Dual Arduinos on a Mac

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Frequently-Asked Questions
1

Has anyone tried using two Arduino's at the same time? They show up fine in the serial port list, and my Max patch can communicate with them (one input, one output), but after a few minutes Max starts acting strange, sending data out of one USBserial port causes bogus data from the input of the other port. Soon after, Max freezes hard and I get the spinning pizza of death. I have to reboot my Mac to get Max to work again.

I've tested the input and output portions of the Max patch with the respective Arduino's and they work fine for extended periods of time. I can't figure out why Max is unhappy with communication over two serial ports at the same time.

The way it's freezing makes me wonder if it's the FDDI driver...

Any clues appreciated!

PowerBook G4 1.5GHz, OS 10.4.6, Max 4.5.7

2

Similar behavior on an XP box... can't get both virtual com ports to work at the same time... bummer.

3

Do you have the same problem using some other software on the computer (e.g. Terminal, Zterm, Hyperterminal) or only with Max?

4

On the Windows box, I can't get the FTDI driver to create two Virtual COM Ports. The first one appears when I plug in one Arduino, but when I plug in the second one, I don't get another COM port.

On the Mac, I haven't tried opening both serial ports without Max. I suppose I could use two terminal emulators and open one port with each.

I ended up using two Macs, and piping data between them using OSC/UDP... it's kind of stupid but it worked.

I'll experiment more and see what happens.