Reports to the project
Tinkerbus can help you tell the project about two things it cannot do yet. Nothing is sent by the application: it builds a short text from a fixed list of fields, shows it to you in full, and you copy it or open the issue form of the project’s issue tracker yourself. An issue on the tracker is public.
When a report is offered
| Where | Link | Report |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog > My catalog, Products you cannot find online | Tell the project it is missing | A product of your project that the online index does not have |
| Catalog > Online, when a search finds nothing | Tell the project it is missing | The search words that found nothing |
| Programming, when the check is refused because the mask version has no load plan | Send the project the details | A device Tinkerbus cannot program yet |
| Diagnostics > Device information, when the device reports a mask version Tinkerbus does not know | Unknown mask: tell the project | The same, from the device |
What is in a report
The report is built from these fields only, never from the open project. Names, individual and group addresses, serial numbers, parameter values and file paths cannot end up in it.
| Report | Fields |
|---|---|
| Missing in the online catalog | Search text, ETS version filter, manufacturer, product, order number |
| Mask not supported for programming | Mask version of the application program, mask version read from the device, manufacturer, application program name, id and version, the error message, and a summary of a recording (below) |
Both add the Tinkerbus version and the operating system and processor type, and your own note of up to 1000 characters. Values are cut to 200 characters, and control characters and backticks are removed.
The report appears in a box exactly as it would be sent. Open issue form opens the tracker in your browser with the title and text filled in; if the text is too long for an address, copy it and paste it into the form. Copy puts the text on the clipboard. Close discards it.
Recording an ETS download
Support for a new mask version is built from a recording of what ETS sends while it programs such a device. The report for an unsupported mask therefore has a section Help add support: record an ETS download (optional) with four steps:
- What you need. Wireshark (or tcpdump) on the computer that runs ETS; ETS 6 connected to the KNX line through a KNXnet/IP interface or router, not USB; secure tunnelling switched off for that connection, because secure traffic is encrypted; and a device you may reprogram, since this is an ordinary ETS download.
- Start the recording. Capture on the network adapter ETS uses, with the capture filter
port 3671. - Download with ETS. Select this device only and run a full download of the application program, not a partial one. Wait until ETS reports that it is complete.
- Stop and open the file. Save the capture as pcapng or pcap, then choose it with Choose capture file….
Tinkerbus reads the file on your computer and keeps only a transcript of the conversation between ETS and the one
device that received the most point-to-point messages. In the transcript the two sides are called ETS and DEV. IP
addresses, other devices and group telegrams are left out, and the capture file itself is not kept. The transcript is
capped at 20000 lines (a full download of one device is a few hundred), and a capture file larger than 256 MiB is refused.
After reading the file Tinkerbus tells you how many messages went to the device (and how many of them change it), how many answers came back, and how many messages to other devices were left out. Read what will be included shows the whole transcript, and Remove the recording discards it. The transcript is dropped when you close the report.
A recording does not fit into the issue form. With a recording, Save report file… writes a zip file with
report.md and transcript.txt, which you attach to the issue yourself.
See also safety for what Tinkerbus refuses to program, and the verified masks.