Tight VNC
ericthompson
Posts: 28
My programmer, who says he has used the G4 computer control many times, seems to be unable to make the system work consistently. Not knowing enough about how the AMX panel is interfacing with the VNC, I am wondering who can possibly shed some light on this. TightVNC is running as a service, but it is extremely unreliable, so I put it in as a startup program for all users. That works fine. The system will connect just fine and it is usable in all respects.
(Note: If anyone has been trying to use a wireless keyboard/mouse with one of the panels unsuccessfully because of driver issues, the basic Dell combo works great!)
However, after a various amount of time, usually a half hour to an hour, logging back into it from the panel produces a blue screen with an "attempting to connect to..." message. Once the panel is rebooted, it connects just fine. Sometimes it goes to a black screen and both PC and panel must be rebooted, but that seemed to be when it was running as a service. So far I have not noticed the black screen with it in the intial start operation.
Any ideas why this is so unstable? Is it Windows XP? They are running XP Media Edition. Is it the panel? Is it some kind of coding issue? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated; I love the concept, but it so far seems very impractical.
Eric
(Note: If anyone has been trying to use a wireless keyboard/mouse with one of the panels unsuccessfully because of driver issues, the basic Dell combo works great!)
However, after a various amount of time, usually a half hour to an hour, logging back into it from the panel produces a blue screen with an "attempting to connect to..." message. Once the panel is rebooted, it connects just fine. Sometimes it goes to a black screen and both PC and panel must be rebooted, but that seemed to be when it was running as a service. So far I have not noticed the black screen with it in the intial start operation.
Any ideas why this is so unstable? Is it Windows XP? They are running XP Media Edition. Is it the panel? Is it some kind of coding issue? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated; I love the concept, but it so far seems very impractical.
Eric
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Comments
I would suggest trying REAL first and make sure the PCs firewall is off or at least the port 5900 or what ever you change the default to is cleared for TCP & UDP (don't know which is uses) and try again and see what happens.
Not sure what you mean by this. We use TightVNC around the office all the time and it works great. I only use it for 30-240 seconds at a time to troubleshoot a panel in another room. It does have a timeout, but all that happens is it pops up a window saying "Couldn't connect to host" and closes. I've never had to reboot a touchpanel as a result of using TightVNC.
I do not have Media Edition WinXP though, just the standard office edition.
I switched from Real VNC to Tight VNC per tech support at AMX. It has seemed to work more consistently than Real VNCl, but that is not saying much. I use the free version of Zone Alarm on just about all of my client's PC's. I can't believe it's a port issue, otherwise it would never work or at least prompt the computer every time to accept the connection. All access is set to allow, so it does not need to ask permission.
Again, the problem isn't that it doesn't work, it is that it will stop working. This particular panel is the kitchen control panel, the television, and internet access, so the wife can surf her email and recipe websites without a PC actually in the kitchen. Right now, if I reboot the panel I will be able to use it just fine. I can log an and off without a hitch. But if I work on the office PC (the one the kitchen is connecting to) for let's say a half an hour to an hour, it will all of a sudden be unable to connect again without a reboot. Even if I don't work on the PC anymore that is true. As I arrive here this morning, the office PC was on overnight as usual, but the kitchen panel can no longer connect to the office without a reboot.
As far as XP Media Center Edition is concerned, it is really just XP Professional with the Media Center veneer on it when you want to use it. That's how I allow their televisions to display their family pictures in combination with the XBox 360.
So the question remains, what could the problem possibly be, and where should I start looking?
Humbly...
The FNG...
One other note: the screensaver does activate after 10 minutes of inactivity. I have experimented with one minute to hurry things up. Upon activation of VNC connection from the touch panel, the screen save disappears, and the welcome screen appears (the "on resume, display welcome screen" box is checked.)
The Energy Star Power ratings allow the monitor to turn off after 20 minutes. I haven't changed this setting, but I didn't think it would be the cause since that would have nothing to do with the operation of the PC itself.
Turn off hard disks, and System standby are set to Never.
Eric
I have seen wonky drops and paritial connects/disconnects similar to this as a result of marginal signal. I have even had something more basic, like an web browser, freeze my entire internet connection, forcing me to reboot the computer (repairing the connection doesn't work), when a remote site had a "dirty" disconnect.
Is your panel wired or wireless? If it's wireless, try temporarily moving the WAP closer, and turning off encryption and see it that helps. If it's wired, try a shorter run. Believe it or not, I've even had a case where I had to lengthen a hard-wired network connection to make a panel reliable. It would drop on and off line, until I added 20' to the ethernet wire, and coiled up the slack near my master. This turned out to be an issue with my network switch, changing from Linksys to Netgear fixed that problem. Of course, the connection problem (if that is what is going on here) could be on the PC feed as well, but I think the panel more likely.
Both the panel and the PC are both wired ethernet. There are two hubs in the system: one at the techbox with the other phone and cable wiring and one at the head end with the AMX and the rest of the equipment. The PC is wired to the hub at the techbox and is 43 feet away according to my LanRover. Cable Test Ok. The Panel is connected to the hub at the head end which is 83' away. Cable test okay. The wire that bridges the hubs is 46 feet. Cable test okay. That is about half of the max distance. It wouldn't be possible to shorten the run at this point since the house is finished. Could it be a setting in the panel?
I do like what Dave says about not recognizing disconnect so I beleive that port is still being held and can not be reused until terminated. I have the same issue quite often where I can connect but when I exit, then come back to connect, I can't. It's like something didn't disconnect and won't release that port. On my TPs exit button I do have it set to 0:311 which is setup port computer control log off. I have no issues with PC to PC connections so it must be a TP issue. I've had this issue on wired and wireless using REAL and ULTRA. I even just changed a customer PC from ULTRA to REAL to test and see if there's a difference but the same thing occurs; Connect, disconnect, no connect.
The question is, why do some have no problems while others do? The second question is why do I have to be one the ones having problems?
Well, it certainly looks to me as if you have done all that can be done with cabling. I still suspect something is interfering with the packets along the way; whether it is due to RFI or other network traffic I wouldn't care to guess. I'm out of ideas how to test this idea.
Networked systems can get wonky in ways that don't always make a lot of sense. I had a system that was giving me all manner of grief; the customer complained of his panels going offline regularly, and I couldn't maintain a remote connection long enough to even load new code, let alone troubleshoot it. And the job was a 2 hour drive away. I was limited by existing structure, and had to connect some of my panels and even my feed to the rack from his router with Powerline adapters, and I thought from the start they were the culprit. Turns out, it was the router. I generally prefer Netgear stuff, but his new Netgear WiFi router was just flaky - I replaced it wth one of the other ubiquitous generic routers out there (I forget now what it was, but it wan't Linksys), and all of the problems went away. I scratch my head still how the gateway device could be fouling up connections that did not need to pass through it at all, but yet it did. I could disconnect it completely, and his internal system worked just fine, but plug it back in again, and there were problems. So I'm happy with the replacent; but I wish I understood better the why's of how it fixed the issue.
I just thought I would mention one other thing. I always disconnect from the VNC. I don't let it stay connected for more than a few seconds or few minutes. It is just unable to reconnect to the PC after a period of time unless the panel is rebooted.
you said the monitor has energy saving at 30 minutes.
there was a time when there wasn't much two-way chatting between pc and monitor.
but i've noticed XP does react to screens switching off.
in fact.. a video streaming system i have will not actually stream until the screen is turned on for the pc involved. this is where i've realised XP knows if the monitor is on or not. once the screen is turned on, i see the stream begins to play.
so, to cut a long story short... maybe turn off the monitor's power saving mode.
see how things behave then.
having said that, i have other pcs via VNC that have no monitor at all and they behave correctly (although i haven't used it alot from panel to PC). (i use Real VNC by the way).
it may relate more the the video driver of the PC. possibly try Standard VGA as the video driver (i know you wont get all display features), see if that changes the behaviour.