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Alpha: Trouble firing up EigenD and connecting to Alpha

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written by: Foveus

It does in fact happen when I start up from other computers. Today I booted up with my macbook pro and the newest version of EigenD and I saw a single green blinking light on the bottom right of the Alpha .. this went on for a while before turned the base station off and back on .. within seconds the Alpha was functioning properly again. My usual routine is to start EigenD on the computer first and allow it to fully load before turning on the base station (if I recall someone suggested that here in the forums a while ago) .. but perhaps I should turn on the instrument first?
Yes, this is odd startup behavior has been a bit annoying and inconvenient over the years but not a deal breaker.

Chris

written by: esperdiv

Thu, 1 Nov 2012 11:54:43 +0000 GMT

Hi,

For a while now, I've been getting a lot of trouble starting up EigenD and having it connect properly to my Alpha.

I'll load EigenD with basestation off, when my user setup has completed loading, I'll turn on the BaseStation, wait a bit. At first, my Alpha lights up properly but as soon as I touch a key on the Alpha the light "sticks", no sound is produced and the Alpha is stuck. Nothing responds.

I usually turn off the Basestation at this point. Wait a few seconds and restart it. One out of two times, the Alpha will come back fine. The other half of the time, the Alpha will never light up again and I'll have to force kill EigenD because it is beach balling.

If, instead, I turn on the Base Station before starting EigenD, the software will sometimes freeze while loading my setup.

This is really annoying and worries me about using the Alpha on stage.

Things I've tried:

- My BaseStation is directly plugged in to a USB port on my iMac, not through a USB hub.
- Checked the connections and cables many times.
- Quit every process on my computer before firing up EigenD

Using EigenD 2.0.68 stable and MacOSX Mountain Lion. However, this problem as been present to some degree for a while.


written by: jim

Fri, 2 Nov 2012 13:04:11 +0000 GMT

Hi esperdiv,

Can you file a bug report; That should give us some indication of whats going on. It does sound like a hardware problem.

When the alpha freezes, do you get any lights when you press a key?

jim


written by: esperdiv

Fri, 2 Nov 2012 13:22:03 +0000 GMT

The first key pressed gets a light then everything usually freezes.


written by: esperdiv

Sun, 4 Nov 2012 15:11:36 +0000 GMT

I've worked on this over the weekend and have been noticing something. Using the mac Console, every time my Basestation Pro is powered on, I get the following message:


2012-11-03 10:56:20.000 PM kernel[0]: USBF: 2454.444 [0xffffff8014353a00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 4 of Hub at 0xfd100000)
2012-11-03 10:56:20.000 PM kernel[0]: USBF: 2454.445 [0xffffff8014353a00] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.

I'd like to know if others are seeing similar messages when their own basestation powers on a mac.

Thanks.


written by: esperdiv

Sun, 4 Nov 2012 22:32:37 +0000 GMT

More information: I've verified that the behaviour is exhibited on 2 macs. (a Macbook Air and my iMac).

However, this only happens when the device is powered while USB is connected. If USB is connected *after* the device has powered on, the error message does not appear.

I'd really like to know if other mac users have the same console message when powering up a Basestation.


written by: Foveus

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:39:24 +0000 GMT

I've had a very similar issue since receiving my Alpha over 3 years ago. I've tried every variation that you described and then some but it still happens virtually every time I start it up. It usually takes anywhere from 1 to 3 on/off switches of the base station power to get it to work properly. It has been consistent with every version of EigenD 1.x thru 2.068. The pattern of odd lighting on the Alpha never seems to be consistent .. but always what I would describe as chaotic haphazard and unresponsive. Very annoying indeed.


written by: john

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 11:34:02 +0000 GMT

Hi Foveus

You should not be experiencing this. Esperdiv is returning his instrument to us for a check as analysis of his logs indicates a hardware failure of some kind. If you are having similar problems then please send us a bug report straight after you seen it and we'll take a look.

Just out of interest, have you experienced the same issue on different computers?

John


written by: Foveus

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 12:53:18 +0000 GMT

It does in fact happen when I start up from other computers. Today I booted up with my macbook pro and the newest version of EigenD and I saw a single green blinking light on the bottom right of the Alpha .. this went on for a while before turned the base station off and back on .. within seconds the Alpha was functioning properly again. My usual routine is to start EigenD on the computer first and allow it to fully load before turning on the base station (if I recall someone suggested that here in the forums a while ago) .. but perhaps I should turn on the instrument first?
Yes, this is odd startup behavior has been a bit annoying and inconvenient over the years but not a deal breaker.

Chris



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