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2014/07/17 at 2:40 pm #40890
Solved. The problem was that the iPad MUST be configured with a default route and DNS server even though both are irrelevent in this setup. Seems to be quite happy with the default route pointing at itself and a DNS server it can’t reach
2014/07/16 at 6:48 pm #40880No joy, sadly. I had an hour to spare so figured I might as well take the plunge – could have done tonight on analogue if necessary.
Mixrack and surface now on 1.94, no connection on iPad 🙁
2014/07/16 at 5:53 pm #40879Thanks. I couldn’t think of any other possible reasons and hadn’t left myself enough time to sort it out. I’ll do the upgrade after tonight’s gig
2013/04/20 at 1:30 am #33763Just a quick update. In my experience you need to be prepared to experiment a bit to get MixPad working reliably. I’ve found that the ideal WiFi settings vary, probably dependant on the radio environment of the venue. Sometimes 2.4GHz is best, other times 5 GHz. Securing the AP can be an issue – I’ve sometimes had success leaving the AP open when using WPA has caused problems. Sometimes auto channel selection is OK, other times it needs to be fixed – tonight I tried 4 channels before I found one that gave me stability.
At least it’s reasonably quick to sort out. If I have difficulty with a particular setting it tends to drop out within 2 minutes. If it lasts beyond that then it’ll be OK for the rest of the gig. I now have the procedure that the laptop and AP are wired to the mixrack as early as possible during setup so that I can test and tweak settings while I’m cabling the stage.
Also make sure that the AP is well separated from any in-ear monitor transmitters.
2013/03/27 at 12:48 am #33578Well you live and learn…
Tried fixing the channel tonight and still got dropouts.Then, since I had the time tonight to mess with the router config I tried switching to the 2.4 GHz band. Absolutely flawless all night. I had assumed that the 5GHz band would be better since mobile phones don’t support it and I always have line of sight to the AP so propagation shouldn’t be an issue, but certainly for me the 2.4 band is better.
2013/03/25 at 10:54 am #33567Router position is interesting. I do usually have it near the iDR so that might be an issue. It’s a D-Link DIR-815, configured for 5GHz band only.
The thing I forgot to mention is that on a couple of gigs I’ve used the laptop on wireless running Editor with no problems over a 2-hour show while the iPad was still dropping out every 2 minutes
2012/11/30 at 2:41 pm #32279Tweak isn’t really suited to my 2 main use cases for iPad:
– setting monitor mixes from stage during soundcheck
– providing multitouch fader control when I’m doing FOH+MON without the T80For both of these, MixPad is absolutely brilliant when it’s working smoothly which is why I get so annoyed when it doesn’t work.
For the second use case I can replace MixPad with MIDI faders, but I love being able to wander around to the back of the stage during performance to check & adjust monitor levels.
I engineer a couple of regular jam sessions with a lot of performers changing around during the evening so all mixes need a lot of on-the-fly adjustment
Hopefully this issue might be addressed by OneMix, but to me it feels like the communication protocol needs to be made more resilient to dropped packets – display a dropped connection warning on MixPad, then automatically catch up as soon as it can after connection is restored
2012/11/26 at 12:10 pm #32235I’m at a bit of a loss at the moment to be honest. My second test in the evening was also flawless for about 90 minutes (with an extra 6 APs visible in my local area), but in Saturday’s soundcheck it was unusable again. Murphy’s law seems to be applying – tests are fine, but it fails when you actually need it. Fortunately it did work for long enough at the opening of the first set when our FOH engineer forgot to switch my monitor feed on.
I’m not sure that much can be done from the user end – there’s virtually no configuration options on the iPad network setup (they ‘just work’), so all I’ve been able to do is correlate the 2-3 second network disconnection to the MixPad disconnection
2012/11/23 at 4:13 pm #32228The only minor issue you’re going to run into is that all of the iDR outputs are on XLR so you’ll need to change the cabling (or just the plugs, or use adaptors) for the monitor feeds. All outs are line level.
Similarly all inputs are XLR, unless you go for the modular rack system.
If you’re on 16 channels now then you do need to consider your future needs – you don’t want to go for an iDR16 now then find you need one extra input in 6 months’ time.
iLive editor is fine for running a show, although I find that I do lose the ability to react quickly to changes compared to using a console or surface – with real faders I use a lot of muscle memory and tactile feedback to find the right controls under my fingers, without even having to look a lot of the time. With a laptop you don’t get that – the only feedback is visual.
..which reminds me.. There are some cheap and cheerful MIDI controllers around. I’ll be taking my Behringer BCF to my next mixrack+laptop gig to supplement the iLive Editor controls.
2012/11/23 at 2:11 pm #32226well that’s irritating. 1hour test with the meters running. No dropouts and only a couple of ping RTTs above 3ms. I’ll try again this evening when there are a few more WiFi radios around…
2012/11/23 at 12:26 pm #32224@Carey D, yes I did consider this problem before upgrading the iPad, but I had no difficulty and didn’t need the workaround. This is with 6.0.1 so maybe Apple addressed the ‘no internet’ problem with that. I don’t have the issues related by others (mostly iPhone4 users) on ZDnet and elsewhere with greyed-out options.
The main difficulty I have at the moment is inconsistency. After the upgrades I tested the system at home and had no dropouts at all during a 30-minute test run. That was the day before the gig experience related above. I’m about to run a test today with the meters turned off so I’ll see how that gets on. It doesn’t help that the locked-down nature of the iPad means that you can’t get much in the way of diagnostics out of them
2012/11/23 at 12:09 am #32219I hadn’t found that option, thanks. I’ll give it a try next time..
2012/11/05 at 5:45 pm #31926“R.E Comms drop outs over wifi we’ve been doing quite a lot of testing recently as were gearing up for OneMix release.
Our lost comms trigger is 10 seconds of no UDP comms between rack and Editor / MixPad.”
I was going to post asking what the trigger delay was and maybe to increase it, but 10 seconds seems ample.
My experience so far (only had the kit a few weeks)
Venue 1: Empty venue during setup and soundcheck only; no dropouts.
Venue 2: laptop wired; no droputs on iPad in 2 hours continuous use
Venue 3: laptop wireless; iPad dropouts at 10min intervals or so. Editor on laptop no dropouts
Venue 4: laptop wired; iPad dropouts ~10min intervals again.
What I take from this is that the laptop wireless seems more reliable than the iPad, but that having the laptop wired or wireless doesn’t make any difference to the iPad (so radio congestion is probably not the issue).
It’ll be interesting when I go back to venue 2 in a couple of weeks to see if it’s stable there again.
The thing I find most annoying about the dropouts is that you have to connect, log in again and then switch the fader view back to what you were using. It would be much less of an issue if the app quietly reconnected without having to go through this each time, although I realise that caching the login details does have some security implications.
D-Link DIR-815, ‘new’ iPad, iOS 5
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