Composer Max Batch Ripper Drivers

[EliC]

Re: Composer Max Batch Ripper Drivers

Brendan,
Thanks for the hard work. Looking forward to the next version of the drivers.

[bhoar]

Re: Composer Max Batch Ripper Drivers

Drive heights are not specified per say, but when a command is sent to the ripper for a specific drive, the robot knows the drive height. The problem is the position being sent to the robot is for the upper drive bays.

That's really what I mean - every other device either only has one drive location (for all drives - the device just goes to the load/unload position, then goes "down" until it hits an open tray, which could be one of up to eight different drives) or only cares which drive bank it is in (again, positioning to a bank and then going down until a drive tray is encountered).

The Max is the only unit I've run across where you have to specify the exact drive in a matrix fashion. I call this drive height only because that maps to an additional feature in my abstracted model* of units where I already use "drive bank". With the max, it's really more of a 2x2 drive matrix with direct addressing.

-brendan

* the abstracted model matters in terms of management of open trays and whether or not they interfere with other nearby drives, allowing more fine grained locking in the future. this could also become useful for allowing multiple trays to remain open for accelerated load/unload cycles at start/end of batch.

[EliC]

Re: Composer Max Batch Ripper Drivers

4. Will need to add support for drive height.

Drive heights are not specified per say, but when a command is sent to the ripper for a specific drive, the robot knows the drive height. The problem is the position being sent to the robot is for the upper drive bays.

[bhoar]

Re: Composer Max Batch Ripper Drivers

1-very long initialization. The arm is moving aimlessly a lot.
2-long pause between commands to the arm
3-seems to only retrieve discs from bin1 of 5 bins. Never looks to another bin for more discs
4-not getting or putting discs properly into 2 lower of the 4 drives, when trying to access the 2 lower drives it set to the same drive position as the 2 upper drives. Works fine when placing discs, they just fall a little further, but when trying to pick it tries to pick from the height of the upper drives
5-opens the right 2 drives (looking at the unit) but the arm attempts to go to the left 2 drives for placing the discs

1. Yes, for two reasons: a) error handling is currently poor, so extra reset commands are sent and b) on every tray close, i spin up and check for a disc, even if I am closing between a reject/unload and a load. I'll be tackling some of this in later versions of the ULCLI.

2. Probably due to 1b above.

3. yes, i need to add explicit stack managment (most multi-stack unts do this automatically).

4. Will need to add support for drive height.

5. You'll need to change the --drivebank=1 to --drivebank=2 for the right side drive configuration.

6-when unable to get new discs, gets stuck and keeps going between drive and bin, while an unload job is waiting.

6. The bank locking ensures that an unload/load or reject/load cycle must complete before servicing any other drives in the bank. Was the unload pending on a lower drive in this case?

EDIT: oops, I misunderstood. Yes, the end-of-batch (end of input) behavior is cruddy as it is now. You may have to manually clear the discs pending unload in the drives when you reach the end of your input stack, unless you add more discs.

As it stands now, you should be able to use the top left and top right drive with one input, one output and one reject stack.

-brendan

PS - thanks for all the help via email in closing in on a partly working driver for the max!

[EliC]

Re: Composer Max Batch Ripper Drivers

-when unable to get new discs, gets stuck and keeps going between drive and bin, while an unload job is waiting.

[EliC]

-very long initialization. The arm is moving aimlessly a lot.
-long pause between commands to the arm
-seems to only retrieve discs from bin1 of 5 bins. Never looks to another bin for more discs
-not getting or putting discs properly into 2 lower of the 4 drives, when trying to access the 2 lower drives it set to the same drive position as the 2 upper drives. Works fine when placing discs, they just fall a little further, but when trying to pick it tries to pick from the height of the upper drives
-opens the right 2 drives (looking at the unit) but the arm attempts to go to the left 2 drives for placing the discs