From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_gmail.com)
Date: Sat Aug 17 2013 - 09:05:43 CDT

Hi Tristan,
Thanks for the update and the good news. Perhaps you should send a reminder to John Stone that he promised to update the VRPN client code linked into the official vmd binaries a long time ago.

Good luck,
     Axel.

--
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer  akohlmey_at_gmail.com  http://goo.gl/1wk0
International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste. Italy.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tristan Croll <tristan.croll_at_qut.edu.au>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 21:41:17 
To: Axel Kohlmeyer<akohlmey_at_gmail.com>
Cc: VMD_List X<vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
Subject: RE: vmd-l: Re: VRPN driver for Novint Falcon haptic device
 available - Looking for Testers
Hi Axel,
Just an update on this.  The latest official VRPN build with your Falcon driver included appears to compile and work quite happily in Windows.  In getting it to communicate with VMD, however, we're running into the same version mismatch problem that I had when trying to use it in Windows: the standard VMD build uses VRPN 7.04 (from memory) whereas the latest VRPN is 7.3, and these versions will not talk to each other.  A colleague of mine is now working towards building a copy of VMD for Windows from source against VRPN 7.3.
Cheers,
Tristan  
-----Original Message-----
From: Axel Kohlmeyer [mailto:akohlmey_at_gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, 4 July 2013 2:44 PM
To: Tristan Croll
Cc: Marcos Ackel; VMD_List X
Subject: Re: vmd-l: Re: VRPN driver for Novint Falcon haptic device available - Looking for Testers
On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 6:32 AM, Tristan Croll <tristan.croll_at_qut.edu.au> wrote:
> Hi Marcos/Axel,
>
>
>
> Just wondering if anything's come of this?  I've just gotten access to a
as it so often happens in academia: nothing.
> teaching lab with 3D visualisation (NVidia 3D Vision), and would like to
> explore its possibilities for teaching molecular structure concepts via IMD.
> It's Windows-based, though, and the graphics cards aren't compatible with
> running the 3D glasses under Linux - so at a minimum I'm stuck with running
> VMD in Windows.
> If there's no Windows VRPN binary available, given the nature of VRPN it
> seems it should be possible to run the VRPN server in a network-enabled
> Linux virtual machine and put the VM's IP in the .vmdsensors file.  Do you
> see any reason why this shouldn't work?
you need USB virtualization, since libnifalcon seems very sensitive to
timing issues, it may be affected negatively by virtualization. that
should not keep you from trying. however, for some other project i
have recently successfully employed a linux-to-windows cross compiler
toolchain and also found a way to teach CMake to handle this. so
theoretically, i should be able to compile both, libnifalcon and VRPN
for windows now. but i am currently 5,000 miles away from my falcons
and won't get access to them for several more months, thus i won't be
able to do any testing.
axel.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Tristan
>
>
>
> From: owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu [mailto:owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu] On Behalf Of
> Marcos Ackel
> Sent: Thursday, 18 October 2012 11:59 AM
> To: Axel Kohlmeyer
> Cc: VMD_List X
> Subject: vmd-l: Re: VRPN driver for Novint Falcon haptic device available -
> Looking for Testers
>
>
>
> Hello Axel,
>
> of course I'll send you not only the executables, as also a small text with
> some clues to build them. I also intend to build them using Ubuntu in the
> next month or so (and will also write some lines about the building).
>
> I'll get some time (hope during this week) to try to fix the remaining
> problems.
>
> I'll try a hub or different USB ports as you suggested.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Marcos Ackel
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Axel Kohlmeyer <akohlmey_at_gmail.com>
> To: Marcos Ackel <mvackel_at_yahoo.com>
> Cc: VMD_List X <vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 3:31 PM
> Subject: Re: VRPN driver for Novint Falcon haptic device available - Looking
> for Testers
>
>
> marcos,
>
> On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Marcos Ackel <mvackel_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hello Dr. Kohlmeyer,
>>
>> I've just finished building the LibNiFalcon.lib and the ICMS VPRN for
>> Windows XP from the sources and using the instructions from your page.
>> THANK
>> YOU VERY MUCH for sharing such great software.
>>
>> I've used MS Visual Studio 2010 and Boost 1.51 for building.
>
> interesting. i don't use windows, so i never tried compiling
> on windows and - so far - i wasn't able to convince somebody
> to try compiling and testing on windows. if you sort out the
> remaining issues, would you be willing to share the resulting
> executables, so i can make them available on my homepage
> for others that want to use the falcon on windows to download?
>
>> The tests included in  the LibNiFalcon (version 1.0.1), mainly the
>> "falcon_test_cli.exe" worked perfectly.
>
> cool.
>
>> Using the VRPN (I've applied the patches in the folder
>> "libnifalcon-patchs"), the vrpn_server.exe gives some constant, repetitive
>> errors:
>>
>> NovintFalcon #0 failed, trying to reset (Try power cycle if more than 4
>> attempts  made)
>> Resetting the NovintFalcon #0 (attempt 1)
>> Closing Falcon device 0.
>> Trying to open Falcon device 0/1.
>> Falcon Firmware already loaded.
>> Falcon calibrated successfully.
>> Move control all the way out until led turns green to activate device.
>
> this should happen exactly once. the falcon needs to be
> calibrated for use with VRPN.
>
>> (The Falcon led goes from green to red, and then blue. After moving
>> control
>> all the way out, it turns green again - as I think it should be).
>>
>> After some debugging, it seems that the function "get_status()" is
>> returning
>> false and causing the issue. I've changed the FALCON_NUM_RETRIES from 10
>> to
>> 300 and it's more stable now, but of course this is not the solution. Do
>> you
>> have any clue about what may be causing this problem? I've noticed that
>> when
>
> no. we've found that sometimes changing the USB hub helps.
> even though the falcon docs say that the falcon must not be
> plugged into a hub, i found that one has to use a *powered*
> usb hub for best results. yet even then, sometimes changing
> the make and model of the hub results in different results.
>
> i haven't looked at the code in a very long time and don't have
> access to a falcon for the foreseeable future, so i cannot do
> any serious debugging for a while.
>
>> I start VMD, the error always occurs immediately. Also, after grabbing a
>> molecule using the center button and keeping it pressed, the error does
>> _not_ occur.
>
> there are likely some timing issues with reading the
> status of the falcon via usb. things get really messy
> when connecting two falcons to the same VRPN server.
>
> i can't really help at this point outside of recommending
> to experiment with using different hubs or trying without
> a hub. perhaps on windows things are different than on
> linux...
>
> good luck,
>     axel.
>
>>
>> Any clue would be of great help.
>>
>> Marcos Ackel
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer  akohlmey_at_gmail.com  http://goo.gl/1wk0
> International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste. Italy.
>
--
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer  akohlmey_at_gmail.com  http://goo.gl/1wk0
International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste. Italy.