Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] · Fri, 8 Jan 2010 17:13:17 +0100

Hello all,

I ran into a problem when reading from a serial device using I/O Intr 
processing with streamDevice.
The device sends a string every 100 ms and this string is converted into 
numbers using scalcout 
record ( silly spaces between sign and numbers fail ai record conversion).
The conversion works, but depending on the poll period, I loose a lot of 
strings.
If using a poll period of 50 ms, I get none conversions at all.
100 ms poll period converts about every other string, 
500ms poll period converts 4-5 strings every 500 ms.

This is the db:
record (scalcout, "VRZ720:$(host)$(port)02") {
    field (DTYP, "stream")
    field (OUT,  "@VRZ720.proto getYAxis VRZ01")
    field (SCAN, "I/O Intr")
         field (CALC, "AA=='-'?-1*A:A")
}

This is the protocol:
InTerminator = LF LF;
PollPeriod = 50;
ReadTimeout = 30;
getYAxis {
    in  "X=%*[+-]%*f%*[ RDrd]\r\nY=%(AA)[+-]%(A)f%*[ RDrd]\r";
} 

This is an example string, which is sent to the device every 100ms.
X=- 757.4302 R\r\nY=-  75.6267 R\r\n\n

The problem is caused by the first call to pasynOctet->read with 
readTimeout 0 if EOS is set.
If using eos asynInterposeEos will return asynTimeout even if some 
characters have been
received, but not yet the eos-string. The timeout aborts the stream 
protocol and the 
partial string is discarded. If using a long poll period chances grow, 
that a full string is in the
buffer at the first read which will be properly processed. But you don't 
want to process
only once a second, if strings are delivered every 100 ms.

If preventing the stream protocol from aborting, even if the first read is 
a timeout, 
allows to read again and accumulate partial strings until eos is received.
The second call to pasynOctet->read has timeout=ReadTimeout, which must be 
long
enough to read the full string.
I attached a patch (which hopefully doesn't break existing code) to do 
this.

Jens

--- old/AsynDriverInterface.cc  2010-01-08 16:46:59.870812999 +0100
+++ new/AsynDriverInterface.cc  2010-01-08 17:05:33.404224396 +0100
@@ -807,6 +807,11 @@
         }
         // pasynOctet->read() has already cut off terminator.

+        // Timeout is considered success, if reading with EOS in 
AsyncRead
+        // mode and at least one octet was received
+        if ((status == asynTimeout) && streameos && (ioAction == 
AsyncReadMore))
+            status = asynSuccess;
+
         switch (status)
         {
             case asynSuccess:
@@ -823,7 +828,16 @@
                     // ignore what we got from here.
                     // input was already handeled by asynReadHandler()
                     // read until no more input is available
-                    readMore = -1;
+                    if (streameoslen && (eomReason & ASYN_EOM_EOS)){
+                        if (replyTimeout != 0.0) {
+                            ioAction = AsyncRead;
+                            startTimer(replyTimeout);
+                        }
+                        readMore = 0;
+                    }
+                    else {
+                        readMore = -1;
+                    }
                     break;
                 }
 #ifndef NO_TEMPORARY



Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System