Digipeating fails but Igate continues to function #53
Description
I installed v1.3.1 based on the text I read about the previous version having some Windows keying problems.
My Igate/digi is up an running but not without some other software help.
For some background, I'm running Windows 7 on a netbook (CPU useage ~ 2 - 5 %) and use a USB to serial adapter. I have used two different adapters with, to the best of my knowledge, equal succes. One uses a Prolific chipset and the other is FTDI. Both use "legitimate" chipsets and have given me no trouble in other applications.
There are actually two problems I have encountered and they are as follows:
At first, I ran only as an Igate station. Setup was straight forward and I was up and running in little time. The problem was the Dire Wolf engine would abruptly terminate for no apparent reason. The time-frame for the problem could be in as little as within the first hour to as many as 14 hours.
My work-around for this was to include a process monitor which would automatically restart Dire Wolf upon unexpected termination. With this in place, I had no other issues with the engine and everything worked fine without having to check on it's status. If the engine terminates, it is restarted within 20 seconds. The process monitor also logs unexpected terminations.
The second problem arose when I implemented the digipeater functionality. Setup was clean and fast due to the excellent documentation and my digi was on the air quickly. Unfortunately, something happens where the engine fails to send the command to digipeat. I see the command on the monitor window but the LED indicator on my interface (RTS > opto > PTT) does not indicate that the RTS signal changes states.
Simply restarting the DW engine corrects the problem until the next time this happens. The problem is random and may occur within a very few minutes or may not occur again for a couple of hours. My work-around for this problem was to schedule tasks to terminate the engine on a regular basis (once every 20 minutes). Once terminated, the process monitor restarts the the engine and the station is up again within the minute.
At this point, the scheduled tasks and the process monitor keep the station on the air without human intervention but I still see times when the digipeater function fails prior to time for the scheduled task to purposely restart the engine. I've minmised my digipeater downtime but something is still not right with v1.3.1. Again, the Igate functionality continues without a hitch.
Is there anything I can do to collect more useful data for the developer?
73, Greg