Bug: Communication error after booting

[McAroni]

Hi there,
I'm using your software for about two weeks now and I came across this issue:
after booting my computer, adrilight will fail communicating with the arduino. The rainbow animation freezes but the actually wanted colors wont show up.
If I remove the USB-cable from the Arduino and plug it back in again, everything will work fine again. Also, if I quit Adrilight, open the Arduino IDE and just open the serial monitor, close the IDE and open Adrilight again, it will work again, too.

My setup:

• Windows 10
• Arduino Nano
• WS2812b with 56 LEDs
• when turning off the computer, I also switch off the power plug from the PC

Greetings

EDIT (summary of this thread):
Problem is still unsolved, but apparently the problem is not a common one. I can only reproduce the error myself on my desktop PC, on two other tested computers everything works as intended.
The following bug fixes work for me:
a) Unplug the USB cable from the Arduino and plug it back in again.
b) or open the Serial Monitor of the Arduino IDE. Adrilight must not send anything during this time.
c) or restart Windows (without physical power off).

[fabsenet]

Hi! if you boot your pc, close adrilight and just open it again without the arduino ide stuff inbetween, does this work too?

[McAroni]

No, this doesn't change anything.

[fabsenet]

to be honest, this is an issue I have no idea how to go further. can you try to reproduce it with another pc or notebook?

you do not use the arduino software to actually change something?

[McAroni]

• A small mistake in my previous description:
  I don't need to close Adrilight, it's enough if I hit "stop sending" until the serial monitor was opened.

• Right now I am not able to reproduce the bug on another device but I should be able to do so in a few days with my notebook.

• The Arduino Software is only used in this situation to open the serial monitor and close it again.

• A more accurate description of the bug:
  After turning on my PCs power supply the Arduino instantly boots and shows the rainbow-wheel-animation.
  When windows is booted up, Adrilight will start via Autostart aswell.
  As soon Adrilight starts sending, the rainbow-wheel-animation will stop/freeze.
  When I disable sending (while Adrilight is sending), the idle-animation (slowly turning off LEDs) will start.
  I can pause this animation with "enable sending" but it will continue (not restart!) the idle-animation when disabling sending again.

• A more accurate description of the possible workarounds I found so far:

  1. With sending disabled, opening the serial monitor will make the Arduino start the rainbow-wheel-animation again.
     At this point, after the serial monitor is closed again, Adrilight will be able to properly communicate with the Arduino.
  2. Unplugging the USB-Cable from the Arduino and putting it back in. After this, Adrilight will work fine.
  3. Rebooting windows (of course WITHOUT turning off the power plug). No idea why this actually helps but, as usual, it does.

• Another minor bug I found while trying to fix this: Disabling "Autostart with Windows" doesn't work. It doesn't even show up in Taskmanager -> Autostart

[fabsenet]

just to be crystal clear, so even after fiddling around with the serial monitor, you never actually see adrilight working?

all you ever see is the demo mode ("colors walking around") and the animation stopping and fading to black after stop sending?

if this is the case, then you have a mismatch of the number of LEDs. A classic error :-(

[McAroni]

Well, good that you asked this because obviously you misunderstood my words.

The three workarounds I described do work. Open up the serial monitor for a second is enough to allow adrilight to work. Or re-plugging Arduinos USB connection. Or rebooting windows (without turning off the power plug).

So, again, to be crystal clear aswell: I do see Adrilight working! And it works fine as soon as it is running. But to do so, I need to use one of these 3 described workarounds, which shouldn't be nessecary.

[fabsenet]

#112 is also from you? You have weird connection problems and it seems you are working on your own customized version. so please rollback to the standard ino file and retest please.

another idea would be to start your pc. then you have the not working point and instead of the serial monitor dance, just press the reset button on the arduino. what happens then?

[McAroni]

#112 is from me, yes. But the communication issue doesn't have anything to do with my modification since it already appeared before this and my modifications shouldn't have any effect on the communication stuff. But anyways, the communication issue appears with the unmodified stock version, too.

I will test the reset button thing in a few hours and report the result.

[McAroni]

The result:
Pressing reset on the arduino will make the arduino show approximately 1 frame of the rainbow-wheel-animation and then freeze again. Pressing reset is not a workaround.

I think I didn't mention this before:
Just restarting Adrilight does not fix the problem either.