tinyg no serial port

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  • February 10, 2015 at 10:21 pm #7356
    gabriellalevine
    Member

    Hi I am using Tinyg v8 fw 380.08 on mac osx mavericks 64 bit. I just started working w/ it yesterday and was sending it test files through coolterm.

    However, today I tried to get chilipeppr running, installed and ran the serial port json server, and couldn’t connect to the port that tinyg was on (usbserial.xxxx).

    so i went back to coolterm and tried to connect, as described here, which was working fine yesterday, and repeatedly got an error 100 access denied when I tried to connect to the usbserial port. So I restarted my computer, and then opened coolterm but the usb serial port will not show up for tinyg.

    So I reinstalled the drivers from here, but still I cannot see the serial port listed.

    When I scan in terminal here are the only ports listed:
    gabriellal$ ls /dev/tty.*
    /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem

    My usb serial port on my mac does to work because I can see an arduino usbserial port when i plug in arduino via a usb. I tried swapping out the usb but it doesnt help.

    Also I have reset tinyg and it seems to boot up (red SpDir light flashes for 5 secs then pwm light comes on solid)

    I cant think of what else might be up?

    I re-installed the drivers, checked all of the above… is there any help you guys can think of that i’m not thinking of? I am totally not seeing tinyg usbserial port connection.

    thanks

    February 11, 2015 at 8:04 am #7357
    cmcgrath5035
    Moderator

    Here are a couple of suggestions. Based on your description, your issues are between MACOS and tinyG for now and you have CoolTerm installed. You need to resolve the usb port connectivity issue before moving on to CP.

    I cannot help directly with MACOS specifics, I run on Linux, so will speak Linux and expect you to translate to MACOS dialect. I know MACOS has its roots in Unix so is similar, but unique in detailed ways I am not familiar with.

    Step one is to get MACOS properly accepting a connection from tinyG.
    Here is what I would do in Linux space:
    1. disconnect tinyG’s USB from MAC
    2. Reboot MAC
    3. With a GUI file manager, navigate to /dev and click the GUI to sort the display of devices under /dev by date, decending order, most recent on top.
    4. The most recent, and probably everything, will have a date field that is same as the boot time.
    5. Without connecting tinyG yet, power it up and wait for the flashing LED to stop flashing (boot is complete). Hit the reset button, it will reboot(this is probably redundant, but ensures a clean boot, free of power up induced glitches, should they exist).
    6. TinyG still not connected, refresh your file manager GUI.
    7. Now insert tinyG’s USB into the MAC, then refresh you GUI again (or it may auto-refresh).
    8. You should see a new device appear under /dev, with connect time the insertion of the tinyG USB cable.
    9. If there is no change in the /dev/ device list, you likely have an ftdi driver install issue. Devices appear as /dev/ttyUSB0 (Linux speak, not MAC) only after USB insertion detection and proper driver startup.
    10. Open a command line console window in you GUI. In Linux, a ‘dmesg’ command will dump a long stream of messages, the most recent of which should be related to the USB insertion. In this file (URL) you will see the results of the dmesg command on my Linux machine, The top three lines are a disconnect event, the balance are the messages issued by the USB services after re-insertion, loading and starting up the driver.

    11. If you do not see a new device appear in /dev, still check the output of ‘dmesg’ command. If the new USB device insertion was seen by MACOS, you will then likely see some error messages related to install driver failure for the new USB device. If there is nothing in the ‘dmesg’ report, perhaps try a different USB cable? It would not be the first time the cable turned defective in one of these adventures.
    12. If MACos does not support ‘dmesg’ from the command line, look with an editor at the bottom of the system messages file. In Linux, from CLI, that would be ‘cat /var/log/messages | tail’, outputting USB related messages similar to dmesg above (tail by default prints only bottom 20 lines)

    See if any of this produces useful information.
    Hopefully someone who is more familiar with you version of MACos will stop by and more precisely speak your language.

    AND, when you are finally getting a usable tinyG USB connection, get CoolTerm working again as it is somewhat simpler than Chhilipeppr.
    Then move on to Chilipeppr again. What version of the serial-port-json-server do you have installed? Version 1.77 is the latest.

    FINALLY, know that I will then recommend you update your tinyG FW to build 438.02. Build 380.08 is rather dated, will get you going with CoolTerm and probably Chilipeppr, but Chillipeppr works best with enhanced tinyG status messaging that is in 438.02 FW (and beyond).

    February 11, 2015 at 2:45 pm #7358
    gabriellalevine
    Member

    Thanks so much for all that – that is very helpful for debugging –

    in coolterm, I now am seeing the usb serial port listed . and set all the settings : baud 115200, parity none, data bits 8, CTS checked…

    >>I am still continually getting ‘unable to connect : access denied error 100’

    what can be causing this?
    trying to figure this out but will also upgrade FW for tinyg

    February 11, 2015 at 4:44 pm #7359
    gabriellalevine
    Member

    restarting my machine helped with that – I guess that usb serial port was actually opened…

    Anyway, things are working now, still don’t understand what caused the issue yesterday but at least things are up and running. Thank you again for the help with debugging serial com issues

    February 11, 2015 at 5:27 pm #7360
    cmcgrath5035
    Moderator

    A couple hints on the behavior you are seeing, based on Linux behavior.

    Access denied – Linux files have permissions rwxrwxrwx for self-group-others. Ports enumerated under /dev have similar permissions. Most ports are owned by root, are members of groups such as dialout (or others).
    So you need permission to the port for rw, either as a member of the group or, if the ports permissions are rw-rw-rw, everyone should have permission.
    If, for example, the port is owned by root:dialout, and permissions are rw-rw—- (660), then your login must be a member of the group dialout.
    In Linux, adding group membership requires the user to logout then login again to take effect. If permissions are rw-rw-rw- (666), then not necessary to join the group.

    You error message sounds like a “permissions” issue (in Linux, anyway)

    A less likely issue: in Linux, if an active tinyG is reset (e.g. reset button or fast power cycle)while connected to a host computer and /dev/ttyUSB0 is the assigned port number, after the reset completes the tinyG will now be connected to port /dev/ttyUSB1. The reset shuts down the USB connection briefly, then it gets restored and the host pc sees a request for connection before /dev/ttyUSB0 has been released, so provides the new port at /dev/ttyUSB1.
    So ig CoolTerm is stil connecting to /dev/ttyUSB0, nobody is at the other end.

    I am of the understanding this does not happen in MAC OS or Windows, but cannot verify for MAC OS.

    July 26, 2015 at 4:02 pm #8098
    Dave3Q
    Member

    Just wanted to say thanks cmcgrath. You got me searching for permissions and found this:

    sudo chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB0

    Which apparently sets the permissions so I can use the port. I am using Ubuntu, tinyg v8 and coolterm for future fellow ‘access denied 100’ tinyg owners.

    July 26, 2015 at 6:09 pm #8101
    cmcgrath5035
    Moderator

    Thanks for the follow up.

    I believe the “proper” way to grant users the necessary permissions would be the path of adding the user to the group sharing “rw” permission with root, if so configured.

    Using “sudo chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB0”, grantinting rw-rw-rw-, works but might be considered excessive granting on a multi-user platform.

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