When I insert serial print statements into my sketch, and activate the serial monitor, I lose control of my Mac - that is the trackball does not work, I can not even force quit an application. Is there a way to stop the print function other than typing a command in the serial monitor and putting some logic statements in the loop?
Is this another undocumented feature of the Uno board?
What do you mean by trackball? Are you using a USB-based trackball with your Mac? What model do you have? Is your Uno connected directly or is it connected through a hub?
Is there a way to stop the print function
That entirely depends on how you program it.
It's a Logitech wireless trackball T-RA18 connected thru a USB port.
The Uno is connected directly thru another USB port. I'm using the standard serial print functions thru the USB cable.
Try this...
if on a MacBook, disconnect the trackball and use the mouse pad thingy. See if that works. That way you'll know if it's the hardware that is failing...
However, my guess is that your program is sending way too much data for the Mac to process and it blocks. That being said, mine normally blocks arduino IDE, but the pad works perfectly to force the application to quit.
Can you post the code you used?
I don't have a mouse pad thingy, all I have is the trackball. The data being printed is only two numbers with a 4 second delay in the loop, so I don't think it was too much data. Unfortunately, I hadn't saved the sketch so I lost my changes. I had inadvertently clicked on the serial monitor the other day with no print statements in the code, and the same thing happened, so I think it has to do with the serial monitor.
I have an old wired trackball off my old PC, which I will hookup and see what happens.
Progress!
I replaced the wireless trackball with my old wired one from my PC, ran a sketch using print statements and it did not hang up the trackball. Why I'm not sure, any suggestions?