Simultaneously Probe Serial Ports for NDI devices

[rajkundu]

Currently, it takes about 5-10 seconds to initialize an NDI camera on my computer (16" Intel MacBook Pro, macOS 12.5). This is because of the following code, which sequentially probes serial ports for NDI devices:

scikit-surgerynditracker/sksurgerynditracker/nditracker.py

Lines 57 to 64 in 26bd21b

	for port_no in range(ports_to_probe):
	name = serial_ports[port_no].device
	result = ndicapy.ndiProbe(name)
	print("Probing port: ", port_no, " got name: ", name,
	" Result: ", result, file=fileout)
	if result == ndicapy.NDI_OKAY:
	break

Therefore, on my computer, serial port 0 (/dev/cu.BLTH) is always unnecessarily probed before serial port 1 (/dev/cu.usbserial-144130, the NDI Camera).

The current best workaround is to set configuration['serial port'] = '/dev/cu.usbserial-144130'. This works fine, but it would be nice to have functionality which probes serial ports simultaneously and returns as soon as any NDI device is found.

[rajkundu]

Any thoughts on this?

[thompson318]

It sounds sensible, I just left a comment on the pull request.