Help deciphering Denon AVC and Onkyo templates

[chrisbirkinshaw]

I have had a problem with my Denon AVC and Onkyo AV Receivers in that every once in a while (days or weeks) the serial port settings are removed and the devices set to disabled. This has followed me through 710, 810, 3 motherboards, PCI based serial, USB based serial, so there doesn't seem to be any hardware issue.

I have seen the following in the Process Initialize section of both the Denon and Onkyo device templates:

if initok==false
   DisableDevice( device_.devid_, true )
   print "The device wouldn't respond. Disabling it.\n"
   return
end


I have 2 questions:

1. Why is this done? If nobody knows what do you think about me changing it to not disable the device?
2. Does the DisableDevice clear the serial port settings? Is this the desired behaviour if something is temp unavailable?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[wombiroller]

Hi Chris,

I have a Denon 2307 connected via RS232 (USB to RS232) and every now and then (also can be days or weeks) I seem to get dumped back into the Wizard to reconfigure what was a fully operational AMP (i.e it seems to get re-detected). After I confirm all inputs etc this goes back to normal.... for a while. This has also happened to me since 0710.

Is this what you are experiencing or is this a different phenomenon?

Cheers,
WR.

[ladekribs]

Hi,

I have a LG TV 47LH4000 that I am trying to create a RS232 template for, and when I make a quick reload of router the communication between TV and MD(via USB adapter) often fails and the device is disabled.

Can the reason be that if the RS232 interface get choked or stoped for some reason that the Plug/Play engine disables the device because it does not get the answer it expects, and could that be the same type of problem?

BR Stefan

[chrisbirkinshaw]

@wombiroller that has happened a few times - in fact my video watching was interrupted 3 times last night by the bloody wizard! It mostly happens though that it gets disabled and then i have to manually enable again from the advanced page for that device in the web admin

@ladekribs I didn't think this problem was caused by the pnp engine, but could be wrong. It seemed this is caused by the templates themselves.

Chris

[tschak909]

The easiest solution to this, is to literally use a PCI serial adaptor.

This will completely solve the issue of the serial device disappearing/reappearing...

-Thom

[wombiroller]

The easiest solution to this, is to literally use a PCI serial adaptor.

This will completely solve the issue of the serial device disappearing/reappearing...

-Thom

Thx Thom - so it is a USB to RS232 cable issue you think? Would a straight up RS232 <=> RS232 also be a fix (assuming your MOBO supports it)...?

[tschak909]

...
...
...
...
...
...
isn't that what I said?

get a PCI RS232 card, connect to that.

-Thom

[wombiroller]

Yes you did. Nevermind, I just wasn't sure if there was a difference between onboard (as in built-in) vs. PCI/rs232 adapter.

[totallymaxed]

Hi Chris,

I have a Denon 2307 connected via RS232 (USB to RS232) and every now and then (also can be days or weeks) I seem to get dumped back into the Wizard to reconfigure what was a fully operational AMP (i.e it seems to get re-detected). After I confirm all inputs etc this goes back to normal.... for a while. This has also happened to me since 0710.

Is this what you are experiencing or is this a different phenomenon?

Cheers,
WR.

Usually this is because the rs232 connection is flaky... some kind of intermittant fault in the connectors or cable.

All the best


Andrew

[chrisbirkinshaw]

Can anyone explain why this part exists in the code to disable the device? I am using X10 and zwave with USB-serial (zwave adapter contains one) and there is never an issue there. I don't see why the code for these 2 AV receivers shouldn't support USB-serial adapters!

[tschak909]

It's there to facilitate unplugging the device, and having the system adapt..however, due to the way that these devices work, they tend to drop off the bus intermittently, and confuse hal-daemon, and the HAL DCE device... The device literally drops off the bus..not our fault.

As I said, the way to deal with this the right way, is to use a PCI serial device.

-Thom

[chrisbirkinshaw]

Ok, eBaying right now... But what is the ideal behaviour? Disable temporarily then try again later? I guess if so then it goes beyond the device template.

[tschak909]

The Plug and Play plugin responds to events from the HAL device, so any enabling and disabling is literally caused by the HAL device picking up the device being there or not, and emitting the event.

It would be nice if someone looked at this interaction and behaviour to see if there is indeed a problem.

-Thom