Possible fix for REFLEX-Interface not responding!

[cmauze]

Folks,

After almost a full year of pulling my hair out trying to get Reflex XTR to run correctly on my “blinged-out” Dell desktop, I made a breakthough today that I felt I needed to share with the [many] others who seem to have gotten the “The REFLEX-Interface is not responding! Please check your hardware installation” and “Switch on your transmitter!” errors.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: There can be a device conflict between the Reflex XTR USB dongle and the drivers for the Maxtor OneTouch series of external USB hard drives. Disabling this driver may allow you to fix a malfunctioning Reflex setup. The short version is that before you simply write-off a non-functioning Reflex to a bad cable, or start emailing MRC or Wolfgang personally to complain, perform a diagnostic startup on your Windows XP machine to rule out software/hardware conflicts that may be specific to your PC. Conflicts like these can make Reflex behave like your cable has gone bad or like your radio setup is incorrect. If you want more details, read below for my shamelessly long-winded troubleshooting process that helped me determine this. I realize this is a long post, but after 12 months of scouring the internet for a solution that would make my $189.99 investment work, I want to include as much information as possible to help others who may be in the same situation.

I purchased Reflex XTR about a year ago to use on my Dell Dimension 8400 desktop. I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty computer specs, but it’s a 3.4 ghz, 160 gig HD, 2 gig SDRAM, dual-monitor set-up that is a pretty top-of the line machine. I’m running Windows XP Professional Edition and have all the requisite patches installed.

About a year ago, I purchased the Reflex “package” from Helihobby.com that included a four channel JR S400 radio to use with it. Right off of the bat the sim rarely worked, as I received the dreaded “The REFLEX-Interface is not responding! Please check your hardware installation” and “Switch on your transmitter!” errors. ….this has been discussed ad nauseum in this and other forums, and can be caused by a number of things ranging from faulty hardware to incorrect radio setup. (PCM instead of PPM). Once every 50 or 60 tries, the simulation would actually start as advertised when I plugged in the trainer cord. I came to find out that the JR Quattro/S400 series of radios have some strange wiring and for some reason can require some solder work to make them work with Reflex (which makes it strange that HeliHobby has chosen to use that particular radio in a package deal). A discussion on this can be found here:

http://www.reflex-sim.de/reflex-sim/...qPath=15_35_72

Instead of soldering a new cable to make the S400 work, I just decided to bite the bullet and get a new radio, since I needed one anyway. I bought a JR9303 heli and anxiously plugged it into Reflex as soon as it arrived. Imagine my surprise when I plugged it in and began having the exact same problems as before….basically Reflex not “seeing” my transmitter.

Over the course of several months or so, I tried every iteration of troubleshooting to see if I could get Reflex to work….complete OS re-installs, wiping my hard drive, trying all manner of stereo/mono adapters, etc…..Since no one I knew had Reflex, I had no idea if there was a problem with some portion of my personal equipment, since I had no “control” group for comparison.

After sort of giving up on it for a couple of months, recently a friend of mine purchased Reflex as well, and began using it with no problems. We tried plugging his radio into my adapter/computer and had the same problem. A major breakthrough occurred when I had him borrow my dongle and it worked just fine on his comp – making it patently obvious that something was wrong with my particular computer setup, and that all my Reflex software/hardware wasn’t to blame.

After searching around on all the forums, I saw one guy mention off-handedly that his Reflex only worked when he disconnected his USB printer. Realizing now that my computer was definitely the problem, I used the msconfig program to perform a diagnostic startup of windows. After booting, I then re-installed Reflex and ensured that the “Reflex RC USB device” showed up under Human Interface Devices in the Windows device manager. I powered up Reflex, plugged in the transmitter and wham….It worked like a charm and brought tears to my eyes.

Now of course I had to determine exactly what service was causing the conflict with the Reflex USB drivers. After rebooting my machine (a “full” boot with all services this time) I very methodically went into the “Processes” tab of Windows Task Manager and began ending processes one-by-one. I started with the obvious USB stuff, like printers, PDA drivers, GPS stuff, etc…Basically anything that had to deal with hardware that connects to the machine via a USB port. After I terminated each process, I would restart Reflex and attempt to get it to run. THE NEXT SENTENCE IS VERY IMPORTANT --Between each restart I would unplug and then re-insert the Reflex USB dongle – ensuring each time it “disappeared” and then appropriately re-appeared in device manager. I figured this would help “kick start” Reflex’s USB drivers that may have been beaten into submission by a competing driver.

Lo and behold, I eventually terminated a process called “ONETOUCH.EXE.” This is a startup service that drives the buttons on the front of Maxtor External Hard drives….I think. In any case, I killed that service, un-plugged and re-plugged the Reflex dongle, started Reflex, and no-problemo, I was flying. I performed several iterations of this, each with reboots in between, and each time killing ONETOUCH.EXE fixed the problem and let the sim start as soon as I plugged the trainer cord into the radio. The only caveat is that the USB dongle needs to get re-inserted AFTER you terminate ONETOUCH. I could try to get Reflex to work all day long after stopping Onetouch.exe, but nothing would happen until I pulled out the interface and plugged it in again (and made sure I heard the little chimes Windows plays when you insert a USB device.)

Now, any of you who have read this far are probably asking yourself…why didn’t this idiot figure this out earlier?....And I agree wholeheartedly…I guess I just assumed (like a lot of people mistakely have) that it was the Reflex hardware/software that was to blame, and that my awesome computer was infallible. If I had looked at this a little more critically from the start, I probably would have had this thing figured out in an hour. My bad.

I hope this can help some folks. Please PM me if you've got questions.

[Rick Rotorhead]

You are most definitely not an idiot my friend. Is it reasonable to expect modern 'plug n' play' software to need in depth device deconfliction at PC guru level before they will work - No! Its only fortunate that you know what you are doing in Device manager etc - not every one does......

I also have this Reflex interface not reponding issue and guess what - yup! I've also got a Maxtor 'one touch' 300 Gb external hard drive connected via USB..........
Guess what2 - yup! I've also got a fairly hot, 3GHz 1024 Duel SDRam Dell pc plus 256 Radeon pro graphics board - small world eh!!!!

I faired a little better than you, in that I have found my XTR 'likes' a specific connection routine. First I connect my Tx to the dongle, so the Tx comes on (FF9 super). Then I start Reflex. When its fully loaded and says 'no usbinterface could be detected' thats when I plug the dongle in and click 'Retry'. All I have to do then is use the XTR menu to select 'Start Simulation' and away it goes..... But anyother variation (like just leaving the dongle in at start up, or not having the TX initiated first) leads to persistent continuous failure - I pulled out most of my hair before I found a workaround. Whats maddening is that I do believe that as a customer you not be expected to have to have 'computer literacy' just to get something to work as intended - those damn dongles are a pain in the proverbial - everything else I've ever plugged into my pc by usb has just simply worked. Reflex really should address this issue if they don't want upset customers.

[websherpa]

I thought you guys would be my saviours. I have a maxed out Dell Inspiron 6400 Notebook, and a One Touch Maxtor drive, and a Reflext XTR 5.01 dongle that doesn't seem to want to work.

I have a Tower Hobbies 4FM that I wanted to use as the training transmitter. I tried both suggestions, and the first time I tried disabline ONETOUCH.EXE, for some reason it worked (and it worked briefly once before with ONETOUCH.EXE still installed)! Yeah. Second time, no go. Third and subsequent times, no go. tried rebooting, same sequence (both of them), still no go.

I am moving the Maxtor on to another system so I thought I'd try uninstalling the software (and unpluggin it) to see.... nope. Sees the dongle, but not the transmitter.
Tested the pins on the interface cable, ground and one control pin have continuity (and besides I was able to calibrate the controls and fly ONCE).

Yikes, this is aweful and I had read so much good about this sim (and liked the demo AND it has a Carona 120 model).

No wonder the Reflex XTR was on a drastically reduced sale. I will give the makers a chance to rectify (damned if I'm going to spend another $50 on an improved dongle just because the original is buggy) but return it in anger if not.