Problem with MidiSysEx plugin

[Ron]

If the plugin writer does not respond try emailing him.

[taiken]

Tried posting this in the Developer's forum, but never got any response. Maybe I got the wrong forum.

I was really pleased to see a plugin for my Sound Blaster Live Platinum's Live!Drive IR, and immediately downloaded it and installed it with Girder. But I am having a problem with it. The plugin only works for a short time, and then none of my commands are executed anymore! Doing some more testing, I found that the plugin responds to exactly 16 button presses, and afterwhich it stops working until I close Girder and restart it, then it works again for another 16 button presses.

I also found that the reason it stops working is that the IR code that is detected has all of a sudden changed and appears to have doubled up. For example, when I press the "+" button on the remote control, I get a IR code of F00020216000010941444639F7 consistantly, but after 16 presses, the code received changes to F00020216000010941444639F7F000202 and gets cut off there (the status bar is too small to see the rest). Also, once this happens, if I learn another event with this longer code, it will work for 16 more presses (minus the one it took to learn) then stop again (afterwhich if I close Girder and restart it, with the two events learned I can press the button 32 times before it stops working).

Hopefully this is a minor bug that can be fixed on a really awesome plugin.

My system is an AMD Duron 1200, 512 Megs RAM, plenty of free HD space, running W2K Pro. My Live!Drive IR uses the RM-900 remote to control it.

Thanks guys!

[taiken]

Tried that a couple of days ago-no response yet.

Was just wondering if anyone else has this plugin working with their Creative remotes, or if I'm not the only one having problems.

[taiken]

Did you let it set itself up when you installed it?
Set itself up? There isn't a setup with this plugin. I just copied the DLL file to the PLUGINS directory and enabled it in the Settings dialog.

[taiken]

Yep, my SBLive! is installed correctly and the Live!Drive IR is functioning.

Girder is version 3.2.4pre5, but just went back to 3.2.4 and the same problem exists.

Remote Centre was not installed on my system-installed it to see if it would work, but the version that I got on the CD doesn't work properly. However, before when I had more up to date drivers (which I had to revert back to the CD drivers because it was screwing other sound stuff up, most importantly the playback of SoundFont files), I was able to install an updated version of RemoteCentre and it worked fine. Now I tried to install the same update, but it wouldn't let me because it said I needed to new drivers, which I don't want to install.

NB: This is NOT my problem, because I had the exact same problem when I tried Girder with the new drivers and the new version of RemoteCentre which was working fine at the time.

To me it has to be a bug in the plugin, because why would everything work perfectly for EXACTLY 16 button presses? If it was 15 or 14 or even a random number of times, that might be different, but it is 16, or 2^4, every time. That combined with the fact that the detected IR code is doubling up and not changing is why I think it has to be a little bug somewhere.

Still no email from the plugin author either. :(

[taiken]

Compaq drivers???

Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 3 installed.

[taiken]

Ok, now I'm even more sure that the problem is a bug in the plugin. I just downloaded the trial version of uICE which has RM-900 support, and it also works with no problems whatsoever.

As for the Compaq drivers, I'll stick with my current ones for now as they seem to be pretty stable. But thanks for the information.

[taiken]

Thanks "v" for your responses both by email and on the forum. Thanks too for the link to MIDIOx-what a sweet program! I have been looking for a nice program like that to use along with my MT-32 to send/receive Sysex info from it.

But back to the matter at hand, I configured it to read my SBLive!'s MIDI in port, and when pressing a button on the remote control, I got on the status screen Sysex messages of 13 bytes each. When running Girder, and repeatedly pressing the "+" button and releasing it, the MIDIOx screen showed me the same 13 byte messages:

00000E84 1 1 F0 Buffer: 13 Bytes System Exclusive
SYSX: F0 00 20 21 60 00 01 09 41 44 46 39 F7

But once I got to the 17th press, the MIDIOx message stayed the same, but the Girder event that was received doubled up as it did before.

Also, I only have one soundcard installed in my machine-there is an AC97 onboard soundcard on my motherboard, but I have unloaded the drivers for it and disabled it via jumpers on the motherboard, so it shouldn't be a factor.

Let me know what you'd like me to do next.

[Vwout]

Sorry for the late response,

This is some weird kind of error. I suggested some things by mail, but reading this topic answers some of the questions. One thing you could try to do is monitor your midi input (as that is what the SBLive IR device actually is). A good (and free :)) program to do that is MidiOX (http://www.midiox.com).

By the way, do you happen to have multiple soundcards in your system?

[kop48]

ok i have an Audigy Drive, and and IR900 and its working fine for me.... Just downloaded it from the site and it worked fine... Did you let it set itself up when you installed it?

[kop48]

the readme says to enable it, then to go settings, and it will install itself when you do that... thats probably your problem


[From Readme]
Installation:
============
* Make sure you have the SBLive or Audigi installed correctly. Test the functonallity
of the LiveDrive IR and remote with Creative's own RemoteCenter (don't forget to
remove it from your HD ;).

* Needs Girder 3.2.

* Copy the MidiInSysEx.dll file to the Girder/Plugins directory.

* Launch Girder, in the Settings menu, check "Midi SysEx" and click 'Apply'.
MIDI SysEx has no setup, it collects all System Exclusive messages from
all available(correct installed) midi input devices.

oops... or not... ahh well give it a go anyway, and make sure your not running Creative Remote Manager as well

[kop48]

im not too sure.... :S
OK: have you tried the Compaq drivers for ur sblive?
and what windows ver do you have?

[kop48]

compaq released some drivers that im guessing they bundled with their PC's.. many ppl are reporting that they work a LOT better than the Creative ones... You might want to give em a go

[kop48]

check that its disabled in the BIOS

[krusty]

Hi,

I have the same problem as taiken. I was wondering if someone found a solution / workaround for it.

I have an AMD athlon 1.3ghz with Win2k and a sb live 5.1 platinium with rm-900 remote

Thank you

[taiken]

After I had posted my help message on the forum, the plugin's author contacted me and tried to help me debug what the problem was, but he wasn't sure what was happening on my system to cause it. A few weeks later (on Oct. 12th), I received this email from him:


Hi,

This week I installed my new computer, equipped is with w2k and I also have the same problem as you, which makes testing a lot easier. When it works on my system, I will send you a testversion, if you agree with it.

I replied back saying to send me the test version as soon as it was ready, but I haven't heard anything from him since. I'll send him a quick email to see if any progress has been made.

Actually, looking back at past messages, I see that he has replied to this thread (v), so hopefully he will have gotten the same "Topic reply notification" that I did and will respond here.

[krusty]

I hope we will have an answer!

Thx for the info!

[taiken]

Here's a note I got from the plugin developer:


I'm sorry to disappoint you.
The problem is a bit more weird than I expected it to be; I haven't found
the source of the problem yet (and thus also no sollution). Surprisingly,
the plugin works with WindowsXP, so it looks like it has to do with just
w2k.

[Vwout]

Hi everybody,

The MidiSysEx plugin development has been on a low profile.
I happen to be finishing my study (that's taking pretty much time), but i'll be finished in about two weeks...

by the way, taiken, thanx for pointing to the forum

[jw]

I hated the fact that creative made their remote to only work with their software and not winamp, or others. This program and this plugin was a godsend.

I have the EXACT same problem as yall, I also have an onboard ac97 sound card although mine is still installed but it is not the default sound device and I also have windows 2000 pro. I do not have the same sound card as yall, I have the sound blaster audigy platinum. The remote is labeled RM-1000W but it seems to work fine with your plugin except for the fact that it quits working at so many buttons pressed. No reason to repeat it because it is EXACTLY the same as everyone elses problems.

Feel free to email me if you need any other information or need help testing anything. Hope this gets resolved! :)
jameswatkins(at)myrealbox.com

Windows 2000 Pro w/service pack 2
ABit KD7 (non-raid version) w/onboard ac97 sound
256MB Memory
AMD athlon xp 1700+
sound blaster audigy 2 platinum w/RM-1000W remote
gainward geforce4 ti4200 64MB

[Markus22]

I also have a problem with receiving MIDI codes with this plugin.
It's a different scenario but maybe there is some relationship
to the problem described in this thread. In my case I'm running
Windows XP and the trouble starts when the system goes into
standby mode and then awakes. After that, the MIDI codes the
plugin receives are too short! I believe only the first 8 bytes.

I tried possible workarounds like disabling/enabling Girder or
restarting Girder completely but nothing helped. The only way
to fix it is to reboot.
Has anybody else seen this?

[bob morton]

I'm having the same kind of problem as you lot. In deed, grider works once maybe twice and then even if he still detects the code comming from the remote he doesn't do anything. However after testing the plugin i noticed one or two things :
1) even if he seems to detect a different code comming(at the bottom of the window the code changes) the code doesn't seem to be different. Indeed if you try linking it to a new command inside grider and you then edit the file(it's in fact a basic xml file) you will see exactly the same thing, moreover if you monitor the code using Midi ox, the code never changes!

2) if you monitor the code while using grider then the code will not change at the bottom of the window

Pretty weird isn't it?
My config :
windows 2000
AC 97 deactivated under the bios
Tb 1,4 Ghz
the most recent creative drivers and i desactivate the remotecontrol creative soft.

It would maybe be useful if people with the same configuration as us let us know if the plugin works for them it would maybe help the poor v to find a solution. By the way are the sources available so that we could try helping him out?

[bob morton]

Tried something else :
configured the button 1 of the remote control to print out a "a"
configured the button 2 of the remote control to print out a "b"
and after 16 tests(mixed or not) there were nothing more that appeared on the screen.....

[Vwout]

Hi all,

I finally fixed the plugin. It now works perfectly with Win2000!
The new version can be downloaded in Girder's download section (http://www.girder.nl/downloadn.php?Link=396).

Next to the fix, the plugin now also has the ability the disable devices that are capable of receiving Midi SysEx messages, but that you do not want to use with girder.

Markus22, the fix might also solve your problem; let me know if it doesn't.
And bob, thanx for expressing sympathy 8)

[Markus22]

The new version fixed my problem. After Windows returns from
standby mode, the remote control now continues to work.
Thanks a lot!