We use a lot of 1425 ( older ones and new ones) in the field. Sometimes when upgrading to Win 7 64 Professionial we see sporadic, nondeterministic and hardly to reproduce failure of the motion subsystem which does not exist under WinXP.
- for example a DMC1425 Rev 1.0g 4719, IHA IHB shows releativly often a " Command Exception 1011 TIMEOUT ERROR. Galil::command("TPX") took longer than 2000 ms to read " like disconnecting the ethernet connection
- on the otherhand a DMC1425 Rev 1.0i ,16938, IHA IHB stops working suddenly and even with Galil Tools you can not connect to the controller. You must switch off /on
What is your advice concerning the hardware revision (serial number) , the firmware version and the used Galil API to manage a successful operation under Win7 operating system ?
The 1425 controller we purchase come with DMC1425 Rev 1.0i and not DMC1425 Rev 1.0j . Why ?
MattK on 01/28/2015 - 15:27
Hi vlovo,
My first question would regard the API you are using. Are you using the older DMCWIIN32 (Smart Terminal) libraries or the new GalilTools COM library? The reason I ask is that the older libraries were designed well in advance of Windows 7 and therefore are not guaranteed to operate under this newer operating system.
On the face of it I would not suspect the firmware just yet but instead would also ask that you take a look at our application not on Firewall Exceptions for Windows 7. When an Ethernet connection is established with a controller, to communication channels are opened. The first is a TCP/IP channel allowing back and forth communication with error checking and ACKs. This is the connection used to handle commands from the terminal or host application and any responses to them. The second channel is a UDP port specifically designed to handle unsolicited traffic (messages from embedded dmc code that are sent to the host). For lack of a better word, Windows 7 doesn't "like" these types of connections and its firewall will attempt to close them if traffic is not seen on them for large stretches of time (more than a minute or so).
The application note on firewall exceptions can be found here:
http://www.galil.com/download/application-note/note4436.pdf
Please read it through and implement the changes it suggests and let me know if this solves the behavior you are observing.
vlovo on 01/28/2015 - 23:55
Dear MattK,
we are using LibGalil-1.6.0.460-vs2010-x86 for integration of DMC 1425 in our software . We use class Galil in our native ,unmanaged C++ codebase.
Thank you for the hint about the firewall, but usually systems shipped with firewall switched off on every option. Do I have to take the applicaton note into account in that case ? I will double check if customers do activate firewall and it is not configured according to the application note.
MattK on 02/05/2015 - 09:34
Hi vlovo,
If the PC's firewall is turned off then you won't need to set rules and exceptions. If, as you've noted, the customer is activating the firewall after the machine is installed, this could be the cause of your communications interrupts.