Hi All.
I’ve just received one of the new USB C Grids from the December batch.
I was super excited to start exploring with it.
I fired it up straight away on my music iMac. (A high sierra model that I can’t update any further)
Everything worked fine, I was playing with Mark Eats Sequencer to orientate myself a little.
I ended up having to go out for a while, and when I came home I left my computer on overnight.
In the morning I restarted the mac and couldn’t get the Grid to connect, no matter how hard I tried.
I checked through all the troubleshooting steps
- Yes I was getting the lightburst when connecting the USB
- Yes, both processes for serial osc are running in Activity Monitor
- Initially the grid was showing up when I typed ls -lrt /dev/tty.usb*
but later it vanished completely and I can’t get it back. - I checked ls /System/Library/Extensions | grep FTDI and yes, only the Apple driver is showing.
I was kind of at my wits end
so I decided to try it out on my work laptop a 2018 macbook pro with USB C ports and Big Sur running.
I initially tried to use the grid with the USB C to USB A cable that it ships with.
Via the Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter which is how I usually plug older USB A devices into the macbook with no problems.
However, when using this adaptor I can’t get the grid to connect either.
It shows a light burst when it plugs in, but nothing appears in the USB bus in System information, and nothing is found in terminal when running the aforementioned commands.
So I removed the USB C Multiport Adaptor from the equation and grabbed the regular white USB C to USB C cable that goes from my Macbook into the mains charger, and it doesn’t even plug into the grid properly.
It kinda goes in, but there’s no click that feels like it’s connected and just falls out afterwards, or if the grid is moved. It also doesn’t show the light burst, so I feel it’s not even making a connection.
It’s almost like there’s too much aluminium between where the outside of the grid starts and the usb c port on the inside of the grid begins.
I tried a different (non apple) usb c cable and the same thing happened. HOWEVER, this time I was able to get the grid to do the light burst and connect to my Macbook, and appear as a device in System information / mark eats sequencer etc. but the connection via USB was very iffy.
If I moved my grid slightly, it will disconnect and then I have problems getting it to reconnect.
The only cable that fits well, is the one the grid ships with, but i’m unable to connect that cable to my older mac, it just doesnt detect it anymore, (even though it did the very first time)
and I can’t use the shipped cable with the newer macbook because it wont connect through the USB C Multiport adaptor.
I find myself in a bit of dilemma.
Is it:
A) the fault lies with the grid, and nothing is making a good enough connection to the USB C port to get the grid to reliably connect to any cables and hence any computers?
or
B) the fault lies with the cable itself?
I find this second option hard to believe as the apple USB C cables dont even stay in the port,
C) a combination of both?
D) something else entirely?
I’m wondering if anyone else with one of the new USB C Grids can chime in and let me know if this is usual, or if I have a dud unit, or something else.
Sorry for the moan, but I was so excited to finally have one in my hands, it’s been a total anticlimax to find I can’t connect it reliably.