TCPEvents : A better Network Event Receiver/Sender plugin

[justahotbag2]

Weird, now it does nothing at all, no log at all. Have checked both sender & EG logs and no errors. They are definitely connecting because I get an md5 error if I mismatch the passwords. However, I get complete silence when they do. I have EG on verbose logging, and nothing at all gets logged. I have adjusted every setting on both ends, and still nothing. I would not kill yourself over this, I was simply interested in running lean, but I can live without it. But thanks for your help up to this point, if you don't have time for this.

[pearbear]

Hi, please try with this modified version of the plugin:
https://github.com/per1234/TCPEvents/fi ... ssue_6.zip
This was a quick fix for the issue described here:
https://github.com/per1234/TCPEvents/issues/6
Unfortunately it will cause the Send Data and Request Data actions of TCPEvents to no longer work but those actions can't be used with the app anyway, only with communication from one TCPEvents plugin to another. I am planning to do a more elegant fix for this issue when I get time, as described in that issue.

[justahotbag2]

Unfortunately that made no difference.

[pearbear]

What do you see in the log of the Android app when you send or receive an event?

[justahotbag2]

It says sent. no errors.

[pearbear]

What happens if you use the Network Event Receiver or Network Event Sender plugins on your PC to communicate with the Android App?

[justahotbag2]

The receiver works flawlessly, I was hoping to start using the send function with your plugin. I ultimately want to convert the volume my receiver sends and display it on the many android devices I use, but I have yet to figure out how to convert the hex into the volume scale on the receiver display. I've posted on another forum for help with that. In the meanwhile, I shall try to figure something else to send, for your testing purposes.

[justahotbag2]

The native sender works, both with password and without. Your plugin logs nothing on the android device without a password and with a password, gives this error "Invalid Password from Server" with matching or mismatching passwords. It gives no errors in the EG log in either case. Hope this helps.

[justahotbag2]

For the record, pearbear I think your plugin is greatly needed, after seeing that in my case of wanting to broadcast to multiple android devices; I apparently need to run multiple instances of the native plugin, as each instance seems to only broadcast to one IP address.

[pearbear]

I agree that TCPEvents is much better than the Network Event Sender and Receiver plugins. I certainly don't deserve much credit though. I just identified and fixed a serious security vulnerability that this plugin inherited from the Network Event Sender and Receiver plugins and added a few other features. I originally had hoped that miljbee would merge my patch for the vulnerability but they seem to have abandoned this project as it's been two years since I reported it. I plan to continue to work on the plugin so I will probably end up renaming my fork to avoid any confusion.

Did you manage to get it working with the App? I've been working with the App a bit over the last couple days with an eye on trying to figure out why it's not working for you but I haven't identified any possible solutions yet.

[justahotbag2]

I have not gotten it to work, there aren't many settings to play with. Could the password length be an issue? I tried it with a 3 character password.

[pearbear]

I just tested an alternative Android app called EGRemote Lite:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... emote_lite
The "lite" version of the app is limited to 5 macros (because they want you to buy the pay version) but it's working for me with my standard version of TCPEvents, not the one I modified to work with the android-eventghost app (though that should work also). Once I got it figured out I liked the interface better than the android-eventghost app, though I find trying to do anything on these stupid tablets or phones to be super inconvenient. I don't think it allows you to add icons to your desktop (or whatever the heck they call it in android land), which was a nice feature of the android-eventghost app but mainly just because I could only set one server per layout.

I did run into a problem, which is that unless you disable the feature in the android-eventghost app configuration, it runs a background service that grabs any network event sent to the app so it never makes it to the EGremote Lite app. You need to make sure that background service isn't running otherwise you can send from the app to EventGhost but not from EventGhost to the app.

[justahotbag2]

I'm at my wits end. Considering I'd rather Riverdance right into my nuts, other then stop using the desktop shortcuts that Tim Hoeck's Android app provides. I thought I'd cleverly try using the EGRemote's Lite app to simply doing the receiving of events, not an elegant solution, but should have worked. It doesn't, least not with TCP Events, it does with the native sender, as has everything else.

I tried both versions of TCPEvents, and different passwords, and with no password I get no errors on the EG side but nothing logged on the EGRemote side either. With a password I get this "The server isn't a TCPEvents server(is it a Network Event Receiver?). Your data will be sent in the payload." The first time I've seen that error. Then I get this error on the EGRemote log. "Unknown network event received:payload withoutRelease"

I have nothing left to try but to setup EG on a netbook and a laptop and see if that makes an difference. They clearly connect, because they react to each other, but I've tried turning off firewalls completely anyway. I can't imagine what we have setup differently... I'll post back in a few days after I've tried other computers.

[kgschlosser]

that error is because you are using the SendData Action of TCPEvents. which is an additional action that requires the other end of the connection to be TCPEvents as well

[pearbear]

Careful of having both those apps installed at the same time. First I had the problem I mentioned of the android-eventghost app's background task eating the events I was trying to send to EGRemote Lite. I turned that feature off and got EGRemote Lite working. Then I wanted to go back and do some more testing on android-eventghost app so I exited EGRemote and stopped EGRemote's background task but even so I still get the pop up notifications from EGRemote when I send an event to the Android and I can't receive events to the android-eventghost app anymore. I don't understand how there can be a task running from EGRemote that doesn't show up in my "Running Apps" list. It seems like I will have to uninstall EGRemote Lite just to use the android-eventghost app again but it took a stupid amount of time just getting a few test buttons set up in EGRemote so I hate to lose that because I still need to do more testing with both apps.

The "withoutRelease" thing is part of the internal workings of the EventGhost Network Event Sender/Receiver protocol that TCPEvents inherited. Actually I've gathered from some old posts on this forum that the Network Event Sender/Receiver protocol was based on a something used by a commercial automation software named GIrder so it may have come from that. I installed a trial of Girder a couple years ago just to check if I could say that my communication code was compatible but I couldn't find anything like it so either I was just confused or it's been phased out of that program.