I'm writing some code to interface with a piece of hardware. The hardware connects to the PC via a USB with a USB-to-Serial converter inside the device (it shows up as a COM port device in Windows).
I'm having issues with the Win32 API ReadFile system call. I can't seem to get it to work as advertised. I've setup the COMMTIMEOUTS structure as so:
COMMTIMEOUTS ct;
ct.ReadIntervalTimeout = MAXDWORD;
ct.ReadTotalTimeoutconstant = 0;
ct.ReadTotalTimeoutMultiplier = 0;
ct.WriteTotalTimeoutConstant = 0;
ct.WriteTotalTimeoutMultiplier = 0;
if(SetCommTimeouts(device_id_, &ct) == 0)
{
return ERROR; // this is never hit.
}
Which according to the Win32 API documentation, says:
ReadIntervalTimeout
The maximum time
allowed to elapse between the arrival
of two bytes on the communications
line, in milliseconds. During a
ReadFile operation, the time period
begins when the first byte is
received. If the interval between the
arrival of any two bytes exceeds this
amount, the ReadFile operation is
completed and any buffered data is
returned. A value of zero indicates
that interval time-outs are not used.
A value of MAXDWORD, combined with
zero values for both the
ReadTotalTimeoutConstant and
ReadTotalTimeoutMultiplier members,
specifies that the read operation is
to return immediately with the bytes
that have already been received, even
if no bytes have been received.
The command I'm sending is supposed to return a single byte integer. Most of the time, the command is received by the device and it returns the appropriate value. Sometimes, however, it doesn't seem to return a value and ReadFile() blocks until more bytes are recieved (eg. by pressing buttons on the device). Once a button is hit, the initial integer response I was expecting is received along with the button press code. While this isn't the behavior I'm expecting from the device itself, I'm more concerned with ReadFile() blocking when it shouldn't be, according to the MSDN documentation. Is there a remedy for ReadFile() blocking here?
D'oh! Turns out ReadFile blocking was just a symptom, not the problem. The hardware device in question only has a 4MHz processor in it. Splitting up the 3 character command written to the device and sending them individually with a 1ms pause between characters fixes the issue.
Related
I have a project where I send data to an Android phone. I get data via the serial port to the rfduino and then send this data to the phone.
First I had 20 byte data chunks. I use "Serial Event" to set a flag and then read and send the data within the main loop. The serial baud rate is 9600 as recommended by the rfduino staff.
Now I have 40 bytes of data. The Rfduino reads 40 bytes of serial data and sends it in two parts (see code). The first byte of each part is an identifier used to distunguish between the different packets.
After some successful transmissions the data becomes corrupt. Usually, once the transmission starts being faulty, I have to reinitiate the connection to get correct data.
This is a basic idea of the code:
void loop() {
if (mData)
{
mData = false;
Serial.readBytes(data, 40);
while(!RFduinoBLE.send(&data[0], 20));
while(!RFduinoBLE.send(&data[20], 20));
}
}
void serialEvent(void) {
mData = true;
}
I checked the serial data with a logic analyzer and there is nothing wrong with it. I also used wireshark to check the ble transmissions. Both 20 Byte chunks are send within the same connection interval. The data sent by the RFduino becomes corrupt after some time.
When I omit the second packet and just send 20 Bytes, the problem does not occur.
I assume, that the radio interferes with the reading of the serial port. I tried to use while(RFduinoBLE.radioActive); before the Serial.read, but I think the data is buffered before that. So this did not change anything.
Additionally I tried to lower the sending power to minimum, without any improvements.
I also tried different connection intervals. I have new data every 128ms. This limits the max. connection interval. All changes did not help at all.
I've read that the BLE radio priority takes about 5-6ms and that there is a 6 byte buffer for data. Using 9600 baud this buffer overflows.
I haven't looked for sources to those statements yet, but lowering the baud rate to 4800 seems to improve the issue with the faulty data.
Still this is no satisfying data rate and the transmission faults still occur. Not that often anymore, but still.
I've run out of ideas how to fix this and would appreciate any thought!
I mean it must be possible to send 40 bytes every 128ms... that's not that much.
I already posted this question in the RFduino Forum - without answer until now - and I wonder if anyone experienced similar issues with the RFduino.
RFduino Forum
I'm handling a non-standard modem via serial port in an overlapped manner. Besides reading from and writing to the telecommunication line, I have to check the control lines like CTS and DSR using the WaitCommEvent() function.
DWORD EvtMask;
/// (some scopes/levels ommitted)
const BOOL syncChange = WaitComEvent(hFile, &EvtMask, &overlapped);
if (!syncChange) {
assert(GetLastError() == ERROR_IO_PENDING);
/// *background activity* probably writing into EvtMask
/// until overlapped.hEvent gets signalled
}
In the (practically all) cases the function call indicates *background activity*, I have to wait on the overlapped.hEvent to happen. Since I'm also waiting for events from alternative sources (like IPC caused by user input, program termination), I use the WaitForMuiltipleObjects() function. But, if the blocking wait is finished for other reasons than control line changes, how can I stop the background activity on EvtMask? The code I'm based on, currently uses SetCommMask(hFile, 0), but I did not find a reliable reference for this being appropriate.
I also observe cases where changes to control lines are not supported properly (driver?, VM?), so I have to do a sliced wait with in-between checking.
What must be done to safely leave the scope where the variable EvtMask is declared?
The code you have is correct, and fully supported by the documentation, which clearly says:
If a process attempts to change the device handle's event mask by using the SetCommMask function while an overlapped WaitCommEvent operation is in progress, WaitCommEvent returns immediately.
I've used this fact on both "real" serial ports, and USB virtual serial port emulations, and it works reliably.
(In my particular case, I was watching for EV_TXEMPTY so that I could guarantee a minimal separation between certain transmissions on the wire)
I have a computer which is connected with external devices via serial communication (i.e. RS-232/RS-422 of physical or emulated serial ports). They communicate with each other by frequent data exchange (30Hz) but with only small data packet (less than 16 bytes for each packet).
The most critical requirement of the communication is low latency or delay between transmitting and receiving.
The data exchange pattern is handshake-like. One host device initiates communication and keeps sending notification on a client device. A client device needs to reply every notification from the host device as quick as possible (this is exactly where the low latency needs to be achieved). The data packets of notifications and replies are well defined; namely the data length is known.
And basically data loss is not allowed.
I have used following common Win API functions to do the I/O read/write in a synchronous manner:
CreateFile, ReadFile, WriteFile
A client device uses ReadFile to read data from a host device. Once the client reads the complete data packet whose length is known, it uses WriteFile to reply the host device with according data packet. The reads and writes are always sequential without concurrency.
Somehow the communication is not fast enough. Namely the time duration between data sending and receiving takes too long. I guess that it could be a problem with serial port buffering or interrupts.
Here I summarize some possible actions to improve the delay.
Please give me some suggestions and corrections :)
call CreateFile with FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING flag? I am not sure if this flag is relevant in this context.
call FlushFileBuffers after each WriteFile? or any action which can notify/interrupt serial port to immediately transmit data?
set higher priority for thread and process which handling serial communication
set latency timer or transfer size for emulated devices (with their driver). But how about the physical serial port?
any equivalent stuff on Windows like setserial/low_latency under Linux?
disable FIFO?
thanks in advance!
I solved this in my case by setting the comm timeouts to {MAXDWORD,0,0,0,0}.
After years of struggling this, on this very day I finally was able to make my serial comms terminal thingy fast enough with Microsoft's CDC class USB UART driver (USBSER.SYS, which is now built in in Windows 10 making it actually usable).
Apparently the aforementioned set of values is a special value that sets minimal timeouts as well as minimal latency (at least with the Microsoft driver, or so it seems to me anyway) and also causes ReadFile to return immediately if no new characters are in the receive buffer.
Here's my code (Visual C++ 2008, project character set changed from "Unicode" to "Not set" to avoid LPCWSTR type cast problem of portname) to open the port:
static HANDLE port=0;
static COMMTIMEOUTS originalTimeouts;
static bool OpenComPort(char* p,int targetSpeed) { // e.g. OpenComPort ("COM7",115200);
char portname[16];
sprintf(portname,"\\\\.\\%s",p);
port=CreateFile(portname,GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE,0,0,OPEN_EXISTING,0,0);
if(!port) {
printf("COM port is not valid: %s\n",portname);
return false;
}
if(!GetCommTimeouts(port,&originalTimeouts)) {
printf("Cannot get comm timeouts\n");
return false;
}
COMMTIMEOUTS newTimeouts={MAXDWORD,0,0,0,0};
SetCommTimeouts(port,&newTimeouts);
if(!ComSetParams(port,targetSpeed)) {
SetCommTimeouts(port,&originalTimeouts);
CloseHandle(port);
printf("Failed to set COM parameters\n");
return false;
}
printf("Successfully set COM parameters\n");
return true;
}
static bool ComSetParams(HANDLE port,int baud) {
DCB dcb;
memset(&dcb,0,sizeof(dcb));
dcb.DCBlength=sizeof(dcb);
dcb.BaudRate=baud;
dcb.fBinary=1;
dcb.Parity=NOPARITY;
dcb.StopBits=ONESTOPBIT;
dcb.ByteSize=8;
return SetCommState(port,&dcb)!=0;
}
And here's a USB trace of it working. Please note the OUT transactions (output bytes) followed by IN transactions (input bytes) and then more OUT transactions (output bytes) all within 3 milliseconds:
And finally, since if you are reading this, you might be interested to see my function that sends and receives characters over the UART:
unsigned char outbuf[16384];
unsigned char inbuf[16384];
unsigned char *inLast = inbuf;
unsigned char *inP = inbuf;
unsigned long bytesWritten;
unsigned long bytesReceived;
// Read character from UART and while doing that, send keypresses to UART.
unsigned char vgetc() {
while (inP >= inLast) { //My input buffer is empty, try to read from UART
while (_kbhit()) { //If keyboard input available, send it to UART
outbuf[0] = _getch(); //Get keyboard character
WriteFile(port,outbuf,1,&bytesWritten,NULL); //send keychar to UART
}
ReadFile(port,inbuf,1024,&bytesReceived,NULL);
inP = inbuf;
inLast = &inbuf[bytesReceived];
}
return *inP++;
}
Large transfers are handled elsewhere in code.
On a final note, apparently this is the first fast UART code I've managed to write since abandoning DOS in 1998. O, doest the time fly when thou art having fun.
This is where I found the relevant information: http://www.egmont.com.pl/addi-data/instrukcje/standard_driver.pdf
I have experienced similar problem with serial port.
In my case I resolved the problem decreasing the latency of the serial port.
You can change the latency of every port (which by default is set to 16ms) using control panel.
You can find the method here:
http://www.chipkin.com/reducing-latency-on-com-ports/
Good Luck!!!
I set my report size to 64 bytes and want to stream single reports (say 2 for now) to the host. My understanding is that there is a ReadFile buffer where these reports can sit. At the host, I have a 64 byte buffer that I use to read single reports. If I send one report from the device, the host reads it fine. If I use two ReadFiles in a loop, the second ReadFile times out. The device is sending two reports. I don't know if they're getting on the ReadFile buffer at the same time, so when the host reads the end point for the first report, the buffer gets purged and I lose the second report? If there are indeed 2 reports on the ReadFile buffer, do I need to read them both at once? How would I know how many reports are on the buffer?
ReadFile reads as many reports as there are in the HID driver's ring buffer up to the numberOfBytesToRead parameter.
The respective HID driver will implement everything as needed. You need not worry about whether those packets arrive "simultaneously". They won't.
The first packet should tell you the length of the report (i.e. a collection of packets), which in turn should allow you to figure out whether you have the full report, yet.
Of course you will have to keep an internal representation of the data from the report, because the packet buffers can only be at most 64 byte in size according to the specification. So to collect a full report you will have to handle that yourself or use the Hid_* routines described in the WDK.
I'm processing Midi on the iPad and everything is working fine and I can log everything that comes in and all works as expected. However, in trying to recieve long messages (ie Sysex), I can only get one packet with a maximum of 256 bytes and nothing afterwards.
Using the code provided by Apple:
MIDIPacket *packet = &packetList->packet[0];
for (int i = 0; i > packetList->numPackets; ++i) {
// ...
packet = MIDIPacketNext (packet);
}
packetList->numPackets is always 1. After I get that first message, no other callback methods are called until a 'new' sysex message is sent. I don't think that my MIDI processing method would be called with the full packetList (which could potentially be any size). I would have thought I would recieve the data as a stream. Is this correct?
After digging around the only thing I could find was this: http://lists.apple.com/archives/coreaudio-api/2010/May/msg00189.html, which mentions the exact same thing but was not much help. I understand I probably need to implement buffering, but I can't even see anything past the first 256 bytes so I'm not sure where to even start with it.
My gut feeling here is that the system is either cramming the entire sysex message into one packet, or breaking it up into multiple packets. According to the CoreMidi documentation, the data field of the MIDIPacket structure has some interesting properties:
A variable-length stream of MIDI messages. Running status is not allowed. In the case of system-exclusive messages, a packet may only contain a single message, or portion of one, with no other MIDI events.
The MIDI messages in the packet must always be complete, except for system-exclusive.
(This is declared to be 256 bytes in length so clients don't have to create custom data structures in simple situations.)
So basically, you should look at the declared length field of the MIDIPacket and see if it is larger than 256. According to the spec, 256 bytes is just the standard allocation, but that array can hold more if necessary. You might find that the entire message has been crammed into that array.
Otherwise, it seems that the system is breaking the sysex messages up into multiple packets. Since the spec says that running status is not allowed, then it would have to send multiple packets, each with a leading 0xF0 byte. You would then need to create your own internal buffer to store the contents of these messages, stripping away the status bytes or header as necessary, and appending the data to your buffer until you read a 0xF7 byte which denotes the end of the sequence.
I had a similar issue on iOS. You are right MIDI packets number is always 1.
In my case, when receiving multiple MIDI events with the same timestamp (MIDI events received at the same time), iOS does not split those multiple MIDI events in multiple packets, as expected.
But, fortunately nothing is lost ! Indeed instead of receiving multiple packets with their correct number of bytes, you will receive a single packet with multiple events in it and the number of bytes will be increased accordingly.
So here what you have to do is:
In your MIDI IN callback, parse all packets received (always 1 for iOS), then for each packet received you must check the length of the packet as well as the MIDI status, then loop into that packet to retrieve all MIDI events in the current packet.
For instance, if the packet contains 9 bytes, and the MIDI status is a note ON (3 bytes message), that means your current packet contains more than a single note ON, you must then parse the first Note ON (bytes 0 to 2) then check the following MIDI status from byte 3 and so on ..
Hope this helps ...
Jerome
There is a good reference of how to walk through a MIDI packet in this file of a GitHub project : https://github.com/krevis/MIDIApps/blob/master/Frameworks/SnoizeMIDI/SMMessageParser.m
(Not mine, but it helped me solve the problems that got me to this thread)