USB auto reconnect equipment / watchdog / trigger

[Ruediger]

Hi All,

I think everybody knows the situation: Some USB device gets disconnected without triggering it. Therefore I would appreciate following “watchdog function”:
If an already connected device disappears from the Equipment without actively disconnecting it, NINA should try to reconnect it automatically with following parameters set by the user:

• Number of retries: 1 - infinite
• Time in between connect retries: in seconds

In a second stepp this watchdog can also throw an trigger to pause or cancel the running sequence. This can prevent damage caused by uncontrolled gear which became unconnected via unattended sequence execution.

Cheers
Rüdiger

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[Stefan B]

There was a lot of discussion around this topic in the past. The decision is against a feature like this, as a device disconnection can range from just a driver having a timeout for a query to the device to catastrophic failure of equipment. Due to the layer N.I.N.A. is working at, there is next to no detailed info available on the why the equipment got disconnected, and just issuing a reconnect can even worsen the situation in some cases. A normal run with typical equipment does not just randomly disconnect and the user should take measures that smooth operation of equipment is ensured.

For the adv. sequencer there is a connector plugin available. You can use it somehow in a loop to connect to equipment if it is not connected before taking exposures for example. Although this is not the intended way of this plugin, it will work similar to that proposed watchdog

[Stefan B]

Removing version: 1.11 Nightly (automated comment)