I'm making an app that connects 3 phones to 1 via Bluetooth: the 3 phones (with 1 bluetooth client each) working as separated screens controlled by the other phone (with 3 bluetooth servers).
They connect and everything works fine, the problem comes when I want to disconnect one of them and then reconnect it. It just doesn't want to work correctly.
I'd like to explain what happens with an example:
Imagine that the phone with the bluetooth servers has 3 boxes (3 Bluetooth servers), and the ones with bluetooth clients are melons (or whatever fruit you want). When I put a melon in box 1 and another one in box 2, it works fine, but if I want to remove the melon from box 1 and then put another melon (or the same one) back in, it goes into box 3 (or any empty one), detecting as if there was still a melon in box 1. I want to be able to empty my boxes correctly.
I've tried disconnecting the bluetooth connections from the clients and the server, stopping accepting connections from the server and accepting them again.
It uhh... Yeah, it doesn't do anything.
The only way I find that works is to reset the screen, but that "empties all my boxes" instead of the one I want.
Tricky! From your description, it sounds like the system cannot differentiate between your server instances. My gut feeling is you should use only one server. If nothing else, there will be conflicts between servers if more than one client sends data at the same time.
The clients connect correctly to the separate servers, because they can send and receive messages from their own server (to be fair, I have no idea how or why, but it just works).
The problem, more or less, is that the server "retains" connections. Rather, it doesn't free up connection space after disconnecting.
I tried disconnecting the server, waiting a bit and reconnecting it, but nothing.
And sorry, I'm not the best at explaining, I'll try this way:
I have 3 servers. If I connect a client, it connects to the first free server it finds and only interacts with that one. If I connect another client it connects to the next free server. I need a way to free up a server connection space without disconnecting the others.
..........but if you have 3 servers and 3 clients, why not dedicate each?
Edit: Also, in normal circumstances, you should not need to disconnect a server until the App is about to be closed. So we need to know what is really being sent by the Clients and what your App actually does with what has been sent - that is probably where the issue really is.
Upload your Project .aia files for Server and Clients - I may not be available soon but other Power Users may take-up the reins.
Dear @Sonjey,
as far as I've understood, your app has three real screens, each one of them is controlling one different phone: is it correct ?
So each phone is a server and the app features three clients, one for each screen.
If this assumption is wrong, you can discard the rest of my answer
Pplease bear in mind the the server is the device which sends data, typically a sensor, but in your case a phone, while the client is the one that receives the data, in your case the app with three screens (= three clients).
Wording apart, what you say is that it seems that the disconnection doesn't work properly. My suggestion, in this case, is to do a step backwards: make a simple app, with only one client-server structure and verify how the disconnection activity works, and how many seconds it takes to effectively disconnect itself To this purpose you can setup a clock that, for example every second, verify the disconnection, after having pressed a button for disconnecting. (as @ChrisWard has said, the disconnection takes time).
Please also be aware that by working with multiple screens in AI2 very often you'll have problems with BT, when switching between screens, In addition to this, also the switching between screens must be done with the correct sequance of blocks in order to free the memory of the system, which, on the contrary, can be replenished soon.
To avoid these problem, typically we suggest to use Visrtual Screens instead.
To this purpose you can have a look to a very recent post, here:
... where you'll find the instruction on how to create and manage virtual screens, and how to correctly switch back & forth between real screens (by @Anke ).
Best wishes.
