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TCP/IP 3332 Protocol.. What is that weird heartbeat char?

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lynxus
Starting to get to grips with FreeStyler
Posts: 15
Joined: October 26th, 2018, 7:27 pm
FreeStyler Version: 3.6.4
I Use FreeStyler for: Home Lighting Control

TCP/IP 3332 Protocol.. What is that weird heartbeat char?

Post by lynxus »

Hi Guys,

As the android app doesn't work with the latest version ive had to resort to writing my own system.

I can communicate fine with the software via TCP, however what is that odd charater that heartbeats?

I cannot figure out what it is and i need it so I can tell my code to terminate after it see's it..

Putty shows : ▒
Web browser shows as : ?
Hex editor shows as (FF) ÿ

Its not documented on the pdf :(


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remco_k
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Re: TCP/IP 3332 Protocol.. What is that weird heartbeat char?

Post by remco_k »

Maybe its just what you say it is. A byte that is a heartbeat. In this case 0xFF (=255). I can't find it in te docs either. Or maybe its something specific in your currently loaded FreeStyler location that triggers a send of this data every X time.

If its a heartbeat; My guess is it doesn't need to be a human readable character, since you're on the 'byte protocol' port (3332) of FreeStyler - if I understand the docs correctly. So you may get any byte between 0 and 256, where most of them evaluates to a 'strange' character you can't read because you're a human. ;)
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lynxus
Starting to get to grips with FreeStyler
Posts: 15
Joined: October 26th, 2018, 7:27 pm
FreeStyler Version: 3.6.4
I Use FreeStyler for: Home Lighting Control

Re: TCP/IP 3332 Protocol.. What is that weird heartbeat char?

Post by lynxus »

remco_k wrote: May 26th, 2019, 12:27 pm Maybe its just what you say it is. A byte that is a heartbeat. In this case 0xFF (=255). I can't find it in te docs either. Or maybe its something specific in your currently loaded FreeStyler location that triggers a send of this data every X time.

If its a heartbeat; My guess is it doesn't need to be a human readable character, since you're on the 'byte protocol' port (3332) of FreeStyler - if I understand the docs correctly. So you may get any byte between 0 and 256, where most of them evaluates to a 'strange' character you can't read because you're a human. ;)
EEk.

Make difficult to read the TCP stream when it doesnt have a common "end" to the stream.
Wish it terminated the connection after each query or sent a return.

One thing im trying to do is create a seqence/cue looper (so it changes my cues automatically at given times.
Sorta like a timecode thing.

Sending commands is great, so that works fine ( I can now control all the lighting and cues via a web browser and javascript to make my own loops etc.

Would be good to auto populate the text but Ill just have to call then "cue1 to 32" in the code.

If anyone's interested, Its all done in PHP (as the server that talks to freestyler using TCP 3332/3)

Will be posting my project and the code once done.

Essentially made a small PHP api that sends the commands to freestyler.
You then use Javascript to create your scenes at certain time intervals. (Pick a cue/cuelist to run at each time slice)
lynxus
Starting to get to grips with FreeStyler
Posts: 15
Joined: October 26th, 2018, 7:27 pm
FreeStyler Version: 3.6.4
I Use FreeStyler for: Home Lighting Control

Re: TCP/IP 3332 Protocol.. What is that weird heartbeat char?

Post by lynxus »

Creating a "party button" that automatically kicks everything in and then rotates pre set sequences based on the music using a PHP based server and freestyler running in the background,.

Image
lynxus
Starting to get to grips with FreeStyler
Posts: 15
Joined: October 26th, 2018, 7:27 pm
FreeStyler Version: 3.6.4
I Use FreeStyler for: Home Lighting Control

Re: TCP/IP 3332 Protocol.. What is that weird heartbeat char?

Post by lynxus »

Managed to put a "hack" in so that it just reads 2 seconds of data and be done with it. (Assumes it received everything it needs) this seems to work.
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