
Ok im having a head scratcher today. I connected Alan and Alena up to different laptops to run them simultaneously. One is an older Apple Mac Pro with bootcamp and Win 7. The other is an asus PC Laptop Win 10. Both are i7 quadcores both have 8 megs ram. Both are connected to the EZB via serial/usb using a osepp FTDI. Both are in maximum mode under power options:
BUT The Asus is running my recorders at half the speed as my Mac Pro. I have tried rebooting, changing com ports etc. I've killed and rebuilt animations with recorder, same issue no change. No background programs running either. Alan looks like he is in a slow motion movie "noooooooooooooooo"
When i move the robot over to the Mac running Win 7it runs at perfect speed as it should.
Question is:
What should I be looking for on the Asus that would be slowing down the data?
My insistent query is usually struggling to understand how things work. That’s my nature. If something doesn’t work or works in a surprising way ( to me) like this recorder, then I’m going to ask a lot of questions so I understand why. Then at the end of that, I’m sitting there either still not understanding why , or I do but I want to offer a suggestion about a possible way to think about it from another angle, (Suggestions based on some 30 years of professional animatronics , servos, and countless programs to control them), then I’m going to.
Bob was experiencing the same thing as me so why not try and figure out a solution? If there is none then there is none. The Recorder is yes just that, a recorder, but it’s also a playback control, otherwise why is it recording anything?
The program I referred to was only to say they figured out how to run at at the same rate on any computer. That’s seems like a positive observation, I wasn’t criticizing EZ ( after praising you today) or asking you to rewrite anything.
This based on your first unedited post
I think I know what DJ is saying: when you record, you are not recording the movement (as you would be doing with a video), but you are recording the data that causes the movement. Depending on what operating system you are using (in this case, Windows 7 vs. Windows 10), that data will be read at a different rate, because that is how the developers created/changed the operating system.
You may have 1ms of data, but Windows 10 is processing it as 3ms, as that is the smallest increment it will do.
@DJ_Sures: did I get it, or did I make the water even muddier?
The solution (IMHO): ditch Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7. As an aside: I've been using Windows since version 3, and I can say from experience "newer" is not "better". And despite the fact that Microsoft is trying to force us into giving up control of our operating systems, many of us are fighting to hold on to the older O/S's as long as we can.
One "good" thing that may come of this was that I am planning to set up a dedicated EZ-Robot machine; I know now to avoid Win 10!
I think what @DJ is saying is we are recording the "data" as movement on any given device with what ever device parameters it might have.
You could record movement on an Windows 7 device i7 process and 8gb ram and potentially have different play back speed on a different Windows 7 device that is not the same specifications.
That means if you want to make a recording in a project and have it play back the same way you need to record it and play it back on the same device. You might need a work bench laptop and demo laptop to be the same (2 of the exact same model and OS). Or if your robots all use an embedded PC like the lattepanda you'd need to be aware that you can't record your movement on a laptop and then play it back on the lattepanda and expect the same result.
That is an important nuance to know and understand, I certainly did not know that before about this control.
I have the same problem with servo Motors and DC Motors via H Bridge.. it doesn't matter what kind of Computer I use.. the wireless place and Fitzbox direct connection or connet to my own Network-Card change the speed-time. in the living room my robot works fast.. in the bedroom, not.
regards
Think you want to narrow it down to either hardware or software. Simplest way is to boot off a clean image and without any complex drivers installed. Sounds like something is generating interrupts that is causing your system to lag and that could be anything from a bad video driver, background process or even a virus or malware. I would start with a clean boot of windows and take it from there
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows
Thanks Nink good advice. I need to have two different laptops running to demonstrate both Alan and Alena at the same time. Time is money, so just going out and buying another laptop, but was comparing notes with Bob in hopes to avoid a new computer with the same slow results. That would make me very unhappy.
Maybe what i can do for you is a create a plugin that doesn't record data, but records servo positions.
You see, the "Recorder" is recording actual data - so that's everything from digital ports, sending serial, sending i2c, etc...
So what you really want is just servo positions be recorded. Let me whip something up for you tonight when i'm back at my hotel.
...that might be interesting indeed...i look forward to what ever brilliance you come up with...it will always be useful.