Error: uploading play list to remote falcon

[jond]

I have been having issues with remotefalcon since their move to a new ip address a couple of weeks ago.  Immediately after the migration I would get the following message "Error: uploading play list to remote falcon"

I deleted the remotefalcon account/recreated, uninstalled xlights and reinstalled, deleted registry keys, and after a desperate attempt to get it working again managed to do so.  Not really sure what fixed it.  It worked fine for the next 5-6 days and I was rebooting the workstation every evening right before the show.  A week later I added a couple of songs to the playlist and the error came back, but this time it will not repair.  I even got a spare laptop out of the cabinet and connected to a cell phone hotspot to eliminate the possibility of it being an issue with the current hardware.

One thing I have noticed is that the xschedule remotefalcon plug-in appears to use the wrong address.  When the feature was working it used my subdomain mylights.remotefalcon.com, but when NOT working it is using the root domain remotefalcon.com or the ip address of remotefalcon.com.  I am assuming I do not have access to the root of remotefalcon.com as a customer, and possibly the plugin is trying to modify the root domain instead of the subdomain assigned to my token?

Attached is MS diags showing what xschedule.exe is doing when the error occurs.  You can see that the plug-in works when it uses the subdomain, but not the root domain or IP.  Logs in .38 were not showing anything, but the error.  Logs in .39 appear to have more information. Note the logs are listing the root domain instead of the subdomain as well.  Also, attached is an error that pops up from time to about a file located in "Keith's" user folder... except there has never been a user named keith on any machine I have owned.  Isn't one of the main developers first name Keith?  Is anyone else seeing this?  Does anyone know how the remotefalcon plug-in is getting the website name to use?  This does not appear to be a setting that I can adjust.  It appears to be getting this name from my token id incorrectly?  I have thrown 4 computers and 5 internet lines at it and can't get this to work any more.

2021-12-06 22:09:10,604 7476 log_base [DEBUG] Starting plugin RemoteFalcon
2021-12-06 22:09:10,606 7476 log_base [INFO] ******* OnInit: RemoteFalcon started.
2021-12-06 22:09:10,667 7476 log_base [DEBUG] RemoteFalcon UI 50,50 800x600.
2021-12-06 22:09:10,672 7476 log_base [DEBUG] Special options file not found at C:\Data\XLights\special.options
2021-12-06 22:09:11,213 7688 log_base [DEBUG] https://remotefalcon.com/remotefalcon/api/syncPlaylists
2021-12-06 22:09:11,213 7688 log_base [DEBUG] {"remoteToken":"{token}","playlists":[{"playlistName":"Candy Cane Lane","playlistDuration":212},{"playlistName":"Cant Stop The Feeling","playlistDuration":237},{"playlistName":"Christmas Every Day","playlistDuration":226},{"playlistName":"Go Cyclones","playlistDuration":17},{"playlistName":"Hey Come Look At My House","playlistDuration":145},{"playlistName":"Holly Jolly Christmas","playlistDuration":119},{"playlistName":"Jingle Bells","playlistDuration":204},{"playlistName":"Little Drummer Boy","playlistDuration":277},{"playlistName":"Run Run Rudolph","playlistDuration":147},{"playlistName":"September","playlistDuration":129},{"playlistName":"mylights","playlistDuration":10},{"playlistName":"The Greatest Show","playlistDuration":268},{"playlistName":"Winter Wonderland","playlistDuration":125},{"playlistName":"You Make It Feel Like Xmas","playlistDuration":156},{"playlistName":"Zero","playlistDuration":210},{"playlistName":"Into the Unknown","playlistDuration":189},{"playlistName":"Blinding Lights","playlistDuration":200},{"playlistName":"Dynamite","playlistDuration":199}]}
2021-12-06 22:09:41,035 7476 log_base [WARN] RemoteFalcon failed to clear existing list of songs.
2021-12-06 22:09:41,050 7476 log_base [DEBUG] Started plugin RemoteFalcon -> 1
2021-12-06 22:09:41,050 7476 log_base [WARN] Frame interval greater than 200% of what it should have been [24] 30450
2021-12-06 22:09:41,087 7476 log_base [WARN] Step Blinding Lights frame 53498 took longer than 80% frame time to output: 37ms.
2021-12-06 22:09:41,679 7476 log_base [WARN] Frame interval greater than 200% of what it should have been [24] 630
2021-12-06 22:09:41,707 7476 log_base [WARN] Step Blinding Lights frame 54102 took longer than 80% frame time to output: 27ms.
2021-12-06 22:09:41,731 7476 log_frame [WARN] Timer: Frame event fire interval 5ms less than 1/4 frame time 6ms
2021-12-06 22:09:41,747 7688 log_base [DEBUG] https://remotefalcon.com/remotefalcon/api/syncPlaylists

[allknowing2012]

James Vance the creator/maintainer of remote falcon is not likely to see this - you need to join the remote falcon group on FB and post there.

[jond]

James Vance the creator/maintainer of remote falcon is not likely to see this - you need to join the remote falcon group on FB and post there.

I have worked with James and he was very helpful.  He said he did not write the remotefalcon plugin and was not sure how it was getting this information.  He suggested to reach out here.  All I can do is hope that Keith Westley may see this and take pity on me.  Otherwise, I will have to go another route.

Does anyone know of another solution to allow the visitors to select songs from a playlist?  The remotefalcon worked great when it worked and the visitors seemed to enjoy the option. 

[jond]

I tried deleting my remotefalcon account, created a brand new one, installed xlights on a new copy of windows, and still could not upload the playlist. 

I drove across town, installed xlights on a corporate desktop, created a brand new test sequence, a brand new playlist, and it still would not upload the playlist.

Dell, HP, Cisco, ASUS, Cable/DSL/Fiber/Cell copper ethernet or wifi...  it does not matter, it will not upload the playlist. 

I keep trying because no one else seems to have problems, but 4 different computers, 5 different ISPs, different switches, routers, access points, wiring, anti-virus, computer models and makes, seems beyond my control.

I can login to the remotefalcon.com website and make all the changes I want, I can go to the subdomain and view the website for my display, I can ping all of the above.  There are NO router logs, NO access point logs, NO data captures, or MS diags that suggest ANY traffic is being blocked or denied.  When I load the remotefalcon plugin from the xschedule.exe tool bar, it shows that it connected to my subdomain and lists the correct type of service used.  If jukebox is selected it shows jukebox, and if voting is selected it shows voting.  Then it gives me "Error can not upload playlist"

I posted here, and asked James if he would try uploading with my token id at his location.  There is not much else I can try at this point.  I considered going to a FPP and had an old pi laying around,  I was able to build a FPP pretty quickly, but could see there was going to be a small learning curve.  The playlist went up pretty quickly, but the MP3s did not copy up, and I noticed a tab for image files.  It did not seem like rocket science, but appeared to require a little research for it work.  I may just call time of death and move on, but the visitors seemed to enjoy the service and we enjoyed watching which songs they were picking.  It was nice to see which ones they were interested in. 

Are there any other places offering similar services for xschedule that anyone is of aware of?

[jond]

I had an old Pi in the drawer and dusted it off and installed FPP on it.  I was able to get it up and running.  It worked just fine with remotefalcon.  Absolutely no issues with FPP.  Wish me luck as I am going live with the FPP player tonight.

Thanks!

[jond]

So much for moving to FPP to run RemoteFalcon.  Moved over to FPP and everything seemed to run well out of the gate, but then noticed people would vote and it would not play the song that was selected.  I have two playlists... The "Nightly Show" and "Website".  The "Nightly Show" is the normal schedule.  The "Website" playlist consists of every song we have available.  The "Website" playlist does not belong to any schedules, or have any lead-in or lead-out programming.  It is dedicated to the RemoteFalcon feature only.

It is not playing the normal playlist either.  People vote and it just plays random songs.  We always seem to have major glitches right after we add a new song to the playlist.

[allknowing2012]

And you did restart remote falcon? There is a restart option on that page (along with a setting to automattically reset it when required) - oh and you dont have randomize turned on for your remote falcon playlist.

[jond]

And you did restart remote falcon? There is a restart option on that page (along with a setting to automattically reset it when required) - oh and you dont have randomize turned on for your remote falcon playlist.

Thanks for the feedback!  I had restarted remote falcon several times, along with restarting fppd, and even rebooted the FPP 2 or 3 times.  I did not have randomize on for either playlist. 

I may have figured out what was causing it to play out of order though.  Remote falcon does not tolerate special characters very well.  I had to rename several sequences such as "can't" to "cant" and "Mr." to "Mr".   I then went on to the remote falcon webpage and under the Sequences tab and entered a cosmetic name in the "Sequence Display Name" field with the correct spelling.  I named one of the sequences "Mr Grinch", but on the cosmetic display entered "You're a mean one Mr. Grinch".  After entering the cosmetic names I would hit the "Sort Alphabetically" button (which I think would sort by cosmetic names) placing "You're a mean one Mr. Grinch" with the "Y's"at the bottom of the list instead of with the "M's" towards the middle with the actual "Mr Grinch" sequence name.  I ended up just uploading the "Website" playlist 2 or 3 times and made sure I did not hit the "Sort Alphabetically" on the remote falcon site.  It is working again for now.  It was late in the evening so not 100% sure that I am beyond the issue, but it worked correctly for the rest of the night. 

[jond]

Follow Up....  I am still having issues with Remote Falcon not playing the correct song using FPP.  It will either play a random song instead of the one selected, or the voted song will disappear from the list, play a random song, and then after the random song has completed will play the one that was voted on.  Typically if I upload the playlist manually a couple of times, and then manually stop the remote falcon plugin for 60 seconds and the restart it will sometimes repair.  Every night we have to bring up the website and watch what is being voted on and make sure the voted song is what is playing.  If not spend a lot of time troubleshooting the issue.  The issue has appeared almost every night.

It looks like xlights 2021.40 was released and has a Remote Falcon fix included.  I upgraded and it resolved the "Error: uploading play list to remote falcon.  I am going to switch back to xschedule tonight and see if it works better with xschedule.   

[keithsw1111]

I fixed the xschedule problem in .40.


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[jond]

I fixed the xschedule problem in .40.

Thank You Keith!!!!

I have been testing with it this afternoon and it has been working great so far!  In the past, I only had to add/remove a sequence and it would break instantly.  I have added and removed several sequences with no issues.