Row Pro 2.001 or 2.0 --> 2.001 compatibility issues?

chgoss · Post by **chgoss** » May 24th, 2006, 8:40 am

Hi Folks,
Wanted to get a survey of how 2.001 is going.. We had a pretty poor race last night:
- I was acting as race master with 2.000.2234.39306
- 3 other people were in the race (which was scheduled using the oarbits server directly)
- Joe, using 2.0
- an evaluation user (Brendo) using 2.001
- Michael using 2.001

- In the warm up, Joe was having trouble, so he dropped out. So it was a 2.0 RM, and two 2.001 racers. As race master I was able to chat with everyone, everyone registered good, everyone showed up green and I started the race OK
- If I remember correctly, Brendo splits display wasnt working correctly.. It displayed something like "-44" which stayed that way the entire time. Michael and I raced correctly, the race stopped when everyone finished. So far, fairly good, although if you look at the results, I am on the only one with a time. Brendo and Michael dont. (see 5/24/06 "tueNight....")

- then we started the first interval, I started seeing all kinds of problems. Chat started going funky, intermittent communications.. The 2.001 racers werent showing up as green.. sometimes white, but mostly red. Because chat wasnt working great, I couldnt seem to collect what was going on.. I bailed, created a quick race, which everyone joined BUT we had the same results as the warmup. the 2.001 users had wierd splits, and the results on the oarbits server dont show a time.

- after that, everything broke down

very frustrating.. Not having chat working properly, we couldnt get anything coordinated.. evening was pretty much a wash.

so, wondering if this is a 2.001 problem, or an interoperability issue with 2.0?

michaelb · Post by **michaelb** » May 24th, 2006, 9:36 am

Pete says that the problem is fixed and will be released in a new version 2.002 in a few days. Hopefully that is true, but having gone through numerous versions of rowpro over the past 2 years, I won't be convinced until I see it.

http://digitalrowing.com/default.aspx?ItemId=305

My problems started after the first interval. During that first row, Brendo's split was shown as 0:00; you looked normal for the most part, but I think I stopped getting your split data down the final stretch. I had done a QR the night before as well without major problem.

After that first row, I tried to check in to the second one. By mistake, I hit the create a QR button instead, and RP crashed. I was unable to force quit RP using the Task Manager and had a hard time getting windows back running. But I eventually shut RP down and then logged out of XP and back in. After that, essentially nothing worked:

1) I was very frustrated in Chat, since it seemed like no one got my messages, so I was just talking to myself. I occasionally got Chat from you and could tell you were at least occasionally getting chat from me. But I got nothing from Joe or Brendo. Brendo status in chat showed that he was rowing the whole time.

2) We were unable to start the remaining SRs. I checked in and showed green to me. Brendo was red. I don't know if you tried to go to start every time, but we did get the race setup failed message.

3) after I gave up on your intervals, I tried to schedule a QR and couldn't do that, and tried to set up my own SR (in RP in the internet panel) and couldn't get that to go to start either. Although this wasn't the message when the race setup failed the first several times, after a while I started getting the message "not registered on the race server".

Pete says that the online problems are caused by a single line of code, but I don't see how that can explain this range of problems, particularly the chat problems. So there may be 2.00/2.001 compatability problems, and we will have to see if 2.002 solves all of this.

FrankJ · Post by **FrankJ** » May 24th, 2006, 2:21 pm

michaelb wrote: Pete says that the problem is fixed and will be Pete says that the online problems are caused by a single line of code, but I don't see how that can explain this range of problems, particularly the chat problems. So there may be 2.00/2.001 compatibility problems, and we will have to see if 2.002 solves all of this.

Michael,

What Pete said is:

In 2.001 we changed one line of code in the Internet Racing area that passed our testing but has subsequently been responsible for a lot of problems. The bug is in the TCP/IP area, so it generates a lot of different problems depending on which TCP/IP packets get blocked.

Looks like as long as you are online you have a chance of hitting the problem. Whatever you are doing will fail and fail in different ways depending on which packets are blocked. Sounds like a reasonable description of what I have been seeing. Hopefully he can fix it quickly because it has definitely kept me from doing any online races or workouts.

Frank

michaelb · Post by **michaelb** » May 24th, 2006, 2:31 pm

Sure, let's be optimistic. But I have been "enjoying" online rowing with RP since the public beta so I have seen more than my share of promised fixes that result in more bugs. I am pretty sure you have been there too. But things have been getting much better, and 2.001 hopefully fixes one of the last big problems: new users having trouble authenticating and getting started. It has been so frustrating seeing new people repeatedly have problems.

Adoption of RP would be so much better if new users found it effortless to get online and up and running, so hopefully that works with 2.002 and we can get that behind us.

Any thoughts on summer racing? I am so out of shape.

Brendo · Post by **Brendo** » May 24th, 2006, 7:31 pm

Hi guys

and that was my first taste of online rowing, at one stage I had a split time for one of you which was about a hundred digits, running across the entire screen.

When I tried chat, no one was there or so it seemed.

at the very end someone set up a QR, then we got two fault starts and nothing. I tried to stop rowing then got lots of Rowpro error messages. closing Rowpro didn't work so had to reboot.

On RP itself, it definitely isn't effortless and not particularly intuitive. they seem to have a lot of space for buttons at the top but don't usem very well.

I'll still give it another go if I see a race which suits Australia time

Nice rowing with you yesterday by the way

Brendin

FrankJ · Post by **FrankJ** » May 24th, 2006, 7:40 pm

michaelb wrote: Any thoughts on summer racing? I am so out of shape.

Michael,

I raced all last summer and was in great shape by the beginning of January but then the inevitable happened and by the CRASH-Bs I was struggling. This year I plan on taking it easier over the summer and not really get serious until September or October. Even with that I wouldn't mind doing a few online workouts. Personally I do not have the time this year to run a series but would help someone get started if anyone else is willing to do the work needed to run a series.

I think the biggest mistake Digital Rowing makes is that they don't have a broad enough test base. I fell into the V2.001 problem the minute I tried it. How did it ever make it through their testing without being noticed?

michaelb · Post by **michaelb** » May 25th, 2006, 8:25 am

Looks like 2.002 is out, so hopefully all these problems go a way. I agree about the racing last year. I was in great shape over the fall, but couldn't keep it up into Feb (the kids and I got sick). So like you, I plan to take it easy until Sept or so.

FrankJ · Post by **FrankJ** » May 25th, 2006, 9:58 am

I've scheduled a 5K at 21:00GMT today to test RP V2.002. It would be nice to have some company to verify that online racing now works properly. If you would like a later time up to 24:00GMT let me know and I'll adjust the time.

Frank

ancho · Post by **ancho** » May 25th, 2006, 11:02 am

I've tried 2001 offline at home apparently without problems.
Now I'm going to download 2002.
If i'm home at time tonight, I'll try to join your row!

See ya then!

Dokitoedele · Post by **Dokitoedele** » May 25th, 2006, 2:09 pm

Rowpro 2.002 is out
This version is mainly to fix two issues in 2.001:

- In 2.001 there is a bug in the network level of Internet Racing that can interfere with the sending of any packet. This bug produced a wide range of weird issues in 2.001, all of which will now be gone again in 2.002.

- Also in 2.001 we put a check in to reject occasional bad data from the PM2+ due to electrical interference. Unflrtunately this check was made too tight, so if you had a period of not rowing during a split, the average pace for the split was low enough to fail the check. This problem is now gone in 2.002.

The 2.002 download is here: http://www.digitalrowing.com/default.aspx?type=2&id=31

FrankJ · Post by **FrankJ** » May 25th, 2006, 2:24 pm

FrankJ wrote:I've scheduled a 5K at 21:00GMT today to test RP V2.002. It would be nice to have some company to verify that online racing now works properly. If you would like a later time up to 24:00GMT let me know and I'll adjust the time.

Frank

I'm going to have to cancel tonight something has come. If things look OK I'll give it a try on Friday.

Frank