The dreaded Vixen 2.1x "Port xx Access Denied" again :-(

T.D.Sutton

T.D.Sutton

New member
I was testing my Vixen 2.1x setup for this years show today, and discovered to my horror that I can run a USB DMX controller for my Laser Projector or my XBee Transmitter/Explorer board on their own, but not together. If I have both plugged in I get the dreaded "Port XX Access denied", which is always the XBee port, at which point the sequence runs. If I manually clear it there is data visible on the XBee data present LED, but nothing anywhere else, although the AP appears fine !!! No DMX, or TX / RX data getting through.

The DMX is running under "Enttec Open DMX" on a port selected, as far as I can see, by the FTDI software driver, so I am suspicious that the "self selected" virtual port could be the same as the one allocated to the XBee. Under device manager, Windows has happily allocated different Com port numbers to each port. I will be using two RS232 Ports with RS232 / RS 485 adaptors for the Renard's with around 900 Channels in use as well as another one for my LedTrix using a Pix C I/F.

I am running Win XP Pro, AMD +1600, 1.4 Gig, 1.5 Gig ram, a 4 x USB PCI card, a dual RS232 PCI Card, plus a Network card and a Video Card.

Any bright ideas please, as I have my sequences setup to use this hardware, thankfully I have a little time to sort it out !! :-(

Terry
 
I dont use any of those but when i get that with vixen 2.1 i just open task manager and close vixen or restart my pc and it works fine again

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First, I will guarantee you that you can get this figured out. I have dealt with many of these types of issues the last couple of years. Worst-case, we can do a Web-Ex so I can see your configurations. (That is if your Show PC is on the internet)

Unfortunately, I don't have any of my FTDI type devices available to me so I can't verify. Been using Vixen 2x for 6 years and seem to chase down 1 or more of this type of issue whenever I add new stuff.

I'm at least assuming that both your Entec Open DMX Dongle and XBee Explorer board used the same driver. If the ports are different then that is not the issue. You may want to look at the other details on the Virtual COM port and make sure they are using different address space. If

Another option would be to manually switch the COM Ports on one of the devices to another port. These settings get difficult to manage because of all of the automatic stuff that the driver attempts to do. When it fails, its very difficult to track down. If you plug the Explorer Board into a different USB port it will likely install another COM port with a fresh configuration. That may be worth a shot as well. Obviously, if you change the port, you will need to change the Vixen Settings as well.

While they may be a different drivers, you have at least 4 USB->Serial converters in there. It can certainly be done, but these Chip Drivers are not the cleanest things ever implemented.

I'll see if I can track down the link to the troubleshooting that a few of us did with All of the USB-Serial configuration issues resulting from the "Counterfeit" protection that was added to the drivers. It's not your issue, but the troubleshooting and configuration items in there will help.\

Edit: Sorry, I thought the Arduino's were yours as well. If you are not using Arduino then ignore the part about 4 USB->Serial Devices.
 
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Hi Kelly,

Many thanks for your thoughts, the "odd" thing is that the same problem occurs on both of my Win XP machines essentially set up the same way as duplicates for use as a main standby setup. You are correct, both the devices are using the FDTI drivers, on different com ports and even when changing one to another Com port the same error occurs regardless, the same goes for a different USB socket. If I run one of the dongles (DMX or the XBee) they operate fine on their own. I downloaded the latest FDTI drivers tonight and that didn't fix things either!

For the record the DMX dongle is a KMTRONICS device that uses the FDTI chips inside apparently. The dreaded error always appears as an "access denied" to the XBee USB explorer board virtual com port, and to my limited knowledge looks as though the DMX one is taking over all the ports and will not allow Vixen access to them or whatever.

One thing I havn't tried is to dummy the setup up on my Win 7 machine, but I cannot afford to have it going dodgy on me. I have run both of the dongles on their own on it without any problems, just not at the same time!!

I am very happy with the performance of Vixen 2.1xx, it has served me extremely well, and I really do not want to change!! If push comes to shove, I would be more than happy to let you have a poke around within the machine, it is currently on the 'net but doesn't stay that way while my show is running!!!

Soooo---- back to scratching heads :-(

Terry
 
A Workaround found, thankfully :)

The good thing is I have now got the system going and think I have tracked down the apparent culprit! It appears if you have two FTDI based dongles/devices plugged in, the Vixen DMX driver grabs all the available FDTI ports and locks them up, you have no choice in assigning the port or anything else. After pondering the problem late last evening (NZ) and a PM suggestion from Dirknerkle I configured a Ren W board as a transmitter today and am running it off a RS485 serial port rather then the USB based Explorer board, this got the DMX and the XBee chains running together. This leaves the two Ren 64 chains on two serial ports and I can then run the LEDTRIX off a Prolific USB / RS 485 dongle that has it's own Prolific driver which doesn't conflict with the FDTI driver, so all five devices appear, at this stage, to co-habit happily on the same machine :) Just one "spare" serial port left!!! Thankfully I was able to purchase some PCI RS232 Serial cards after last years Christmas Lights season, just in case!! :)

I have run this setup on both boxes, the "Old" AMD 1.4 Gig machine, and a spare Hyperthreading 3.3 Gig Intel machine as a backup with no problems on a test run. Interestingly the "Old" AMD machine, with the AP turned off, runs all that hardware at around 40% - 50% average processor loading, while the 3.3 Gig Intel runs at about 15% with the AP turned on!!

The bottom line, as far as I can determine, is that there must be a buss contention of some sort with multiple USB ports using the same manufacturer's chips and drivers with Vixen 2.1x. I ran into this exact problem last year using multiple Prolific based dongles with their drivers, namely, some very nice USB / RS485 dongles. They produced the same error - Access denied, port in use etc. etc. when I attempted to use them together.

Hopefully that will put this to bed for now!! The thing that worries me now is that with the lack of Serial ports on most "new" machines and the proliferation of USB devices, there will be problems running this software in the future. This would be most evident when using a laptop to run a show, all USB, No Serial Ports!

No back to show "prep",

Thanks all,

Terry
 
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