Errors and Sub Device All Call - E1.20 RDM (Remote Device Management) Protocol Forums

SeanSill · July 18th, 2013

Recently OLA has been working on adding more soft RDM responders for developers to play around with. One of the recent ones is a dimmer with sub devices.

We've run into an issue with the SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL and when/how/or at all to report errors.

The perfect example is with a SET DMX_START_ADDRESS. Where the root device doesn't have an start address. In our current implementation we only send back the response from the root device. Which right now looks like a NACK_UNKNOWN_PID, but each sub device gets the message and changes the start address of all sub devices even though it comes back as a nack.

Simon and I discussed it a bit and there are arguments to make SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL only affect sub devices and not the root device or all devices including the sub device.

Thoughts? How is the forum approaching this?

ericthegeek · July 18th, 2013

My interpretation has been that SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL should only effect Sub-Devices and not change the root at all.

In the case where someone sends a broadcast request to SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL, only responders that have sub-devices should act on the request.

How the respond gets a bit dicey when you have a mixed collection of sub-devices. Lets say you send a SET DMX_START_ADDRESS to a responder that has 2 sub-devices, but only one of the sub-devices supports the DMX_START_ADDRESS PID. Both "NACK Unknown PID" and "ACK" would be appropriate.

nomis52 · July 19th, 2013

I agree with Eric here (sub-devices only), although I don't think the standard calls this out.

It does however say:

"All sub-devices shall report an identical list for SUPPORTED_PARAMETERS. This list may be different than that of the Root device."

So you shouldn't see "NACK Unknown PID" but you may trigger other NACK conditions.

July 18th, 2013	#1
SeanSill Task Group Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Lancaster, PA Posts: 25	Errors and Sub Device All Call Recently OLA has been working on adding more soft RDM responders for developers to play around with. One of the recent ones is a dimmer with sub devices. We've run into an issue with the SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL and when/how/or at all to report errors. The perfect example is with a SET DMX_START_ADDRESS. Where the root device doesn't have an start address. In our current implementation we only send back the response from the root device. Which right now looks like a NACK_UNKNOWN_PID, but each sub device gets the message and changes the start address of all sub devices even though it comes back as a nack. Simon and I discussed it a bit and there are arguments to make SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL only affect sub devices and not the root device or all devices including the sub device. Thoughts? How is the forum approaching this?

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July 18th, 2013	#2
ericthegeek Task Group Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 378	My interpretation has been that SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL should only effect Sub-Devices and not change the root at all. In the case where someone sends a broadcast request to SUB_DEVICE_ALL_CALL, only responders that have sub-devices should act on the request. How the respond gets a bit dicey when you have a mixed collection of sub-devices. Lets say you send a SET DMX_START_ADDRESS to a responder that has 2 sub-devices, but only one of the sub-devices supports the DMX_START_ADDRESS PID. Both "NACK Unknown PID" and "ACK" would be appropriate.

July 19th, 2013	#3
nomis52 Task Group Member Join Date: May 2010 Location: San Franciscio Posts: 57	I agree with Eric here (sub-devices only), although I don't think the standard calls this out. It does however say: "All sub-devices shall report an identical list for SUPPORTED_PARAMETERS. This list may be different than that of the Root device." So you shouldn't see "NACK Unknown PID" but you may trigger other NACK conditions.