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Wi-Fi Connection Issues with Lenovo and Ad-hoc Connection - MIDI Designer Q&A

Wi-Fi Connection Issues with Lenovo and Ad-hoc Connection

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Summary: Previous title: "Why Does Midi Designer Keep Dropping Connection To My Laptop"

I really like mididesigner and when my ipad connects to my laptop and everything works, I am loving life. But more times than not, I cannot establish a connection to my laptop and when I do, mididesigner will say "No Connections" after I do connect.

All that seems to help is that I reboot my laptop and reboot my ipad. I don't know if I have to start things in a particular order. Sometimes I fire up mididesigner without starting the network connection on my laptop. MidiDesigner just keeps spinning and spinning when trying to connect to wifi. I see the network in Settings on the IPAD.

I was going to try Bluetooth but I only have an IPAD 2 and I don't think the range will be as good.

Any suggestions that would help where I can connect 100% of the time would be helpful.
in User Support, Resolved by bczubiak (140 points)
recategorized by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
Hi there, dropping connections is not normal. What laptop are you connecting to? What is your Wi-Fi router? You cannot use BT LE with an iPad 2, unfortunately. You could use a cable with musicIOapp.com's MIDI app, which is pretty awesome (we are part authors of that project).
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I am using a Lenovo Laptop but I am not using a Wi-Fi Router. I get to the command prompt then run the connection string that turns my laptop into a Wi-Fi Hotspot. I can see the network with my Iphone but for some reason it takes me a few times of re-boots and re-booting the ipad to make things connect properly.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Just for diagnostic purposes, please try a normal Wi-Fi connection over a router. That way we can see if it's the Ad-Hoc Network or something else. Thanks!
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
My home network connected really fast and the first time I tried. So maybe it is something with the Ad-Hoc Network. At first I thought that maybe the cause of mididesigner not connecting was because I was starting my devices out of order. For example, I would start my laptop and my lighting software and then launch mididesigner. So basically I would forget to start my ad-hoc network and mididesigner is currently looking for the network but can't find it. Then I would start the Ad-hoc network. But sometimes mididesigner would see the network and othertimes not. Then I would just restart everything and maybe it would connect... maybe not. That is the scary thing right before a gig and the clock is ticking.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Purchase a Wi-Fi router from a store near you. Then either keep it or return it after the gig. Best one is the Apple Airport Extreme, especially if you use 5G only. Make sure this is all working perfectly at home and then... Have fun at your gig!
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
Or just bring your router from home. Make sure it can work without the Internet!
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
Ok. Will do. I'll try a separate router connected to my laptop and see what happens. Thanks for the help.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Can I close this? Did you get sorted?
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I did purchase a router and got it working. I worked on it again last weekend but still seemed to have some issues. It may be that when I reboot my laptop, I have to let it boot up for a few minutes before trying to connect. What it is doing now is MidiDesigner is connecting to the Wifi, then 10 seconds later it disconnects. When I rebooted the laptop, then it would connect. I think I have to do some more precise testing to see what the cause is. Right now I am guessing that I have to turn on my router first, then the laptop and then let it sit for a few min after booting, then make sure my ipad is connected to the wifi on the router, then try to connect with MidiDesigner.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Okay, let us know what you find out as you move forward. With Mac it's all rock solid and with some Windows machines, but the variation on the Windows side is staggering... hard to come up with consistent answers on that front. Glad that you're sticking in there!
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
Wifi is still now working right. I bought a 3 antennae Netgear router. My IPAD connects to the router find but when I go into MidiDesigner and click config, mididesigner either keeps spinning and doesn't find any wifi or it finds my laptop and then the checkbox appears for 5 seconds and then disappears. I'm going to try to connect using the Free version of MidiDesigner and see what happens.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Hey there, as I said in the other ticket in which we're discussing this same problem: 1) Try connecting from one iPad to the other, as you said you have an iPad 2 and an iPad 3, connecting one MIDI Designer instance to another. 2) I'll be MIA until the 26th of August with very spotty connectivity, so expect delays between our responses, please. THANKS, looking forward to getting you sorted.
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I don't have two I use for operating MidiDesigner. I was just stating that I I have an IPAD 2 and my Wife has an IPAD3 and I was trying to see if there was an issue with my IPAD

Last weekend, I setup for a lighting gig and the same thing happened. I boot up my router, boot up my computer and boot  up my IPAD. In MidiDesigner, I try to connect to my laptop. The checkbox appears and then 16 seconds later, the checkbox disappears. I couldn't get anything to connect so I rebooted basically everything, then I was able to get a connection with my IPAD.

Half way through the show, I lost connection with my IPAD to my Laptop. Pretty scary. Luckily the dance lights I had on were set to sound active through my computer and my LED tube lights just kept working.... but I had no control. I decided to reboot the router and that didn't work. I rebooted my IPAD and then I was able to connect again. It was stable the rest of the night.

As a note, when my IPAD lost connection, I couldn't connect to the router wireless through my laptop. Just kept saying Cannot Connect. I don't know if I am throwing too much data at the router and locking it up? But this same thing was happening when I didn't have a router.

Now I am stuck again. My next show is on 09/18/16.  Should it matter what order you turn things on? Is there another program I can run instead of rtpMIDI to see if that is the issue?
by bczubiak (140 points)
Sorry to hear about your woes with Network MIDI running on Windows. Is there a reason you don't want to run with Lightning cable? You could use musicIO (we're part of the dev team). While musicIO doesn't offer support on Windows, once you get it set up it's very solid. That could work. Anyway, first things first: what are your needs as far as... must it be wireless? Must it be Windows? On Mac this stuff is rock solid, as Apple created Network MIDI and we've had NO issues with it as far as stability.
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I use software called Lightjams. The software can be run on a Mac using Bootcamp. I use my IPAD so I can get in front of the band, walk around the room and adjust the lights. Is wireless necessary? No but is sure nice not having to stay in one place all night to make things run. I do small events like weddings, backyard parties so nothing too big at the moment.

I also use my ipad to stand on the stage and adjust my moving heads to certain positions. I am not opposed to buying a MAC... if I really had to.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Can you set up musicIO MIDI as a backup option? Another way to go, on the ridiculous side, would be to have another iOS device that you connect to and then you pipe that MIDI to your computer over lightning cable. We could talk about options for MIDI thru (even MD does it, but there are better options). But for now, I'd try two things: 1) getting musicIO set up as a backup option and 2) ruling out MD as a culprit, too. Use anything else that does MIDI over wifi to check. If that's up and we're not... then we've got issues.
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I'll try musicIO as a backup. Should I uninstall RPTMidi then? If I have to stay by my lighting setup for the next few gigs I'll do it as long as I don't loose control again.  Also, one time when my IPAD would not connect to the router, I went into my laptop and connected to my home network, then all of a sudden, my ipad connected. It was almost like my laptop needed to be connected to some network to work. My laptop should not need to be connected to the router because I am using an ethernet from the laptop to the router. Then I got to thinking it was something with the wireless on my laptop screwing things up.
by bczubiak (140 points)
No man, they are completely independent. Also you could consider some actual hardware like an iConnect... alll of these options are good and any will work. Just be careful not to be using two at once!
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
Hey there, I'm closing out this issue for now. With further questions, please hit us up via Config -> Actions -> Email us.

Thanks,
Dan
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
Ok. Thanks. I was able to take a step back an analyse my situation. I think the problem was from my LED controller from holidaycoro. The unit hooks to my laptop via ethernet and in holidaycoro's instructions, they want you to set a static ip address by going into the laptops network settings and changing from dhcp to static ip address. I decided to set the holidaycoro controller to dhcp and my laptop network interface to dhcp then I didn't have any issues with MiDesigner disconnecting after that. The only issue I have now is that if I loose power to my whole setup (but the laptop stays on) when things power up, I cannot reconnect mididesigner to my laptop. When I reboot the laptop, then it works. So for now, things are working good but I will pursue using a direct connection from my ipad to my laptop just to ensure stability.
by bczubiak (140 points)
when things power up, can you restart rtpMIDI somehow?
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I guess I can try to end task it and reload. I'll give it a try.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Thanks. While this extended conversation is quite absurd, it could be very helpful to other users. Hopefully we'll sum it out at some point. But the general theme is that it wasn't MD, right?
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
To call this conversation quite absurd is rather harsh. Sorry for taking up your time and to everybody else that was trying to help :(
by bczubiak (140 points)
Sorry about that, I misspoke (very long day). I meant merely that for other users the details of this interaction might seem quite specific to one person's rig. In fact, everybody's rig is that way. I really appreciate the conversation and am 100% committed to getting our users working on all platforms. My apologies again, please feel welcome to continue discussing this issue here. My first concern is understanding whether there is a problem with rtpMIDI on win 10 or whether it's fine.

Thanks,
Dan
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
I'll try to restart rptMIDI if I loose connection again and see if that fixes things. Biggest thing is to turn off my router and then back on and see what happens. Robooting the machine works but by the time I reboot and relaunch my lighting software and software project, it takes about 6 min so that's pretty scary during a gig. I have also had cases where I could not connect and when I rebooted my IPAD, it connected. I just have to spend more time testing more slowly and documenting what I do to see if I replicate the issues but it's working better now after the IP address issue. Apology accepted and thanks for making a great product.
by bczubiak (140 points)
Thanks, please keep me in the loop.
by MIDI Designer Team (Dan)
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