1.3.8 won't stay connected to radio

rfoust

Started playing with 1.3.8, and SmartSDR won't stay connected to the radio (6700) for more than a few minutes. Everything seems to be working fine, then I get a Connection Lost message "The connection to the radio was lost. Please reconnect." The radio is connected directly to my computer via wired eithernet (usb adapter). I access the internet via wireless. I'll experiment, reboot, etc, in case its a problem with my setup.

Jerry W2TXB

Mine does the same thing, but usually after many hours of operating or idling; sometimes I leave everything up and running, only to find the same error message and problem the following day. The most recent time this happened, I got the BSoD as well.

rfoust

Rebooting everything seems to have helped, although while SSDR was running, I loaded Chrome and the additional load on the computer caused it to disconnect again. I loaded SSDR again and so far it is staying connected. I keep talking about getting a new computer, guess I need to do that.

Steve W6SDM

I would consider getting an Ethernet card that plugs into the motherboard on your computer.  They're cheap these days, depending on what you get.  If I am understanding you correctly, your Ethernet right now is actually a converted USB port.  That may very well be the source of your problem. 

You may also want to consider putting in a router and use a port for your Flex.  That will give you room for other network peripherals and you will have WiFi.

rfoust

This is a tablet (Surface Pro 2), so getting a real ethernet card isn't an option. I want to get a "real" computer with a high end graphics card but was out of town for a while and haven't had a chance to put time into designing/building one. I may try to just put the flex back on the router and see if it makes a difference, but I think the surface just can't handle the amount of tcp/udp traffic coming from the radio when I'm trying to use it for other stuff -- web browsing, spotify music, 4k external monitor, etc. :-)

N7BCP

For direct radio to Pc connection, If the flex isn't assigned an IP address via dhcp then you will have trouble with disconnects. Enabling windows internet connection sharing solved this issue for me.

Steve W6SDM

Yeah, I think you're right.  It would be a stretch to expect good connectivity without anything else competing for bandwidth.  Well, pat yourself on the back - you got SSDR running on a tablet, which in an of itself is an accomplishment.

K1FR

I started having this problem yesterday as well.  No changes to my computer setup that i know of.  It got so bad that I could not trust the radio to stay up long enough for a QSO,  Bombed once in the middle of a T30D QSO.  A reboot of rig and computer settled things down.  Only one recent disconnect since.  73, Tom K1FR

KM6CQ - Dan

Mine will loose connection with this upgrade (1.3.8.47) at any time. I do not see a pattern yet.

Dan 

Howard Koenig

I am also experiencing this now. There is no pattern. All I need to do is go to the welcome screen and click on the radio, no reboot is required.

Brian_W9HLQ

I had the same problem of Ethernet disconnecting, especially after moving to 1.3.8.   By chance I looked at the CPU utilization with Task Manager.   I found at times I was at 100%...and not surprisingly, the computer disconnected from the Flex 6500.   I then did a review of what was running and found all sorts of background stuff using almost 50% of the CPU.   There was not enough left for SmartSDR.   After cleaning things up I am at 30% and have been running all day with WSPR.   Computer is Levono,laptop AMD A6 processor running WIn 8.1.  -=Brian, W9HLQ=-

Rick Hadley - W0FG

I've experienced an occasional disconnect which, in my case, required a long-delay reboot of the 6500, but I think I understand why.  Up until a week ago, i was getting distressingly frequent lockups of the PC, often with a BSOD pointing toward the NVIDIA graphics driver.  I'm running a Dual-Core i3, 3.3Ghz/8GB/Win7 system with 3 monitors, 2 (HDMI & DVI) are connected to an ATI Radeon graphics card, the other standard 19" was connected the NVIDIA card and usually used primarily for web browsing with Chrome.  As an experiment, I decided to avoid using the browser and dedicate the system strictly to SSDR and related programs.  For the entire week, I've had SSDR, DDUTIL, HRD Logbook, FR-Stack, SDR-Bridge and 2 CW Skimmers running 24-7 with no sign of a system lockup, but I did observe occasional latency in the panadaptor display when running 2 pans.  Last night I experienced a radio disconnect, so following a reboot I did a bit of further investigation with Windows Resource Monitor and discovered with the all of the above programs running, my CPU usage was close to 95%.  Conclusions: 1.  On this system, avoid using the browser with any radio related programs.  2. I need to carefully monitor CPU usage when attempting to run the full suite of software I'd like to use.  3.  I need a bigger, faster CPU.

N7BCP

I'm seeing the same disconnect issue with a Mac book pro i7 8gb ram and ssd - boot camp with win 8.1. Not running any other apps at the same time and smartsdr taking ~40% cpu. Disconnects more frequently if I bring in more pan adapters. This laptop runs Powersdr and my flex 5k without trouble. Frustrating during JOTA this weekend.

Jerry W2TXB

Just for the heck of it, I checked CPU usage with the just radio running with one slice. CPU usage was 22-26%, with occasional excursions to 28%. I then started FLDigi and the usage almost doubled when receiving, but went back down somewhat when transmitting. In each case when I noticed the connection dropping out, I believe FLDigi was running along with SmartSDR. 

As I was typing this, I thought about one more setting that has been unchanged since the beginning, so I changed it... referring to the Ethernet power setting in Windows 7. I will post up on this if anything changes after a few days or so.

rfoust

I haven't responded to this in a while, but figured I should since others have had similar issues.  The usb-to-ethernet adapter *shoudln't* be an issue, since tcp packets are guaranteed to be delivered (udp isn't).  I don't know if v1.3.8 is using tcp or udp (or something else) as its keepalive method (I don't recall what the new method was), but I doubt tcp packet loss is an issue here.  I think that blaming it on the adapter is just pointing the finger to something to pass the buck without addressing the underlying cause. Also, I didn't have this problem prior to 1.3.8, or rather, it wasn't quite this noticable.

I think the keepalive could probably be improved.  I know it probably isn't high up on the priority list but when the radio won't stay connected under normal PC load, it does become a serious issue. Something that could help may be some type of diagnostic message (or log) that explains *why* SmartSDR thinks it lost communication to the radio, when everything I'm seeing on the screen says it is connected fine.  Hope this can be addressed in the next release.

N7BCP

It would be nice if the radio could recover from this condition automatically. A short interruption in receive audio would be preferable to the radio giving up.

Steve - W1TAV

I was having the same issues with my 6300 right after I upgraded from Win 8 to Win 8.1.  Looked at what folks were saying there and got some ideas!  Turned out to be the CPU hitting 100% Cleaned up some stuff running in the background. the big offender  was "Daemon Process(1015)"  Looked around on the internet, I cant find anything definitive on this.. Any thoughts??  Looks like something the got switched on/installed with windows 8.1.

Brian_W9HLQ

I was peaking at 100%.  I found SSDR using 55 to 70 %,  Dropbox using 25% for some reason, WSPR was at 10%.  Add in the other Windoze functions and there was nothing left.  After cleaning house by not using Dropbox unless needed, and adjusting the Refresh Rate and Waterfall values, I got SSDR down to 35% and total system usage to no more than 50%.   This is with two pan adapters running.   No more disconnects and SSDR is up solid once again.  The Task Manager is your friend in strange cases like this.  --Brian, W9HLQ--

Jerry W2TXB

Update: this did not help much at all; the radio stayed connected for a couple of days, then the  connection dropped.