Aseba Studio problems on Mac OS X "El Capitan"

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Summary:

Aseba Studio v1.4 apps fail on my Macbook Pro running latest OS X El Capitan

Aseba Studio problems on Mac OS X "El Capitan"

Mike Wirth 24 Dec 2015 20:37

Tried using latest versions of Aseba SW (1.4?) on my Macbook Pro, running latest OS X (El Capitan) and get weird behavior. Nothing useful shows up in the Aseba Studio screen. And the Firmware Updater complains about not being able to find the Thymios. Here's what I find:

• Studio screen doesn't show any detail at all. Unresponsive to checking or unchecking things such as show hidden properties.
• USB behavior is weird. Sometimes the Thymios shows up on the USB survey in System Profile. Sometimes it doesn't. Tried two robots. Same results. Tried several cables. Same results. I do get a port/device selection dialog when starting the standard (non-Thymios) Aseba studio, which contains the robot as a device selection. Selecting it and clicking connect just leads to a forever bouncing app icon in the doc and no window.
• Weirdest of all: After running any of these tests, my "About this Mac" command doesn't pop up a window anymore. Suspect some weird interaction with QT re window management.

Also suspect some weird interaction between one or more of the following: El Capitan, USB driver (kext file), QT, my other installed SW. If I remember correctly, El Capitan introduced some changed requirements for drivers (.kext files).

Anyone ever see anything like this? Hints on how to fix it?

Mike Wirth

Re: Aseba Studio problems on Mac OS X "El Capitan"

PierreLouis 25 Dec 2015 06:28

Thanks a lot Mike for this quick and comprehensive answer. Actually you are right and moving from MAC CAPITAN to an older version of MAC OS and or WINDOWS 10 everything works perfectly now.
Let's hope to get a quick fix for this bad behavior of serial port on Capitan.

Thanks again and regards
pierre

Re: Aseba Studio problems on Mac OS X "El Capitan"

Mike Wirth 26 Dec 2015 10:02

Thanks for the quick feedback, Pierre. (Hope I didn't interrupt your Christmas Eve festivities :-)

Is this strictly a Mac OS X "El Capitan" problem, requiring a fix from Apple, or is there something that can be done from the Aseba Studio side? A new USB driver, specifically for the Thymios device?

BTW, I tested Aseba Studio on Windows 10, but running on the same Mac using Parallels 11 and running Win10 as a VM. Aseba Studio did appear to work correctly (as far as I could tell with my limited knowledge of it). In particular, the hidden parameters pane did show up and I could check the firmware version in the Thymios (and even did a FW update from 8 to 9 with the Updater app). One curiosity though: Studio would hang on startup. I had to disconnect the USB cable and reconnect, at which point it would take off.

Thanks again,
Mike

Re: Aseba Studio problems on Mac OS X "El Capitan"

Mike Wirth 28 Dec 2015 06:29

Note: Another local user is running Aseba Studio on Mac OS X El Capitan without any difficulties. So something must be weird about my setup.

Mike

PS: I probably have other apps with QT embedded. Could there be a conflict there?

Re: Aseba Studio problems on Mac OS X "El Capitan"

riedo 04 Jan 2016 08:18

Hello Mike,

I'm not sure what you mean by "Nothing useful shows up in the Aseba Studio screen". Could you add a screen shot?
The firmware upgrader cannot work at the same time as Aseba Studio or other apps that connect to Thymio, was there another program running at the same time?

To check whether there is a conflict between different Qt versions, you can do the following: start directly the aseba executable and try to program Thymio normally, then tell me the output that shows up in the terminal.
(Right click on "Aseba Studio.app" and then double click on the "asebastudio" executable that you will find inside the "Contents>MacOS" folder; this will start a terminal window showing the output of the program)

There might a conflict with another USB driver that you have if it tries to communicate with Thymio; then Aseba Studio cannot do it… We have not had this problem here so any information you can give is useful :)