Touch screen latency, or CNC12? <not cnc12>

[kb58]

The issue: While running CNC12 v5.06, when an icon on the touch screen is tapped, its outline immediately goes white, as it should. The problem: if the icon is only briefly tapped and not held down, CNC12 often (~30-50% of the time) fails to act , as if it missed seeing the activation - yet it never misses setting the button icon outline white. The only way to keep CNC12 from missing the icon press is to deliberately hold it down until the function starts.

It could be my touch screen (Niuto), but because the icon outline turns white immediately, it seems to point toward the CNC12 app. It's almost like it sees the icon pressed, turns it white, and goes back and confirms that it's still being touched, or at least that's how it's acting.

EStop handles emergencies, but this is still important, like if a drill starts to squeal and Tool Check is tapped so it can be inspected, but often, the tool check routine doesn't start. Curious if this is a known issue with CNC12.

[cnckeith]

if we sold cnc12 like that we'd be out of business.

[kb58]

if we sold cnc12 like that we'd be out of business.

An icon is touched on the screen and immediately turns white - so CNC12 sees it. The mystery is how, then, does CNC12 sw not execute the associated task? Since the above post implies that this never happens, I'll run the computer throughput test, even though it's had no other problem. It'll be interesting to see how a "slow" PC can see the initial icon press every time, yet fail to act on it in a timely manner.

Or, I could have said: "Cool, so I'm the first one to identify a new bug!"

Or I could have said, "As a former SW engineer, I was genuinely curious what could cause this. I guess from a Marketing/Sales point of view, it's always, "nothing is wrong", at least until the torches and pitchforks come out, lol.

[cncsnw]

It is not CNC12 that makes the outline turn white. That is performed by VirtualControlPanel.exe, which is a service program that runs separately from CNC12, to present and manage the VCP.

There are several communication links that have to be followed before CNC12 will take any action in response to a VCP key. My guess is that something is interfering with one of those links.

[kb58]

A short video illustrating the issue has been added to my photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/BDVkuuegUtyfm8v47. Turn up the sound to hear that nothing happens the first time Tool Check is touched, and only when it's tapped again is the Z axis heard.

This appears to be due to latency in the API. It's as if one function handling turning the icon outline white isn't followed immediately by a call to the actual function. This is a fairly common software goof where sequencing and latency of API calls aren't set up properly to handle a human touching the buttons. If this is gibberish, please forward to your programmer.

This reminds me of the Therac radiation treatment machine case from the 1990s. Read all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25. It was eventually traced to a race condition in their UI, where if an operator pressed the keys fast enough, the machine misinterpreted the key presses, with fatal results.

[tblough]

Or, more likely since this seems to only occur on your machine, there is some process, like a firewall or disk encryption, that is causing the issue.

[cnckeith]

if we sold cnc12 like that we'd be out of business.

An icon is touched on the screen and immediately turns white - so CNC12 sees it. The mystery is how, then, does CNC12 sw not execute the associated task? Since the above post implies that this never happens, I'll run the computer throughput test, even though it's had no other problem. It'll be interesting to see how a "slow" PC can see the initial icon press every time, yet fail to act on it in a timely manner.

Or, I could have said: "Cool, so I'm the first one to identify a new bug!"

Or I could have said, "As a former SW engineer, I was genuinely curious what could cause this. I guess from a Marketing/Sales point of view, it's always, "nothing is wrong", at least until the torches and pitchforks come out, lol.

hello. its not a marketing point of view.
we do take 'bug' reports very seriously and a large portion of my own time is spent tracking down, repeating, documenting and squashing even the most obscure bugs. For proof of this, just look at our extensive release notes for the last few versions of software, serious man hours are put into making CNC12 a solid performer while providing this effort free of charge to our customers. my point is, in your case, if this issue was on all machines it would be unacceptable and i'd have 10,000 users on this forum reporting the same thing so my first reaction is to look closer at the third party hardware and software that you are running and start swapping things out before jumping to "i found a bug". and fyi while marc is technically correct that what we are talking about here is the VCP i use often use "CNC12" as an all encompassing term for the entire Centroid CNC software suite. I'll be more specific next time.

[kb58]

Or, more likely since this seems to only occur on your machine, there is some process, like a firewall or disk encryption, that is causing the issue.

Agree that this could be only my machine. Thing is, this PC was bought brand new specifically for this, so it's a clean install on a clean machine. There are no firewalls and disc encryption is not used. Nothing else runs while CNC12 is operated. I should add that this wasn't noticeable on v5.04. Also, everything other than this appears to be operating properly, so the PC is not falling behind. To rule out potential excuses, I'll run the PC performance app.

[cnckeith]

please provide info on the CNC PC and the touch screen being used. make model, specs link to manual etc.
are you using a third party touch screen setup app?
any anti virus software on the PC?

[suntravel]

I cannot repeat this behavior on my machines, even if I run the VCP on a second mobile USB Monitor with touch screen.

Uwe