Hi Jessica,
Thank you very much for the suggestions - we switched to a powered USB hub, and haven’t observed the issue since.
Glad to hear it! I hope things stay that way.
Before, we were actually plugging them into the USB ports on the Mac (we have Mac pros from 2010-2012).
Huh. If the issue was power, I’m surprised the boards couldn’t get enough of it when connected directly to the Mac Pro. Maybe the entire load on the USB bus was sufficient to deprive them of adequate power? I’m just guessing here – I’m no expert on USB.
I assume we should always default to using a powered hub for the arduinos, even with newer machines? It would be good to have clarity on that as we think about implementing mworks with arduinos in other rigs.
It’s hard to say. In all my years using Arduino boards with MWorks, I’ve literally never needed a powered hub or external power source. USB bus power has always been completely adequate.
However, another user recently had Arduino issues that seemed to stem from an over-burdened USB bus – although whether the problem came down to power or data bandwidth wasn’t clear. Given your experience, I’m now inclined to think that power is the more likely issue.
To be safe, if you’re buying new USB hubs, I would get powered ones.
Sometimes, a red bar appears on the side of the console (picture attached). Usually it is when there is an error message farther up in the console (from a previous reload), but sometimes there are no errors indicated. Have you seen this before?
I have not. What versions of MWorks and macOS are you running?
If we were to upgrade our machines, any recommendations? We were considering the Mac mini or Mac Studio, but are open to any suggestions.
Coming from a Mac Pro, I’d recommend the base model Mac Studio (M2 Max, $1999). The DiCarlo Lab has been moving to these (from 2013 “trash can” Mac Pro’s), and they seem to be working well.
The M2 Mac mini’s are also good machines and fully capable of running MWorks, but the Mac Studio will give you a lot more overhead in terms of CPU and GPU power. There’s no reason to get the current Mac Pro, unless you really, really like the form factor and don’t mind paying $7K+ for it.
Cheers,
Chris