connection error

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connection error

Postby andyman » Wed Feb 19, 2020 4:34 am

I'm pulling my hair out here. I've got a windows 7 machine with uccnc 1.211 installed. I'm connected via a switch OR cross over cable. I've used the network utility, I am able to scan the device, disable dhcp, and test the connection..
I'm even pinging continuously ping -t 10.10.10.11 from my machine and I'm getting replies.

But when I run the program, it always says connection problem, closing program. Once in a while It'll go all the way through and I can actually do things. But if I close the program and re-launch same problem. This is completely unreliable. I've had a smoothstepper here on this same computer with the same ethernet connection and I"ve never had a problem.

Any help would be appreciated. the ucxxx utility works every time. I can scan and find the device.
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Re: connection error

Postby ger21 » Wed Feb 19, 2020 12:17 pm

Which controller are you using?

Did you setup the PC as the manual describes?

IP Address.JPG
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Re: connection error

Postby cncdrive » Wed Feb 19, 2020 1:43 pm

That the Utility tool finds the controller does not mean that your IP settings are correct.
The Utility tool finds the device even with incorrect network IP settings, because it works with broadcast packets.
But if the settings are incorrect then the UCCNC will not connect or will show disconnection immediately.
So, check your IP settings, make sure they are made as in the users manual.
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Re: connection error

Postby andyman » Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:45 pm

The IP is set correctly and no longer using DHCP. I can issue the command
ping -t 10.10.10.11 and receive replies. I leave that running continuously.

When I run the program it often gets far enough to load the software (get to 100%) then it exits. I've tried both cross over cable and through a switch. The switch seems to have more success then cross over. With the switch between the computer and axbbe sometimes I can get it to work. But if I close the program and try to re-launch it stops working and I have to do this cycle of launch , close, re-launch until it works. By the way, when attempting this last night, I do get a blue light when launching the software. The blue light turns off when it says fail to launch. One more thing, I've measured the voltage (5v) into the axbb-e. It was a steady 4.94v throughout the entire cycle. Just to be sure I replaced the power supply with a new switching one and I set it for a constant 5.00v. 24v is a seperate supply and also measures 24.0v exactly.

I've never had this type of problem with the smooth stepper. Any help would be appreciated. I need this to be reliable, I need it to work on the first try. Is there anything on the computers network driver that would cause communication to fail?
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Re: connection error

Postby cncdrive » Wed Feb 19, 2020 7:18 pm

Yes, you can try to update the network card drivers.
You can also try to intall the UCCNC on another computer if you have one at hands, just to at least narrow things down.
Also make sure to have updated video card drivers, because the UCCNC is using OpenGL which is hardware accelerated graphics on the graphics card and if the graphics card drivers installed are old or not installed properly can cause the process to slow down so much that it cannot communicate with the required latency and so it can cause the loss connection.
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Re: connection error

Postby andyman » Wed Feb 19, 2020 9:14 pm

Very interesting! Didn't think of video card drivers causing the problem. I do have a seperate computer in a different part of the building. If I connect that computer over the network to the AXBB-E, it actually connects everytime without a problem. This computer has a NVIDIA GTX video card vs the computer with problems.

The system I'm using to drive the AXBBe is an apple mini bootcamped to Windows 7 x64. I focused a lot on the network, i'll switch my focus to the graphics card instead and see how that goes. Thanks, wish that was put in the manual! Maybe some language about minimum graphic card requirements.
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Re: connection error

Postby cncdrive » Wed Feb 19, 2020 9:56 pm

It is described in the users manual that at least OpenGL 1.3 is required on the graphics card. It is impossible to exactly define the minimum system requirements, because it depends on many things, like the graphics card's VRAM, GPU frequency, bus width/speed and several other technological properties of the card can make it worse or better for 3D graphics like OpenGL, DirectX etc.
The speed of the CPU and bus width and speed to the graphics card also counts.
So, it is basically impossible to define a minimum requirement for a whole computer because it is built from many components with many properties.

However computers which are recently built (in the last 10 years or so) mostly all have enough power to run the UCCNC. Ofcourse I'm not talking about those AM-Terminal like "use it for just internet" computers, but normal desktops and laptops.

And it is recommended to run Windows natively, not Virtually in Virtualbox or Bootcamp etc.
That can be also an issue, because who knows how fast with what latency does the Virtual system connects Windows and the computer hardware, maybe the problem lies there that you running bootcamp and not a native Windows system.
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Re: connection error

Postby andyman » Wed Feb 19, 2020 10:57 pm

Understood! This computer is running windows natively. I guess I under estimated how much system resources this software actually requires (not cpu since my cpu is mostly idle). I wish there was some kind of output that tells me why it failed to load (ie opengl latency exceeding requirements, cpu load too high, network latency too high, etc). I'll buy a new computer and report back.
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Re: connection error

Postby cncdrive » Wed Feb 19, 2020 11:25 pm

If the connection fails like that can be due to 2 reasons:

1.) The communication latency is too high, which means that the ethernet data packets require more than 20milliseconds to get delivered. Then the controller disconnects because it cannot work reliably with that high latency.
2.) There are errorous data packets. If a data packet has a CRC error (corrupted data) then it re-requests the data and if this fails 3 times in a row then it disconnects, because then it does not have enough useful data anymore to reliably continue the operation.

But the reason for the 1st one can be many things, it can be network card issue, too slow graphics card which eats up the communication latency of the computer etc.
And the 2nd one does not even happen with wired ethernet, it can happen with Wifi ethernet and with USB only.
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