Data Source: Remote Unit - How does it work?

[chromo23]

Hey TD-er,

how is this undocumented feature supposed to work? Is it still WIP?

remote.png (18.59 KiB) Viewed 2078 times

[TD-er]

Yep still a WIP, but you could try to test it yourself.

Have a task on a node sharing its data via the p2p network.
Then add the same task on another node at the same task index and add the other unit's ID in that field. (don't forget to have p2p controller enabled)

This way you can easily 'switch' to another p2p source.

Well.. it wasn't intended to be used like that, as it is just a debug field for me, but maybe it can be useful for someone

[chromo23]

I see. This could actually be a really nice feature.
I use the p2p a lot but have never been happy with the way tasks are shared as you cannot do it selectively.
But the biggest problem is still having to rely on the same task index. This means that you always have to juggle the task indexes for the devices.
The optimum for sharing would be to also include a way to specify the task index for the recipient side in the sender task.

[TD-er]

My ideas for extensions to the p2p layer:
Using multicast, so you can define a multicast IP per unit/task.
This way anyone can subscribe to a multicast 'channel' and the network will manage the distribution for you.
It is a bit like MQTT, where you have topics, only with multicast you will have a multicast IP + port

Only possible drawback is that it might need some tweaking to work on all networks as some switches can "help" with multicast and this can also be quite counter-productive.
Also not all access points handle multicast the same way.

I also want to make it possible to remove the limit of using the same task index on both nodes and allow to share 1-to-N.

[chromo23]

That sounds great. Keep me updated