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This morning, using MobileSheets for Windows 3.6.7, I could not get my two-tablet setup to work properly.
About a year ago, I purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 tablet PC to upgrade my older Surface Pro 4. That's when I discovered the visual benefits of running a two-tablet setup. Things had been running very reliably, for the most part - until this morning, after the 3.6.7 update.
I am able to link the tablets using Bluetooth as usual with one tablet (the newer one) as the Leader, and the second tablet as the "next page" device. The first time I select a song, it appears to select and display the next page for that song on the second tablet, as expected. After that, the second tablet fails to respond to any subsequent page turns. The first tablet continues to skip pages that should be displayed (but aren't) on the second tablet.
Did something change around this function with the latest relelase?
Thanks!
Serafin
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Hello Serafin,
No, I did not change any of that functionality with version 3.6.7, and didn't modify any code related to the "Connect Tablets" functionality. I'm not sure why you are suddenly having connection issues, but due to the fact that none of the code changed, I can't imagine it has anything to do with the code changes in version 3.6.7. Having said that, you can always try backing up your library, uninstalling and reinstalling to see if that fixes any issues.
Mike
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01-09-2023, 03:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-09-2023, 03:16 PM by Serafin.)
Mike, thanks for the reply. I'll try a few other things and report back.
To add detail to my earlier report... the connection between the two tablets appears to be maintained - the connections remain listed on the respective device/group lists. The page turns just aren't getting through somehow.
Serafin
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Additional observations:
To eliminate (or at least diminish) the possibility that the issue stems from an isolated corrupted installation, I tried various combinations of leader and follower across three different Windows (10 and 11) PCs. I observed the same issue in every case. The follower simply stopped following after the initial page turn (in one exception, I might have been able to get one or two additional page turns before it stopped). Furthermore, I could not turn pages on the follower until I disconnected the tablets or restarted the app. I seem to recall that I was able to do this previously, but I can't be certain.
It really seems to me that there's something off with the release. Can you confirm that you don't see it on your end?
Thanks.
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I have tested this, and in general, the bluetooth connection seems unreliable when disconnecting, creating a new leader, reconnecting, and then loading songs. I am going to have to see if I can improve this code. One of the things I want to do is switch to bluetooth LE instead of using Bluetooth RFCOMM, so this may push me to do that sooner. I am seeing issues where, on the leader device, if I created a group, and the follower has been connecting, disconnecting, reconnecting, etc, I have issues disconnecting and trying to recreate the leader. Sometimes I'm seeing a good bluetooth connection, and I can load a song and it loads on both devices, but the page turns don't work correctly (as you described). A different time, I tested it, and I had no issues turning pages at all. So it seems that it's really hit-or-miss as to whether the connection is in a good state and the page turns are reliable. Restarting the app always gets things back into a good state though. I just did that on both devices, connected over bluetooth, and the page turns are working great. So you may just have to go through this a couple times to see if you can establish a good connection. I'll work on addressing these issues for the next update though.
Mike
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I'm really unhappy with the way the bluetooth code is working, because Microsoft's code seems very unreliable. I'm hoping the bluetooth LE approach will be more reliable and easier to work with. It would also potentially allow the iPad version to connect to Windows and Android if they all use bluetooth LE (I'll have to see if Apple's implementation will support that though). I'll make as many fixes as I can to the existing bluetooth implementation for the next update, but after the half page turn feature is added, the next update will switch everything to use bluetooth LE.
Mike
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Got it. Thanks for looking into it. It's just odd that things seemed to be working reliably for me until now. iPad interoperability in this area will definitely be a plus.
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New data:
I tried connecting by WiFi instead of BT - I'd never tried that before because I do not expect to have a network available at all performance venues. I was pleased that it connected faster than when using BT.
Unfortunately, I get the same behavior with page turns failing after the first one  .
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I am definitely seeing behavior I have never seen before. The same issue appears to be happening with Wifi as with Bluetooth - the code tries to read data from a socket (the connection with the other device) and it basically hangs forever and never returns. I'm trying a completely clean build right now to see if it resolves the issue, but if it does not, the only thing I changed in recent weeks was to update the version of Visual Studio which I use as the editor. While it's hard to believe that could cause something so fundamental to break, I don't know what else could be causing the issue at the moment. I'll let you know what I find - if I can get things back into the normal working state, I'll put out an update immediately.
Mike
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01-10-2023, 08:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-10-2023, 08:08 AM by Zubersoft.)
I have found the cause of the issues and will submit an update with fixes ASAP. It's not something I would have ever imagined would impact the networking and bluetooth connectivity. The changes I made for the metronome ensured that audio playback resources were freed when they weren't needed, but those resources impacted the use of Microsoft's networking APIs.
Thanks for reporting the issue!
Mike
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Looks good on 3.6.8. Thank you.
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I'm glad to hear that - thanks for following up.
Mike
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(01-10-2023, 05:08 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: I'm really unhappy with the way the bluetooth code is working, because Microsoft's code seems very unreliable. I'm hoping the bluetooth LE approach will be more reliable and easier to work with. It would also potentially allow the iPad version to connect to Windows and Android if they all use bluetooth LE (I'll have to see if Apple's implementation will support that though). I'll make as many fixes as I can to the existing bluetooth implementation for the next update, but after the half page turn feature is added, the next update will switch everything to use bluetooth LE.
Mike
I used Bluetooth Master/slave setup since it was implemented and NEVER had any problems with 1 leader and 3 followers on Pixel Slates based on ChromeOS with Android layer. Good few years now and can't thank you enough. Android & Bluetooth combination rock solid.
I would never use Windows based device during the performance.
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