Flora GPS Starter Pack: Flora not detected on a mac

[fredfredburger]

Hello!

I was following the instructions on the getting start with flora page, and had problems with getting it detected on my mac (10.8.2). No x.usbmodem.x entry show up on the Tools menu (just two Bluetooth ones), and nothing special listed on /dev/tty*.

I tried installing newer FTDI drivers and they are loaded but nothing new shows up. If anything, the entry /dev/ttys002 got a new timestamp when I reloaded the FTDI driver.

The green light is on (steady) and the red one is blinking. What else am I missing?

Thanks!

--

Update: I also tried using the regular Arduino ide on ubuntu and copied board.text and the flora variants dir into the arduino ide's dir. Serial Port from the tools menu is disabled and when running lsusb, I don't get my device listed.

[fredfredburger]

Also, should it make a difference that I bought the starter pack from MakerShed? I did that since the pack was out of stock from adafruit and was being impatient

Is there any other information missing from here?

[sanju_gem]

I am having quite a problem installing flora in windows . It does not updates the driver given on this link
http://learn.adafruit.com/getting-start ... d-software

my screen shows something like this

[fredfredburger]

@sanju_gem: I tried this on windows 8 as well at device manager kept crashing when i would connect the flora and click the scan for new devices button. Didn't post it here since it might have been my windows 8 install. It's weird not seeing it listed under lsusb or anything!

[sanju_gem]

@fredfredburger yes, i started new thread for windows installerhttp://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=36924&p=182173#p182173 ,
and yes your right it crashes a lot ..I tried on Mac and linux both has same problem as u said , no serial device is listed . I went through a lot of other posts. I found few of them posting that its watchdog, which is resetting every time and making problem in this micro-controller http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=797991 . I am not sure how long will it take for Adafruit Experts solving this problem but i really need this for my wearable experiment .

I will post update here as soon as its solved .

[fredfredburger]

Thanks sanju for updating. I should try out what you linked to...will update here if it works.

[fredfredburger]

Some more debugging on a mac (10.8.2) to see if the same problem of no device being recognized in ubuntu (using the lsusb command).

First I ran this command that would list all devices (I didn't want to use the hardware type utility since it's harder to diff info):
$ system_profiler SPUSBDataType > normal
Then I plugged the flora in and waited for a few seconds. Then ran a similar command
$ system_profiler SPUSBDataType > after
Then I diffed the two
$ diff normal after
No output, so nothing different...and no new device detected on a mac.

[fredfredburger]

@sanju regarding the second forum link, it's not possible to debug by uploading barebones firmware code with debug lines, since the flora can't be mounted. So I'm pretty much stuck still.

[adafruit_support_rick]

@fredfredburger - Try different USB cables and USB ports on your computer. If that doesn't help, try attaching the Flora through a powered USB hub. Since you're running 10.8, I'll assume you have a newer Mac with USB 3.0 ports. We've been seeing some scattered problems with USB 3.0. Sometimes using a powered hub helps with that. In any case, there is a wide range of quality in seemingly identical USB cables. Communication problems are often cured by switching to a different cable.

[fredfredburger]

Thanks! I'll try that when I get home -- I did try different mini-USB cables and no luck, but good point, I'll try a powered usb hub.

Also I did try it on my ASUS U30JCB1 which has usb 2.0 ports, and ubuntu didn't list the flora when executing lsusb... will try that anyway.

[fredfredburger]

Hi,

So I tried it with the powered usb hub (with usb 2.0 ports). USB prober could recognize the hub with 4 ports, but when I would connect the flora to the hub, the status of that port wouldn't change from not-responding to something normal.

USBPortStatuswithouthubandflora.txt

(3.15 KiB) Downloaded 8 times

USBPortStatuswithhubandflora.txt

(3.34 KiB) Downloaded 7 times

I tried this in either of the two ports on my macbook. I also tried using an unpowered USB A/A cable and then connected the flora but there was no change.

Do you know which specific kext is related to the flora com driver? I've been unloading and loading those, but it looks like most of the AppleUSBCDC* ones aren't used. Also reloaded the IOUSB one.

[adafruit_support_rick]

Well, it sounds like you've got a bum Flora there. You'll have to contact MakerShed for a replacement.