Premise Newbie issues

[etc6849]

I'm also wondering if any one has played with a digi etherlite and realport. Supposedly, you can configure realport so that etherlite serial ports show up as local hardware COM ports to windows and this works with any application that can use a local windows hardware COM port?

http://www.digi.com/products/model.jsp?lid...id=189&pm=Y

 

[samgreco]

I don't know if this will be of direct help, but, I use 3 different serial based devices in Premise. All of them running off of a Digi Edgeport/8. I am running Vista 64. I start and stop services all of the time, and reboot, without ever having lost 2 way communication with the devices. None of them are Integras however.

I have a UPB interface, and old X-10 interface and my Xantech multizone preamp. All use 2 way comms.

So it seems to point to the driver, although I am not familiar with the Etherlite.

Do you have anything with a hardware serial port available to test with?


Oops, just notice the "completely different com hardware" bit. Sorry about the confusion.

 

[Waynedb]

I have had issues with the Integra driver also, I have my receiver connected using a serial port on a Global Cache GC100.
I don't know if it is the driver or the GC100 but I plan to switch it to a RS232 port in the computer when I put my house back together.
My new computer has 6 RS232 ports where my old one had only two, I use Mini-ITX motherboards with only one PCI slot on them and
I use that for my multi-zone sound card. I am in the middle of a whole house remodel right now so I don't have everything setup right
now.

I believe Damon had a native driver for Integra but I don't know if he will sell it.

 

[123]

More 'cold comfort' news: I also have several RS-232 devices connected to my Premise server (Win XP) and have not experienced the kind of stability problems you've described.

Perhaps the serial port parameters need tweaking ... try the suggestion in this post.

Alternately, you can try contacting David Abendschein or Damon Deen at Digital-Residence and see if they are willing to sell/share the native Integra driver.

 

[Waynedb]

I have also had issues with cheap USB-RS232 adapters I bought at Frys, I had my Weather station on one at one time and it worked sometimes but more often than not it didn't. The weater station works great when connected directly to an onboard RS232 port. The only other RS232 trouble I have had in Premise is with an Insteon PLC, I don't even want to go into my opinion on Insteon here.

My Onkyo receiver always seems to work fine but sometimes it does not respond to changes I make at the receiver. I don't want to jump to conclusions on the driver untill I have it hooked up directly to an onboard RS232 port on the Motherboard. I have read that PC RS232 ports voltages vary from 3 volts to 12 volts so I don't know if that is part of the problem. My new motherboard can be set at 5v or 12v.

 

[etc6849]

This isn't a good sign... It could be an issue with the integra given that it happens on two different computers and different rs232 hardware (for me anyways). I also wrote my own integra driver and I've also used Damon's example integra driver posted on the old forum. Does port spy show receipt of the data from the receiver? Wayne, your problem is exactly the same problem I am having.

Your GC-100 issue scares me as I just ordered one along with a GC-IRE so I can receive IR signals over ethernet. I'm going to play with an Toshiba HD-XA2 I have and see how two way serial communication works with it.

What specific Integra product are you using? I'm using an Onkyo TX-NR905 with firmware 1.09 from the avsforum.

I have had issues with the Integra driver also, I have my receiver connected using a serial port on a Global Cache GC100.
I don't know if it is the driver or the GC100 but I plan to switch it to a RS232 port in the computer when I put my house back together.
My new computer has 6 RS232 ports where my old one had only two, I use Mini-ITX motherboards with only one PCI slot on them and
I use that for my multi-zone sound card. I am in the middle of a whole house remodel right now so I don't have everything setup right
now.

I believe Damon had a native driver for Integra but I don't know if he will sell it.

 

[etc6849]

Yes, I tested it on an XP Dell laptop with an onboard rs232 port. Same issue.

I don't know if this will be of direct help, but, I use 3 different serial based devices in Premise. All of them running off of a Digi Edgeport/8. I am running Vista 64. I start and stop services all of the time, and reboot, without ever having lost 2 way communication with the devices. None of them are Integras however.

I have a UPB interface, and old X-10 interface and my Xantech multizone preamp. All use 2 way comms.

So it seems to point to the driver, although I am not familiar with the Etherlite.

Do you have anything with a hardware serial port available to test with?


Oops, just notice the "completely different com hardware" bit. Sorry about the confusion.

 

[etc6849]

DTR and RTS settings are enabled on my setup. Is there another program to test 2 way communication with? I'm hesitant to suspect it's the receiver when port spy shows receipt of the volume change from the Onkyo 905...

More 'cold comfort' news: I also have several RS-232 devices connected to my Premise server (Win XP) and have not experienced the kind of stability problems you've described.

Perhaps the serial port parameters need tweaking ... try the suggestion in this post.

Alternately, you can try contacting David Abendschein or Damon Deen at Digital-Residence and see if they are willing to sell/share the native Integra driver.

 

[Waynedb]

What specific Integra product are you using? I'm using an Onkyo TX-NR905 with firmware 1.09 from the avsforum.

I have a Onkyo TX-SR804, if I adjust something on the receiver I can see the data in port spy. The receiver works very well but if I pick up my remote and change the volume it would be nice if it was reflected in Premise. I know it has worked sometimes. I don't know if there is a problem with the GC-100 or if the network has issues that can cause this. I have not be playing with Premise too much because I have too many other projects going on right now.

 

[Waynedb]

I did a quick test with my Onkyo receiver and Premise, like you said, when you first create the driver it works two-way but as soon as I rebooted the computer it did not. I set this up on my new PC but I still have it connected through the serial port on the GC100. I think it must be the driver that is the problem.

 

[etc6849]

So I added a generic serial device after resetting Premise. I set the serial port to 9600 stop bits to 1 RTS etc to disable. I also set the end of line character to 1A and it works as I can view RX line increment by one and I can see the string. However, after rebooting nothing even though port spy still shows data being received.

Right now, I'm left with thinking that it is an internal bug in the way premise is loading/reloading during start up or initializing some variable, but 123 states two way communication works fine for him so this really confuses me.

123 which property change are you using to monitor for receipt of data? Do any of your two way devices use a 3 wire serial connection? (TX/RX/GND) The Integra documentation clearly says it only uses 3 wires to communicate.

I did a quick test with my Onkyo receiver and Premise, like you said, when you first create the driver it works two-way but as soon as I rebooted the computer it did not. I set this up on my new PC but I still have it connected through the serial port on the GC100. I think it must be the driver that is the problem.

 

[samgreco]

This is confusing since I have 3 different devices running 2-way serial comm without issue. I reboot and restart services relatively often.

So if it is a bug, it is not in general rs-232 comms, it seems.

 

[chucklyons]

I doubt Damon would have released a drive if it had such a serious bug, so I wouldn't think its an Integra communication problem. I have Xantech, Aprilaire, WeatherHawk, Lutron, and A Kenwood Sirius Tuner running..not a problem w/ any of them. I bounce my server a number of times - never a problem w/ the restart.

I have Damon's Integra driver from the old forum days; I'll see if I can dig it up and post it.

 

[123]

I use the native CM11A and MR26A drivers. The CM11A is connected to the PC's single serial port. The MR26A is connected to one of the serial ports of an Edgeport/8. These two drivers continue to work correctly after Premise Server is restarted. Mind you, these are native drivers (C++) developed by the Premise team.

I have an ELK M1 driver (a Module) ... its design is probably similar to your Onkyo driver. OnChangeOnNewData monitors the RxTextLine buffer for incoming data.
OnChangeOnInit contains only two lines:

'OnChangeInit is used for any device or COM port initialization code 
this.RxPurgeAll = true	' purges the receive buffers
this.RxNextLine = true	' requests the next line of data from the serial port

ClassConstructor contains all of the serial-port configuration code:

dim oTmp
	
' Create a Serial Command object to transmit data to the M1
set oTmp = this.CreateObject("sys://Schema/Device/Serial/Command","OutCommand")

' Hide the Serial Command object
oTmp.SetValue "Flags",2

' Append carriage-return and line-feed to all transmitted data
oTmp.AppendCR = true
oTmp.AppendLF = true

' Pause between transmitted commands (milliseconds)
oTmp.WaitTime = 100

' Configure serial communication parameters
this.Baud 	= "115200"
this.Parity = "None"
this.StopBits = 0
this.RTS 	= "Disable"
this.DTR 	= "Disable"
this.CTS 	= false
this.DSR 	= false

I guess setting the serial-port parameters (Baud, Parity, etc) could be done in OnChangeOnInit to ensure it happens each time the driver is initialized ... but it has not proven to be necessary in my situation.

FWIW, the PC and the ELK M1 are connected via Ethernet (and not hard-wired via their respective serial ports). I use the Lantronix UDS10 driver as a "shim" so that the M1 driver can speak TCP/IP. All of this is transparent to the M1 driver and it assumes it is speaking via a serial port.

BETA 1 of the ELK M1 driver would suffer after the Premise Server was restarted. Restarting would (naturally) interrupt the connection and garble any received packets. In BETA 2, I made the packet-validation function more robust so that it would reject truly mangled packets. This may have no bearing on your situation but just to highlight the fact that problems are exposed when the testing 'gets medieval' (reboots, devices unplugged, garbled packets, momentary power outages, etc).

 

[Waynedb]

This is confusing since I have 3 different devices running 2-way serial comm without issue. I reboot and restart services relatively often.

So if it is a bug, it is not in general rs-232 comms, it seems.

I am sure that Premise can do two-way serial control with no problem, people would have been screaming on the forums if there was a problem.
I also don't believe Damon wrote a bad driver, I am thinking maybe there is some minor difference in how the newer receivers work versus the older models when the driver was written or it is just us not setting it up right. I think my Onkyo is most closely related to an Integra 7.7 receiver and the driver was written for the 5.3 model so something may have changed.