Proper usage of RpcClient.write()

[paliasgh]

Hello,

I hope you are going great. We have a YARP related question again. We need to periodically check if robot is still speaking or not. Therefore we connect to the rpc port /iSpeak/rpc in our code with:

RpcClient speakCheckPort;

And do this in updateModule():

Bottle cmd, reply;
cmd.addVocab32(Vocab32::encode("stat"));
speakCheckPort.write(cmd,reply);
string msg=reply.get(0).asString().c_str();
if(msg == "quiet") {talking=false;}

The problem is, when the robot is saying a long sentence, /iSpeak/rpc will not respond right away. It waits until the robot stops talking and then responds "quiet". The line speakCheckPort.write(cmd,reply); will block the entire updateModule() waiting for a reply from /iSpeak/rpc. Is there any way the code can send a request to /iSpeak/rpc and if there is no response right away, pass and keep doing it until there is a response?

Thank you!

[pattacini]

Hi @paliasgh

I'm a bit rusty with YARP and iSpeak but just a quick try for you.
Without changing the server part, you could set a timeout:

yarp::os::RpcClient rpcPort;
// ... (prepare your RPC command)

rpcPort.setTimeout(1.0);  // Set 1-second timeout
auto ret = rpcPort.write(cmd, reply);

if (reply.isValid() && ret) {  
    // Process the 'reply'
} else {
    // Handle timeout or error
}

[paliasgh]

Hi @pattacini ,

Thank you for your prompt response. It seems like there is no setTimeout() in RpcClient class, even looking at what is available
. Maybe the only solution is to modify the iSpeak server's behaviour (which can be hard)?

error: ‘class yarp::os::RpcClient’ has no member named ‘setTimeout’
         speakCheckPort.setTimeout(0.1);

--
By the way, in the documentation, should this write() function and also some other functions be under RpcClient, not the RpcServer?

[pattacini]

Thank you for your prompt response. It seems like there is no setTimeout() in RpcClient class

My bad. You should be able to get access to it this way:

rpcPort.asPort().setTimeout(1.0);

[paliasgh]

Hello @pattacini , thank you very much! It solved the problem.