Network Broadcast Sender / Listener

[magao]

I had a similar issue, and just configured it to send a "test" broadcast periodically. The sending EventGhost needs to be listening to its own broadcasts if you need to keep its receiver awake.

[jitterjames]

yes, 255.255.255.255 is correct. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I've always used that setting without problems.

I've never seen this behaviour that you are describing with eg goiing "idle". Are you talking about an event like this:
4:44:51 PM System.Idle
? then again, I suppose I might never have used it in quite the right way to recreate that problem.

weird. Could it be that your network card is set to turn off to save power? I know, it sounds like a long shot.

If you are talking about your system going to sleep that's a different story, but I think it's a safe bet that that is not what you mean.

[petemcn]

I had a similar issue, and just configured it to send a "test" broadcast periodically. The sending EventGhost needs to be listening to its own broadcasts if you need to keep its receiver awake.

EG goes idle after like 10 seconds. Are you saying that you send a test every 10 seconds to wake up the broadcast process?

[jitterjames]

I'm not even sure what that event is for specifically but there is an action to set the idle time. It seems that the default is 60 seconds, so maybe you can set it to something really long? eg.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<EventGhost Version="1462">
    <Action>
        System.SetIdleTime(6000.0)
    </Action>
</EventGhost>

[petemcn]

yes, 255.255.255.255 is correct. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I've always used that setting without problems.

I've never seen this behaviour that you are describing with eg goiing "idle". Are you talking about an event like this:
4:44:51 PM System.Idle
? then again, I suppose I might never have used it in quite the right way to recreate that problem.

weird. Could it be that your network card is set to turn off to save power? I know, it sounds like a long shot.

If you are talking about your system going to sleep that's a different story, but I think it's a safe bet that that is not what you mean.

Yes, after I see that message System.Idle I am no longer able to send those commands from the outside computer. I can send a key command to get System.UnIdle but it still won't recognize the UDP command from the second computer. If I then send a UDP command from the EG computer and race to the second computer I can send UDP commands from that computer until EG goes back to System.Idle.

I hightly doubt it has anything to do with the network card but if you know what I should check I will take a look. I'm using an Acer Revo 3610.

[jitterjames]

I don't know if you saw my previous note but try using

System.SetIdleTime(6000.0)

if that doesn't work we'll try something else.

[petemcn]

I don't know if you saw my previous note but try using

System.SetIdleTime(6000.0)

if that doesn't work we'll try something else.

I was posting when you sent that. I can't find that code in my XML file. I checked the XML that I save to, is that correct or is it a general one that EG uses? Sorry I'm such a noob with respect to all this stuff. I appreciate all of the help.

[magao]

I had a similar issue, and just configured it to send a "test" broadcast periodically. The sending EventGhost needs to be listening to its own broadcasts if you need to keep its receiver awake.

EG goes idle after like 10 seconds. Are you saying that you send a test every 10 seconds to wake up the broadcast process?

Pretty much. I used to control 3 computers using broadcasts, and I think I had the controlling one sending a "test" broadcast every 10-15 seconds. I've since consolidated all 3 machines into one much more powerful machine since, and can't remember the exact setup.

As I recall, there's no need to actually assign the "test" event to anything (though obviously that's useful for debugging).

Unfortunately, increasing the idle time doesn't eliminate the possibility of this problem occurring. And since I found a usable workaround, I never got around to delving into the code to find out what was going on - and I don't use the plugin anymore.

[jitterjames]

you can copy and paste the following code into the eventGhost tree and it should work automagically.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<EventGhost Version="1462">
    <Action>
        System.SetIdleTime(6000.0)
    </Action>
</EventGhost>

otherwise you just need to click "Add Macro" then in the tree select System, and then select set idle time.

a macro can be put into the autostart section so it will run every time EG starts.

Magao says that this won't work, but I think it is worth a try. If it doesn't work, then that tells me that it's not actually the system.idle that is causing the problem. Just to check, are you using the latest version of this plugin as found in this thread?

[jitterjames]

latest:

http://www.eventghost.org/svn/trunk/plu ... _init__.py

[petemcn]

I need to run out now. I'll try this stuff later this evening and post back with what I find. Thanks.

[magao]

Magao says that this won't work, but I think it is worth a try.

I'm not saying it won't work for many purposes - when it might not work is any time that no broadcasts are sent for the increased idle period.

[petemcn]

Ok, after a ton of troubleshooting I did find out that the issue doesn't have anything to do with EG going Idle. It seems that the EG computer stops receiving UDP messages after a certain amount of time (60 seconds) from the network. Sending a UDP message from the EG computer will reawaken the process to listen for messages which will give me another 60 seconds. If it receives a network UDP command it restarts the timer. Once it doesn't receive a message within the time limit the process goes silent and must be re-awoken again from the EG computer. I think the time is similar to what my Idle timer on EG was which threw me off.

So I guess the question from here is if anybody has an idea what I should check about why my PC stops receiving messages. It very well may be an energy saving feature that James mentioned from the network card but I haven't the first idea how to look for this. Any ideas would be appreciated. I realize this now seems to have nothing to do with EG but maybe you have a quick idea I could try. The PC in question is an Acer Revo 3610.

If I can't figure it out I might try what Magao said to send a broadcast over UDP every 20 seconds to keep it awake. What would be the best way to do this and is there any concerns with sending a simple message every 20 seconds 24/7?

Thanks again for all of the help.

[jitterjames]

Plugin version?

[jitterjames]

try running this on two computers in your lan and see if it suffers from the same 60 second timeout.