto Configure" feature, in which it scans the available COM ports, and for each port that it can open, sends something that will cause a controller to respond. It reports success when it gets the response from the controller. This feature is only available in the Hardware Utility.