I'm still getting the hang of using Queuebicle since i haven't been using it but a month or so but in the past week or 2 all the pandas that are created from my watcher will run a few times then stop and i'm not sure why. It worked fine the first couple of weeks and I'm not sure what has changed. I have created a Turkerview watcher for hourly wage/$13.25 and Minimum reward/$3.00. QBC will create a panda for a HIT, run it about 8 times, then completely stop. When I start it again, it will run once or twice and stop again. The only way it will continue to run is if I change the group to "none." What am I doing wrong? It's frustrating because an hour will go by and I will see that it's created a ton of pandas but none of them are running. Having to constantly check and switch the group kind of defeats the whole point of the app. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
If everyone is of them is stopping at 8, then that seems like an issue. But if there is no discernable pattern, it just means there isn't enough HITs starting at $3 with an hourly of $13.25 to go around. It's going to stop at 6, 7, 8 or whatever just because there is nothing left to collect. If you are trying to toggle the panda back on while it is grouped to TV Watcher, its not going to work. As you already noted, None is a panda you have control over. TV Watcher gives control to QBC to toggle it on/off again. Since there is nothing there to collect, QBC is going to toggle it back off. Try lowering your minimum reward. You can create multiple TV Watchers and toggle them on/off as appropriate. I personally like to start my day off at $1 for a $17.50 hourly. If it seems slow, I will drop to one of my other TV Watcher I have set - 50 cents at $15, or 25 cents at $12.25.
Thank you for the reply.... I'm sorry, I'm not really understanding. I used to use panda crazy and it would run the panda for a task regardless if there were any hits left because who is to say that a hit wont pop back up due to someone throwing it back or timing out, etc. That's the entire purpose of a panda, to catch hits, right?. I don't think it makes much sense for a panda to stop working just because there is no more hits of a certain task at that time. I used to keep pandas running for certain hits on PC all day long and I would catch something that popped up on my scraper in the morning, in the evening time, and sometimes even the next day. If QBC is turning off the panda because there are no more of a certain hit left, then what's the point? Just to be clear, in QBC it's creating a panda for hits, but the panda for each individual hit is turning off after running a certain number of times. It's not always 8. For example, I now have 2 pandas that were created around the same time and both stopped after running 38 times. If I turn them on, the run one cycle and turn off again, unless i switch the group to None. I'd prefer them to continue to run until I turn them off. I didn't have this issue a couple of weeks ago. I was getting notifications that I had too many pandas running and would then manually turn them off. If this is how it's actually designed to work, how do I create a minimum $ watcher that will continue to run even if a certain job has run out of hits to work?
QBC will make multiple attempts. First attempt is when the HIT is first seen/released. If QBC does not pick up the HIT, it will toggle it off after about 30 attempts. If QBC happens to see the HIT pop back up in the scraper, it will turn the panda back on (so long as it is still in control). QBC scrapes HITs every 950ms or so. Because QBC is constantly watching everything, it will make a last attempt for time outs because QBC already knows when the HIT will expire. I don't have Panda Crazy, nor have I used it, but I believe it still operates using the same principles as HIT Catcher and QBC. These programs send panda requests one at a time. So if you have a full queue of pandas, a lot of other requests need to fire off before it comes back around. For example, if you have 10 pandas running at one second intervals, the first panda has to wait 9 seconds to fire off again. A lot can happen in those 9 seconds. I used to use HIT Catcher in the same fashion as you. I would scrape a bunch of HITs from the forum and let them all run. Sometimes I would get lucky, but it's not a guarantee. TV and YV Watcher are set. As you noted, you will have to switch them to None and manage them yourself. You run the risk of PREs if you have too many, which essentially is Amazon throttling you. You could handicap QBC in the setting and change your panda timer, but I would leave it alone. Unless you know the requester or group ID of the HIT, you will just have to create manual pandas from the TV and YV Watchers, if TV and YV Watchers is what you are relying on to find the work in the first place. To help you manage your panda, you can go to the Max field in the Panda Manager tab and enter a 1 for your manual panda which should turn it off if it catches the HIT. If you see something in the Daily and want to use that, you just click and hold the word PANDA from the review, and then drag and drop it anywhere in QBC and you will get a pop up to create a panda. If it is just a survey, you can set Max Project to 1 and that panda will turn off if it catches it.
Ahh, ok, this makes more sense now. I wasn't aware that it would turn the panda back on if it saw the HIT in the scraper again, I just thought that once it was off, it was off and that was it until I manually turned it back on. Thank you very much for the patience and the explanation!
Nope, it will turn it back on. But there is one caveat. After awhile, QBC will give up after trying to catch the expired HITs. As we already discussed, QBC will make that last ditch effort because it knows when it expires. You will see red text in the Att section to denote this. However, I am not 100% sure if say a second person were to catch it and let it expire, if QBC would turn the panda back on after it went red. @CT, @SamAnt, or someone more experienced with QBC will have to chime in to confirm or correct me.
Unlikely just because by that point the probability of catching a return only is low, so it'd require there being no better options at all available for it to try and grab, but yes it's possible. Personally doubt it happens though, and FWIW on return attempts it doesn't bother updating the UI unless it somehow catches it lol
