The comms client feedback popups are laggy

Prior to version 5.0.6.3 the comms client feedback popups could sometimes start to lag before freezing entirely.

Symptoms

During heavy scanner use, especially when multiple scanners are connected to a single PC, the feedback popups and sounds from the comms software could sometimes start to lag behind user activity. Ultimately the software UI could freeze entirely for about a minute, after which it would unfreeze and any subsequent popups that were created in the interim would be displayed in a flood that could take some time to clear.

Cause

Older versions of the comms software had a default timeout of one minute for waiting for feedback from the backend scanning service. Under some circumstances the comms client software UI (i.e. the popups) therefore had the potential to freeze and wait for up to a minute before moving on to displaying the next popup.

It's worth noting that this has no effect on the scans being processed by the main PTS application. Scans were still sent to and received by PTS; only the comms client feedback was frozen.

Solutions

1. Update to PTS v5.0.6.3 or newer, or:
2. If you have many scanners connected to a single PC, spread them out across as many PCs as is feasible, and/or:
3. Amend the client timeout manually (you can do this in any version of the software):
   1. Open File Explorer and go to C:\Program Files\TMS Insight Data Capture\PTS Comms Client (or your otherwise specified installation path), where you should see a file called “PTS Comms Client.exe.config”.
   2. If you can't see this file, click on View and then turn on Show File Extensions.
   3. Open the file up in Notepad and locate the following section:

      <netTcpBinding>
           <binding name="NETTcpBinding_IPTSScanningInfo"/>
           <binding name="NetTcpBinding_IPTSScanningInfo">
                <security>
                     <transport sslProtocols="None" />
                </security>
           </binding>
      </netTcpBinding>

   4. Carefully modify it like so:

      <netTcpBinding>
           <binding name="NETTcpBinding_IPTSScanningInfo" receiveTimeout="00:00:10" sendTimeout="00:00:10"/>
           <binding name="NetTcpBinding_IPTSScanningInfo" receiveTimeout="00:00:10" sendTimeout="00:00:10">
                <security>
                     <transport sslProtocols="None" />
                </security>
           </binding>
      </netTcpBinding>

   5. Save your changes, making sure to overwrite the existing file. Notepad and Windows will sometimes try to rename it or save to a different location; it may help to save the new file to the desktop and then drag it back to the installation file if you encounter problems.
   6. Reboot the PC.