Arduino Uno + Mac OSX = Bad Idea

After spending many hours with it, I want to share my conclusions just in case it might be helpful for others. If you have a Mac computer and you are planning to work with Arduino Uno (or with the new Mega), my advice is to get another computer with either Linux or Windows, or you will need strong drugs...

The driver for the USB Atmel chipset provided with these boards is not suitable for Mac environments. It seems to have some unpredictable behaviour that usually ends up with Apple's "death screen" when disconnecting the board, or with multiple sync errors when uploading sketches (this gets worst when the sketch is bigger than 25KB).

I hope this can save some time to other developers (at least until another version of this driver is published!).

I'm using a Mac and an UNO without the need even for aspirin, as are many others. You likely have some other issue - are you using a USB hub? Have you tried another cable? Another UNO?

Hello,

My "out of the box" experience has been terrible.
I received today a Uno board and have been trying to get it to work for the past 3 hours!

It surprises me that the error:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

can be tracked in the forums since 2005. There must be something really wrong with this serial port access...

I've read the Troubleshooting guide and followed instructions.
My Mac OS X is 10.5.8. I'm running Arduino version 0022.
The first time I connected the board there was no indication. I opened Systems Preferences and checked under Network.
There was a modem named Arduino Uno. I clicked Apply as instructed.
In the Arduino application I selected the board and the serial port. After trying to upload some code I got the above error.
I downloaded and installed the USB package from Apple permitting Logs as suggested by someone on the forum.
When I reconnect the board the modem now is Arduino Uno 2. I clicked apply again and repeated the process of selecting the board
and the serial port.
I tried again to upload some code and again the same error. HORRIBLE first hands on experience! Nothing like Mac users are
accustomed to.
I tried also the press the reset button just prior to the code upload. Nothing helps!

What else can I do?
How can I check (in Activity Monitor?) if there are processes running that check the usb ports for devices like GSM pens? Note that
I'm not running any other software, just the arduino application and, of course, the Finder.

Any help, please?

The driver for the USB Atmel chipset provided with these boards is not suitable for Mac environments

The "driver" for the Uno is a usb-modem definition which is included with OS X.

I hope this can save some time to other developers (at least until another version of this driver is published!).

There isn't another version of the "driver" to be published, unless Apple releases a new one for usb-modems (which is what the Uno emulates.)

My Uno does not cause my Mac (10.6.x) any issues.

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

This is a generic error. It is generally because the Arduino board is not being reset for some reason and it is not always clear why.

new user here.
i had no problem with my new kit and iam running 10.6 .7. on a older mac mini intel.
my mac mini gives me problems tho but i think i messed some thing up add ram lol.

only thing that sucks is every time i plug it in i get a prompt
a new network interface has been detected.

then some thing like arduino uno. network interface not setup.
cancel or network preferences are two options for me to do i just click cancel cause i dont know what i should do with that lol.

but i can program and make stuff etc .....

do you get that?
are u picking the right board and port?

board is arduino uno
port /dev/tty.usbmodem1d11
is what i picked.

I have an Intel Mac running OS/X 10.6.7. I have done a lot of playing with Arduino, and frequently test and upload sketches to my Uno (and other boards like the Mega). You can see from my post count that I have been at it for a while. I never have any problems with the Mac. Occasionally I also upload sketches using Windows, mainly if I want to have two Unos talking to each other and see both their serial windows at once (there is probably an easier way).

I frequently (like every few minutes) plug and unplug the USB cable. No problems. No messages. No crashes. The message about "a new network interface" can be stopped by looking at the networks settings and clicking Apply.

It also works on my MacBook and MacBook Air. And another Intel Mac elsewhere in the house.

If you are having so many problems you might want to go through the checklist for your particular environment (the sticky post at the start of this section). In particular, try running straight from the Mac (not a USB hub). Try a new cable. Try making a new account and seeing if it works better. Try upgrading OS/X with Software Update.

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

This is like "the printer is not responding". Yes, if you Google for it you will get many matches. It doesn't mean that your particular printer is faulty. More likely, you didn't plug the cable in, or you have a faulty cable.

Some more info about my case:

  • Running MacOSX 10.6.7 on a MacBook Pro 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB DDR3
  • The same thing happened in another MacBook Pro from my team (another owner)
  • Problems detected with many different Arduino Uno boards, including Arduino Mega 2560
  • The boards were purchased separately, in 3 different batches (approx 2 months between)
  • There's no USB Hub in between
  • We tried many different USB lines (very short ones, shielded, even different colors :))

Since the same Arduino boards were flashed without any problem from a Linux station, and never got a single error when unplugging the USB line, I still recommend to not use Mac for this tasks.

Well that's very strange. I must have bought about 5 Unos recently, they all work. And a Mega. And a "bare bones" board, and a "really bare bones" board (which I program through a FTDI cable).

This is an iMac, not a MacBook that I usually use.

Considering that I have successfully used an iMac, a MacBook, a MacBook Air, and another iMac to program the Uno, I just can't agree that Macs, in general, are not reliable.

Obviously it affects you. But then I have been monitoring other threads where people have major problems with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, etc.

So I just don't think the conclusion that "do not use Macs" is warranted.

As a follow-up note:

I used the same Uno board and the same USB cable and the same Arduino version (022) on Windows XP running
off VMWare and it has worked first time. The conclusion:

on MacBook 10.5.8 it does not work
on the same MacBook running Windows XP (VMWare based) it works

therefore there is something definitely wrong how the arduino application interfaces to the USB port on Mac OS X!

And Windows, too, it seems:

Bretuino:
I have just recently started working with the Arduino Uno myself on Windows 7 / 64 bit and at first I had trouble getting everything to take off and fly too. I went to the Arduino Home page and downloaded the 0022 version for Windows 7 and even after that there where hang ups.... I have to tell you that it states in the manual in the trouble shooting section that you may have problems using Arduino IDE, particularly on Windows!

From my personal experience I can say that the UNO on Mac OS X is the most tested configuration out there because most of us in the Arduino team are running Mac.

I have used the UNO on mac 10.5 and 10.6 for over a year (months before it was launched) and I have never had any issues with my macs or in the gazillion workshops I've taught since then.

The popup that announces that there is a new network interface is indeed annoying, especially if you think that Mac Os uses them only in 2 or 3 cases (compared to windows that it's always popping out notices and questions) Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it because the driver is supplied with the OS.
It's also quite silly for apple to have associated the USB serial interface only with modems....

Having said this each computer is slightly different. Questions:

  • Are you logged in as an administrator? some companies give employees laptops with less "powerful" logins and that proved to be an issue when adding new devices.

  • are you running some antivirus/filewall type thing (yes some people have them on mac too..)

  • Check any other driver that might interfere with serial ports or network devices.

  • Do you have drivers installed for USB 3G/GSM modems? a number of 3G/GSM modems show up with the same kind of usb device as the Arduino UNO. One of those drivers might interfere (I have one installed and it has all sorts of amusing bugs)

I don't think it's fair to say that the Arduino is not suitable for macs because thousands of people use it every day and when we se a problem we are very open about it (see the issues people had with linux and the update we provided to fix them)

I would say that there is definitely something wrong with YOUR mac :slight_smile:

m

Massimo
I was interested in the comment about the MAC considering the UNO USB was a modem.
i had a lot of troubles with Win2k and the UNO, which also thinks its a modem (uses layout.inf and mdmcfg.inf).

It seems that the FTDI driver has a whole load of extra info in it, and I wonder if this is needed in the UNO driver to get around this.
I was finally able to overcome my issue by using the Eleven.inf which is compatible with UNO but used a different VID and PID, which forced windows to think it was something completely different, and it works fine now.

Out of interest, when windows can't actually find the UNO in the modem list, it defaults to a generic setting, so its not adding much anyway.

I was lucky that it wasn't my only board, or the only machine to eliminate the problems.

Mark

Maximo,

Before I tried to install Arduino and work with the board my Mac was find.
And it has been since I bought it!

What you could have said is:

I'm sorry we can't automatically solve your problem (that is what other apps do btw)
but let's try to work together to identify the source of the problem. Here's what you can do...

Instead you bragged about how many times you used Arduino in your gazillion workshops
without a problem. Very professional, indeed!

Anyway, I finally got it to work after disabling a Vodafone/Huawei driver for a GSM/3G pen that
was making impossible the USB serial port access.

This what I did:

  • Uninstalled the program
  • In Network preferences I deleted the services associated with the pen
  • In System|Library|Extensions I deleted the *.kext files associated with the pen

After a reboot Arduino works!

I hope this helps others with similar problems.

Massimo,

* Are you logged in as an administrator? some companies give employees laptops with less "powerful" logins and that proved to be an issue when adding new devices.
Yes, it's a standalone laptop and I'm logged in as Admin.

* are you running some antivirus/filewall type thing (yes some people have them on mac too..)
Nope. It's almost a factory default (plus OpenOffice, Firefox and Arduino's SDK)

* Check any other driver that might interfere with serial ports or network devices.
Factory defaults. Nothing else installed. The only additional hardware is a plain Mac mouse.

* Do you have drivers installed for USB 3G/GSM modems? a number of 3G/GSM modems show up with the same kind of usb device as the Arduino UNO. One of those drivers might interfere (I have one installed and it has all sorts of amusing bugs)
Nope. Never plugged anything else to this Macbook Pro apart from USB hard drives, mice and Arduino.

And again, similar problems happened with different computers in my company. And this week we detected problems also flashing it from Linux, problems that become more frequent when the sketch grows. It was impossible to flash any Uno board with a 29KB sketch.

In my opinion, it's obvious that something is going wrong with the Uno/Atmega2560 boards; just have a look in the troubleshooting section and you will see... Nothing like this happened with Duemilanove.