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Openbuilds Control becomes unstable during long projects

Discussion in 'Control Software' started by RoosterTX, Jul 12, 2019.

  1. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    This has happened to me on two different computers. My old system (Win7) and my new system (Win10) both experience problems with long projects stalling out and the software becoming unusable. More so the older system, but the new system as well. The new PC is a Intel I5 with 12GB of RAM and a fresh install of Win10. No other software is failing.

    What I experience is that during a long project, say with 3-4 different pieces of gcode in that needs to be run consecutively against the same XY zero point, is that eventually I can no longer make the software jog, run code, or navigate menus. Also, displays of position and buttons freeze up and no longer respond. The only fix is to stop the software completely and reload, which of course causes me to lose my XY zero. Much frustration follows.

    I'm now using Universal Gcode Sender nearly exclusively. There are more features in the Openbuilds software but it's cost me too many projects and I just don't trust it. Suggestions?
     
  2. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    We did fix a memory leak bug in the 1.0.17x versions. 160s and older had an issue.

    So if you last tried it in the 160s, try the newest version once again and report back.

    If issue persist, post sample files and order they have to be loaded so I can try replicating the issue on this end to analyze and fix
     
  3. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    I will check my version and the newer version as you suggest and report back. Thank you very much for the rapid response!
     
  4. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Sorry this thread is old and I'm just now getting back to it. Sometimes I go weeks without getting to play in the shop..

    Did some cutting today, making some simple vector cutouts. Started getting slow responses to jog commands from both the PC console and the mobile widget. Ran my simple gcode file to cut a triangle vector cut, and halfway through the cut it slowed waaaaaay down and acted like it was starved for commands. I saw this with my old PC, but this my PC now is much, much faster (Win10, Intel i5-4590T @2GHz with 12GB of RAM).

    As requested with my previous issue, I've attached the gcode file. I generated it using the OpenBuilds CAM Creator (where I make most of my simple files). Here is a video I uploaded showing what appears to be the machine starving for commands. Note that I'm running Control v183, just upgraded to it today.


     

    Attached Files:

  5. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Additional info. The cut was going to take probably another hour, even though the counter said 3 minutes or so remaining. Attempted to stop the job, and the GUI was unresponsive. Controller status on the software remained in "idle" state, but the machine kept chirping along at perhaps a tenth of a mm at a time. Couldn't stop it, so shut down the hardware with the power switch and killed the router. Software is still unresponsive, had to use the right click the icon in the systray and "quit OpenBuilds (disables integration)" to get it to end. Restarted completely and it's responsive again.
     
  6. sharmstr

    sharmstr OpenBuilds Team
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    Strange. I ran a 2.5 hour job today in 95 degree heat with a fanless mini pc that only has 4gb of RAM. Not a single problem except for running out of beer. I dont see where you've mention what control board you are using.
     
  7. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    What GPU (not CPU) does the PC have?
     
  8. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    GPU is Radeon, not in front of the PC but I believe 4900 series. To the previous question, the controller is the Black Box, bought this spring.
     
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  9. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    N
    Next time it happens, press F12, Performance Tab may have clues, also check Task Manager > Processes . Screenshots of those will help :)
     
  10. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Will do Peter, thank you. Again, I love the software. It's got way more features than UGS and is easier to use. Looking forward to not having this little hiccup anymore and I'll be good to go.
     
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  11. gregers05

    gregers05 Well-Known
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    I found this thread because I am also having the same exact issues. Just tried running a program to drill holes in my wasteboard and it locked up after about an hour. It also did this to me randomly in surfacing it as well. Same issues with mobile able becoming slow to respond and control on computer slow to respond. It is also not saving my zeros either. I am SOL now because I am not sure where my zeros are and I need to match up to the counterbore holes I already have there from a previous program.

    @RoosterTX what Gcode senders have you had good results with? I really hate to get away from OB builds stuff, but I couldnt get the CAM to work either. Carbide 3D software has been working great for me so far.
     
  12. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Don't get me wrong, Openbuilds Control gets it done most of the time. But real long cuts or multiple programs run consecutively without a reboot of the software has ruined a few things for me. Universal Gcode Sender (UGS) has been more stable but has less bells and whistles. As I'm getting into more complex projects that requires a clearing path, tool change, finishing path, flip, repeat, etc... I'm a little worried about it.
     
  13. gregers05

    gregers05 Well-Known
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    I agree. I like everything the OB software offers, but i cant have it randomly locking up, especially on longer cuts
     
  14. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    That is all odd, but as always, happy to look at the issue. However we need your help to see why it happens. Like i said to Rooster above, F12, Performance tab will tell all the secrets. It happens on your PCs so only you guys can help us check why.

    I ran 18 hour jobs three in a row last week, no lockup, on a very low power win10 TV box. So got to have specifics to troubleshoot :)

    Complaining is more fun, i agree. But do try to gather some info:
    Post the gcode files
    Post sysinfos
    Post troubleshooting data / screenshots of task manager, and F12>Performance/Memory tabs when you guys have the issues

    The old "i dont feel sick when I am at the doctor" thing is the issue... Cannot diagnose what we dont experience
     
  15. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    So some additional guidance for troubleshooting:
    On OpenBuilds CONTROL: Press F12 to bring up devtools. Resize window a little so it all fits. Go to the Memory tab (Screenshot shows the gcode I have loaded there along with all the other GUI memory totals to about 132MB, peaking at 178MB. When there are active webworkers there may be two lines (each worker gets its own JS VM)
    Below that you can see Windows Task Manager peaking out, I can see Control has two threads spawned, barely using CPU, around 50MB memory per process (Backend, and GUI runs each in own process)

    So do similar for yours. When it gets hung up, lets see what those stats look like (as well as providing files etc of course)

    Also keep in mind, your PCs experience it :) so if you need to run for a while to get it to happen, why not power off your CNC, but stay connected. Run the job (wont move as power is off) but that'll make it run long enough to start seeing what the loads do, and give you the chance to get the information without actually machining.
    f12.PNG
     
  16. gregers05

    gregers05 Well-Known
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    Good info all around. @Peter Van Der Walt

    I didnt know about the f12 thing so ill give that a try tonight.

    I was planning to upload the gcode this morning, and had my flash drive in hand before i left the house but guess i set it down somewhere, because it didnt make it to work with me

    Never thought about starting the program and then turning power to the machine off. I assumed it would throw errors and stop running.

    As far as homing, am still at a loss for that, im a noob at gcode and grbl so i need to deep dive the issue I guess.

    Overall im just extremely frustrated with the machine. Ive had software issues from the get go and have many hours into tramming it and still isnt quite right because there is no good way to tram the z percisely. My motivation is dead and just feel like throwing it in the dumpster lately.
     
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  17. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    I hear you!
    :) sometimes its better to stop worrying and start making. At the end of the day if your tramming isnt perfect now, but "good enough" to turn out some projects (even if its more artsy than engineering) it all helps get you out of the slump as you build confidence and skill. Get making!

    Homing: personally I dont see the point, i dont do mass production. Plonk stock down on bed, jog to where 0,0,0 should be, setzero and run the job. Homing+offsets doesnt make a lot of sense for hobby use
     
  18. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Peter, it happened again. Seems like it's related to time the software is running vs the complexity of the job. Did a few very basic jobs this morning, then let the machine sit (software and hardware up and running, router off) for a few hours. Came back, and the software was very unresponsive. Got it to run a job, but it slowed down and I couldn't stop it. It also was able to jog, but was very sluggish.

    I captured what I think is the pertinent data you requested. If it's not, I'll try again. I'm fairly certain I can reproduce this reliably. The images I'm attaching are my computer info (for CPU/mem/OS), video card info from the AMD/Radeon app, the task manager screen cap when it happened, showing what appears to be OpenBuilds hogging up CPU and Memory, and the F12 snap as well.
    display adaptor info 17 Aug 2019.png my pc snapshot.png OpenBuilds Control F12 memory tab 17 Aug 2019.png task manager mem 17 Aug 2019.png
     
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  19. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Just an update. Left the Openbuilds Control software running overnight. Not running a job, just running on the PC. Came in today and PC was unresponsive. Checked task manager and found OpenBuilds Control was using 5.5GB of memory. I killed it, and it resisted it seems, and didn't stop cleanly. It slowly bled off allocated RAM. Took this snapshot when it was still using over 3GB.
    memory issue 1 sept 2019.jpg
     
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  20. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    • Was any file loaded?
    • Was it connected to a board or not?
    :) zooming in on something at least
     
  21. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Yes a file was loaded. The hardware was disconnected and powered down. I always disconnect the USB and power down so fans don't run.

    Also this was v185 software. Hope this helps!

    Just checked again today - left it running last night. Exact same thing. 7GB memory consumed. File was loaded, HW all disconnected and off.
     
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  22. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Can i beg another test, with no file loaded (or even better fresh reboot) , and running, see if same happens? (i assume viewer is open all night)
    (trying to see if its even 3d viewer related at all. This is really exciting troubleshooting now, as you found a repeatable way to make it happen. Now we just need to drill down to what 'doesnt make it happen. See happening while just standing there takes a lot of processes out of the line of suspects. What remains is basically the viewer, which has an Animation loop that runs all the time. So if it happens even with no gcode loaded, that could be something in there (as the animation loop still runs to draw the grid, etc) but if it only happens when gcode is loaded, its something like garbage collection etc. Love this kinda stuff! )
     
    #22 Peter Van Der Walt, Sep 2, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2019
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  23. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Will go set that up right now. Will do a fresh reboot, start the Control software but not load a file. Will keep everything else constant (i.e., no HW connected or running). Will look at it in the morning and advise.
     
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  24. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    Thanks! :) hoping it does the same :)
     
  25. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Peter, I hope it's what you wanted to hear, but I got exactly the same result. After about 8 hours, the result was the same. Over 5GB of RAM allocated to the control software, with no gcode file loaded and the hardware disconnected. I really hope this helps! Screenshot follows. memory issue 1 sept 2019 at 1101pm.jpg
     
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  26. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    It does! Long weekend is over, back in the office later *today (timezone difference hehe) but will dig into the animation loop then :)
     
  27. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    @RoosterTX

    So, had a power failure yesterday that killed my long running experiment just about a day before it clocked 2 weeks.
    Tried replicating your experiment, but even 1.9weeks in it hasnt balooned memory yet.
    Also, indepently tested by another forum member: Possible memory leak in viewer.js>animate() · Issue #101 · OpenBuilds/OpenBuilds-CONTROL

    I did change the animation loop scoping beta 1.0.186 · OpenBuilds/OpenBuilds-CONTROL@543a532 in v1.0.187 just to make it best practice, but shouldn't make a difference. The long term test was with 1.0.185
    After this long term test I am still somewhat convinced it's something "on your PC", but do try 1.0.187 or later and report back
     
    #27 Peter Van Der Walt, Sep 17, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2019
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  28. RoosterTX

    RoosterTX Well-Known
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    Well that's good. I'm glad it's working for you. I upgraded to 187 the other day, will keep an eye on it. Thank you for all the hard work!!
     
  29. Peter Van Der Walt

    Peter Van Der Walt OpenBuilds Team
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    So, for the one or four/five of you with issues, in v1.0.194:

    We've added a menu to Disable the 3D viewer - that should help you use all the other great features of CONTROL, but without the 3D viewer (which is just Eye candy really)

    disable viewer.png

    Some others of you reported an issue where sometimes the job stalls for a couple seconds, with CONTROL showing Not Responding along the top, if you were one of those, PLEASE do a test for us with this: Disable the viewer and run a job, see if the stalling went away. Give us feedback please! As it doesnt happen here in our labs, we need those of you who do have the issue to help test: Does disabling the 3D Viewer make a difference to the stalls. This will help us zoom in the root cause of that issue :)
     
  30. Brandon Hurst

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    I was having this same issue with 1.0.205. I was running a 2 part code file when in the middle of the 2nd part it slowed down to a crawl and would stop mid cut and resume a second or 2 later. The only thing that fixed it was completely exiting control and restarting. After I finished the job I updated to .207 so I can't confirm if I'm still having the same issue
     

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