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devonbeckett / LifxTile2DEngine

A simple engine for building scenes and animations for the Lifx Tile written in Python 2.7
MIT License
8 stars 1 forks source link

This is so Awesome!! Question #1

Open brazda opened 5 years ago

brazda commented 5 years ago

So I just got the panels and really just started messing with them. Your script is really cool and the first i tried but I get a little lag once in awhile and before I start digging into it and chasing my tail I was wondering if a couple second lag every minute or so is normal with the panel when using a python script or should I look into it more and dig into it and deconstruct my network.

devonbeckett commented 5 years ago

I occasionally have slowdowns if I try to run at too many frames per second. Lifx recommends against sending the devices more than 20 messages per second. Occasionally, you can get away with more, but I think the Lifx devices have trouble keeping up with the input and end up buffering and lagging, or dropping messages. Though to be honest I have not done extensive analysis of the issue.

I do also occasionally get a slowdown for a couple frames, but it is much less random than you are describing. It could be something on your network. Remember that the Lifx protocol is UDP based so there is no guarantee of delivery like there is with TCP. The Python script sends out messages and they get there when they get there. Usually this work, but every once in a while...

For what it is worth, while I LOVE the Lifx product line, they do not seem to have the best WiFi capabilities. I was having tons of trouble with their bulbs until I switched to using Google WiFi as my home router. I was using an upper mid-range DLink WiFi router before, which never gave me any problems with any other brand WiFi device.

If it is happening that frequently though, and you are sending less than 20 frames per second, then I would try to collect a network trace with a program like Wireshark to determine if it is you computer (Python) causing a transmission delay. If not your computer, then you may have some network congestion or WiFi channel congestion.

I will try to run some analysis myself as well to see if I can get a better idea of where some of the lag is coming from, but I suspect it is just the Lifx Tile.