Network Backends: receive indicator

[GralfR]

Hi!

On backends like sACN or Artnet, I'm missing some kind of status to determine if the desired universe is received, 'cause it's hard troubleshooting connection-errors (see VLAN-problem). It would be great, if the backend would have some kind of debug-tool like the winmidi, which shows a universe report when receiving or losing a universe on the bound interface.

Furthermore it would be great, if there was an option to not send an output-universe, if there is no input. Example: If you want to map a sACN-universe to an Artnet-universe, midimonster always sends the Artnet-universe, even, if there is no sACN-input. Maybe this could be some kind of timeout-option. If there has been no mapping-event for a given time, then the output will not be generated anymore. For non-realtime-backends like MIDI this is already implemented by design. Streaming-protocolls like DMX need this timeout and hold-option be implemented.

Thanks Gralf

[cbdevnet]

Hi @GralfR, thanks for the suggestions!

This issue is basically two improvements:

• Add an option to show incoming universes / lost universes for streaming backends (similar to the detect option on some backends)
• Add an option to disable the keep-alive packet transmission for streaming backends when there are no events for some time

Is that correct?

[GralfR]

yes, that's it in short. And maybe in connection with the keep-alive: hold last received data on keep-alive. But that's not important, because if the output is disabled, if no input comes in, then the following devices (e.g. Artnet-node) might react themselves on lost universes (the missing output of midimonster).

[cbdevnet]

The ArtNet and sACN backends already buffer all output values and send them in the keepalive packets, so the values last set should still be active with the keep-alive transmission.