Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Barco Communicator projector icons missing

This is topic Barco Communicator projector icons missing in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Tim Sherman (Member # 569) on 09-13-2015, 05:48 PM:

Has any one figured out why the auto generated projector icons for each screen in the Barco Communicator are not showing up? All of the projectors used to show up on the left side, and then one day they just stopped appearing. Is this a windows update issue? I know quite a few are having the same issue. For quite some time now I just have to type in the ip manually to connect to each screen. It would be nice if they were showing up like they are supposed to. This is happening with all versions of communicator. Currently running 5.0.13

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-13-2015, 07:51 PM:

Do you have 2 network cards in your computer that is running Communicator? That'll do it.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 09-14-2015, 06:35 AM:

Communicator chooses one path out of your computer to find the projectors and if it chooses the wrong path...they don't show up. It also seems to default to a lesser path. That is, if you happen to add IPs to a single NIC (lets say you want to be on a 10.x.y.z network and on a 192.168.x.y network and they are all plugged into the same switch, you could set your computer to be on both...I've noticed that Communicator will not use the main one set in your IPV4 settings but will go to the secondary one.

If you have two NICs, it may choose the other one. Disable the one not on the projector network and they'll come back.

It would be nice if one could specify the range to seek so that it would pick the right NIC/route...but alas no. Also, if you have any Link-Local stuff going on (things with a 169.254 type address), that will, for sure keep them from showing up. Some equipment uses Link-Local as a means to find everything in the background, even if it has a standard IP.

Posted by John Roddy (Member # 7348) on 09-14-2015, 07:59 PM:

This limitation has been driving me nuts too. I service two different locations, so I have my network adapter set to use two different IPs (each location's projector networks are in a different local IP range, eg. XXX.18.0.XXX vs. XXX.19.0.XXX). The factor that determines whether or not the list shows up seems to be whatever the gateway is set to. Even though Windows lets me setup an alternate gateway and every other application has no problem figuring out which it should try, Barco's software fails. I can get it to work for one location or the other, but not both. Even though I can still connect to whatever I want. It just won't list anything.

I've been playing around with the idea of trying to put some kind of software blocker in place that only allows specified applications to see one network device or something like that, but it's still kind of annoying. Would be nice if there were a few more networking options in there.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 09-14-2015, 08:09 PM:

Now what I have done if there are multiple IP ranges accessible via a single node, is to relax the subnet mask to a 255.255.0.0 type and then add in the specific ranges into the extra IPs on the specific ranges, that tends to have the projectors show up.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 09-15-2015, 12:37 AM:

I see this when I have wireless connected, Communicator will sometimes not show the projectors. It does connect if I type in the proj address. Shutting off wireless lets it find them fine, and turning wireless back on after that doesn't make them go away. Until Communicator crashes and I have to restart it that is... and the newer communicator versions crash fairly often.
I've never tried setting the pc port to more than one address range.
Same thing sometimes happens the other way around: a browser won't find a site through wireless with the auditorium network connected. For some unknown reason connecting to Google does work, after that all sites are available.

Posted by Tim Sherman (Member # 569) on 09-15-2015, 06:02 PM:

Yep that is exactly what it is. Multiple nics and multiple Ip addresses. Well now I know why they aren't showing up, but doesn't really help me that much to fix it. Thanks for the info.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-15-2015, 07:13 PM:

I fight this also to where now, I just have the last three numbers memorized in the address string, which these numbers are assigned to each unit, and change accordingly when I need to connect to a certain unit.

As for GDC when I use VNC, I do the same knowing the last three numbers of the address string.

Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 09-15-2015, 08:11 PM:

If you're running this on a reasonably modern Windows, could you not run the application in Windows Virtual PC or VMWare, and set the network settings to only have one network adapter, and the select "bridged" to put this virtual network interface straight on the real network card you want it on?

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 09-18-2015, 01:27 PM:

quote: Dave Macaulay
Shutting off wireless lets it find them fine, and turning wireless back on after that doesn't make them go away.

That's what I do. My laptop is connected to the theatre network via wireless, however the projectors are on their own separate network with a different router and IP range - no wireless anything on the projection network.

When I use my laptop to log in to communicator, I disable the wifi on the laptop and physically plug in a CAT6 cable from the laptop to one of the switches on the projector server rack. Doing it this way, all of my projector icons do show up. If I leave the wireless turned on they do not.