I encountered a connection problem with Bome Network Pro.
BNP is installed on 6 Macs (all running macOS 10.13.6). One of them (connected via LAN to the router) connects to the 5 others (connected via WiFi to the router). All are running BNP version 1.2.1
When the Macs are booted up, BNP usually automatically re-connects to one or two of them, but for the others it is stuck on „[authenticating]“ in the „Disconnect“ menu. „Prompt for permission“ is turned off in the settings of all instances. There is no dialog or anything visible on the Macs that can’t be connected. When I click on every entry in the „Disconnect“ menu and then connect to every instance manually via the „Connect to“ menu, the connection is established and everything works normally. Initially, I had „Prompt for permission“ turned on but turned it off to see if it helped with the re-connection problem.
I saw your post but need to load up the software before I can do anything. Unfortunately the download link is not working right now. Please be patient. Also, since I only have 3 systems (and a BomeBox) to test with, I’m not sure if I will be able to duplicate the behavior but I will try and see what happens. In my experience, I have had BomeBox drop off and on randomly when on WiFi but not with CAT5 direct connect, but I live in a very noisy WiFI traffic area.
I’ve been running 2 BomeBoxes 1 Mac and 1 Windows PC for about 4 hours. The only problem I’ve encountered is with one of the BomeBoxes. On that one, I have it connected via ethernet through a cheap 3rd party WiFI adapter. I do this because I like to leave my normal WiFi connection as a Hotspot. I do this so that I can use WiFi on either my built in WiFi or on a different network via my Ethernet connection.
I will continue to monitor, but so far I think the main thing to look out for is poor WiFi connections. The other BomeBox is on CAT 5 but my Windows and Mac PC are also on WiFI.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Q and A Moderator and
Independent Bome Consultant/Specialist bome@sniz.biz
thanks a lot for testing! But the problem only occurs when I boot the Macs and BNP is trying to re-connect to previously connected instances on the network. I had dropouts because of noisy WiFi (stale connection) but this doesn’t bother me too much because I only use BNP for controller data and not timing critical MIDI messages. I would have chosen a cable connection if that were the case. Once the connections are established by manually disconnecting and then re-connecting via the BNP menu, everything runs well for my purposes. But, as I said, when booting up the Macs in the morning one at a time, I get three or four devices that show “authenticating” in the menu and nothing happens until I manually re-connect them. Even if I let it sit for a few minutes.
Hi Jens, I assume that when first accepting a connection on one of your Mac’s you are checking the box that says “remember this connection”?
When starting up this morning, most of my connections came to life, One BomeBox (yes the one with the flakey third party WiFi adapter) did not.
Can you pinpoint, which computers do not authenticate automatically. Is it always the same ones? Do you have all computers connected to each other 5 macs with 4 network connections ? Each Mac should have a list of 4 “Auto Accept Clients” in the settings. I would leave the prompting on as it should only affect clients that are not in the Auto Accept list.
If your clients are running fixed IP you could also manually add them to the IP address list.
Jens, this is a big problem for us and we are committed to find the cause and fix it — one way or another.
At first a question: are you running the latest BomeBox firmware? https://www.bome.com/products/bomebox#downloads
We are continuously working on improved connection stability.
Thanks,
Florian
Hi Steve, hi Florian,
yes, I checked “remember this connection” when first accepting a connection. I switched prompting back on. Made no difference.
I have one Mac (the one connected via cable to the router) connected to the 5 other Macs. I only send MIDI to from the one Mac to the other, not the other way around. So each “client” Mac only has one entry in the “Auto Accept Clients” setting.
I can’t pinpoint which computers authenticate automatically. I seems random. Usually one or two get connected, the others don’t. These are not always the same ones. Yesterday I booted all the Macs and manually connected every Mac that wasn’t automatically connected, as always. Then I re-started all the “clients” (the 5 other Macs). When they where back up, none of them would re-cconnect automatically. So for all of them, they were listed in the “Disconnect” menu with “[authenticating]”.
There are no BomeBoxes involved. Just 6 Macs in total. Mac 1, the one that connects to the others, is an 2017 iMac, the others are two 2012 Mac Minis, one 2014 Mac Mini, one 2012 MacBook Pro and one 2017 MacBook Air.
Thanks,
Jens
Hi Jens, could you post your log file. It is in your /tmp folder on Mac. If it is hidden then use the Finder “Goto” command to get there.
Shortcut is Shift-Cmd-G, then type “/tmp”.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Q and A Moderator and
Independent Bome Consultant/Specialist bome@sniz.biz
Here ist the log file. This time, only one Mac was automatically re-connected (Key 1). See attached screenshot. The Mac that connects to the other Macs ist called “Key2” in my setup.
It seems that “Key2” got disconnected from the local network somehow. Then, all connections are treated as if they’re across networks.
We’ll investigate.
Thanks,
Florian
Hi Florian,
are there any news concerning the auto-connection problem I have since last October? There was no update since then and the problem still persists.
Thanks,
Jens
Hi Jens,
While we wait for Florian’s answer, have you upgraded your BomeBox to the latest version 1.4.1 which came out a week or two ago? Florian made quite a few modifications to the firmware which should make it more reliable.
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