A disaster happened and ruined my work. MIDI ports became unavailable. I don’t know what happened. Throughout the project these ports became unavailable. On the screenshot, ‘Stan Remote’ is the port created by Bome Network Pro which receives remote MIDI controllers connections. Please help!
Recently got one more error: Cannot open system clipboard:
Hi,
First of all, make sure all devices (computers, BomeBox or IOS devices) are on the same network.
Then click on the iCON on Bome Network and make sure "Use Auto-Discovery is turned on. Also make sure you set the Network Port to 37000.
The message you are seeing is telling you that for some reason, this was turned off or perhaps you changed the network port number.
See below snapshot.
If Stan Remote is a Windows machine, make sure there are no MIDI applications opened on that machine also trying to access the same MIDI ports.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
This is usually Windows problem so a re-start of Windows may be necessary.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Florian suggested to leave Use Auto-Discovery OFF for my particular application and it has been working perfectly fine that way for along time. Port is 37000. Remote MIDI controllers are visible through BNP as seen on the screenshot. I just tried ‘Use Auto-Discovery’ ON on both machines and still port not available. Restarted both PCs - no improvement.
The only thing I changed that might have caused that was deleted BMT project file and restarted PC so BMT started without a project. Then I restored deleted project file and opened it. Got no connection until I restarted BMT. Then, restarted PC again and no matter what I do - it doesn’t see the ports… :(((((
Yes, Stan Remote is a remote PC. To my knowledge no other applications accesses the controllers on that PC. How can I see if any hidden processes access it?
If you open MT Pro on Stan Remote do you see the ports there? Perhaps you have a USB issue on that machine. You may also try moving the problem controllers to different USB ports instead.
As far as I know there is no way to tell what application is using a given MIDI port. The most likely candidates are DAWS. You just need to close down one application at a time until the port starts working. It is important to know that on Windows only one application at a time can access a given MIDI port. You may need to check applications running on both PCs.
BMT is running on the ‘CCC Audio PC’. There’s no BMT on ‘Stan Remote’ PC, that computer simply supplies MIDI controllers remotely to BMT Pro on ‘CCC Audio PC’. The controllers are visible in device manager on Stan Remote PC:
You can load it or maybe SendSX on Stan Remote to see if you can read from those ports locally. Disconnect the network connection to test it. If you cannot read those ports locally with another application, then the issue is on Stan Remote.
The ports being visible in device manager does not necessarily mean they can be opened, just that the driver is there. You can also try removing the the ports in device manager, then unplugging and re-plugging in the devices again and Windows will recreate the ports.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
I see that you have Voicemeeter running. Please make sure you do not have either Voicemeeter or Voicemeeter Macros set up to use your X-touch devices.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
If ports are visible by BNP on ‘CCC Audio PC’ but occupied by another software, wouldn’t there just be no MIDI traffic to/from these ports but they’d show as connected in BMT? Why does it say ports ‘do not exist’ in BMT while they are visible in BNP?
Yes, I made sure that Voicemeeter on both machines do not use MIDI.
OK, sorry you are still having trouble. Let’s try this.
With the log file, we should be see what Bome Network is doing. Turning off the switches will make sure that the ports are deleted when turning of Remote Direct MIDI and that they are re-created when turning them back on. The Wait times are to give Windows time to delete and re-create the ports. 2 minutes might be overkill but I want to make sure that Windows has ample time to react to the ports disappearing and re-appearing.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
How? Do you mean phisicaly turning MIDI controllers OFF/ON ?
No, turn of the Remote Direct MIDI Switches in Bome Network on your other PC.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
It just worked this time before I followed your suggestions. But I followed them anyway and it worked afterwards, too. I’m attaching the log. Please try to see how this situation can be prevented in future. So thank you very much, Steve!
BomeNet.log (457.6 KB)
Project Port Aliases aren’t saved as part of the Project file, are they? can they be saved at all?
Does Project file contain all settings except Port Aliases and Settings defined in View - Settings window?
What exactly Export/Import Settings option include? Settings defined in View - Settings window?
I’m glad you got it working! I will take a look at the log file but I think Bome Network somehow lost the endpoints of the Remote Direct MIDI ports. What I had you do forced them to be deleted and re-created.
Aliases are indeed saved but not part of the .bmtp project file, but you can save them as part of a .bmts (settings) file and then reload them if you wish. There is an import and export function in settings for exporting and importing a .bmts file. Basically it saves aliases and other things like screen settings and most of the stuff on the settings page.
Normally I don’t care about saving this stuff because these settings are generally easily re-created as need be.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Keep virtual MIDI ports after disconnect, forces the created port to stay even if the connection between devices is closed. Turning this off tells Windows to remove the ports associated with the connection.
Keep Virtual MIDI ports for pending devices keeps he virtual port on the local system even if it is dropped on the remote system. Turning this off tell windows to delete the port if the remote system port is no longer available.
For the most part I like to keep both switches on so that Windows doesn’t have to delete and re-create ports, however if for some reason the Windows driver get confused, Windows seems to lose it mind about how they were connected so setting both to off told Windows to delete the virtual port and re-create it. Re-creating it made it remember how to pass MIDI messages.
This snipped shows when the port was forced closed and re created.
2024-03-25 19:59:29.364 Closed MIDI INPUT 'X-Touch 1'
2024-03-25 19:59:29.364 Closed MIDI OUTPUT 'X-Touch 1'
2024-03-25 19:59:29.996 Closed MIDI INPUT 'X-Touch-Ext'
2024-03-25 19:59:29.996 Closed MIDI OUTPUT 'X-Touch-Ext'
2024-03-25 20:01:03.737 Opened MIDI INPUT 'X-Touch 1'
2024-03-25 20:01:03.738 Opened MIDI OUTPUT 'X-Touch 1'
2024-03-25 20:01:04.264 Opened MIDI INPUT 'X-Touch-Ext'
2024-03-25 20:01:04.264 Opened MIDI OUTPUT 'X-Touch-Ext'
With the settings on, the port stays open but not usable. Most of the time, re-connecting the systems recovers things but not always.
I hope this explains.
I will notify Florian of this issue so hopefully he can make it more bullet-proof in future versions of Bome Network.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Florian and I had extensive troubleshooting of BNP because I’ve used to have connection issues and we decided that it’s better to keep both of these settings ON because when I loose connection briefly, ports disappear and DAW doesn’t reconnect when ports reappear. With these settings ON, the DAW has always been reconnecting in case of momentary loss of connection. But I see now that sometimes ports need to be recreated.
After this extensive troubleshooting of my unusually complex connection case Florian was able to make BNP much more robust! It has been working smoothly for about a year. Hopefully he can see how the above can be prevented. Temporary workaround will be to recreate ports.
Keep in mind, these probably were done manually by me AFTER it started working by itself and I just wanted to follow your troubleshooting steps anyway. So I came home, turned both PCs on and it just worked. Then I followed your steps and it worked again…
Is there any chance that Bome MIDI Translator was the culprit and not Bome Network Pro ?
It is possible, however a port pending status usually means that there is another application holding the device open so MT Pro cannot open it. I periodically use two separate instances of MT Pro or other applications like Ableton Live that hold a port open and puts my project ports into a pending status awaiting for the other application to release the port.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care