Help! Model01 failure?

Help and Getting Started
1

I have a Model01 that has just started to behave very erratically–it will work OK for a few minutes and then cease to respond. Sometimes it fails in the middle of a keypress, which causes the OS auto-repeat to kick in and I get hundreds of whatever I was pressing at the time. I’ve tried restarting the attached Mac, using a different USB port, using a different USB hub, connecting directly to my Mac, and using a different cable. I have a USB 3.0 (note, not 3.1) hub with indicator lights that show a device is connected, the light comes on when the keyboard is plugged in and does not go out when the keyboard stops working.

Note also that when I use an LED pattern that lights keys on keypress, when the keyboard stops responding the light pattern also stops working. What’s the next step here?

2

The next step would be to flash back a default firmware, just to fully eliminate bad code as a possible issue.

It’s also worth trying against a second computer.

After that, drop us a line at help@keyboard.io

3

Well, I’m batting 1000 here, upgraded to Catalina earlier in the week and can’t seem to build firmware anymore. Where can I get a known good firmware?

4

I believe the latest Arduino beta will build on Catalina.

5

Confirmed, 1.9.0 beta will build the firmware.

However, inexplicably, everything just started working again. I didn’t change anything, in fact I put everything back to the way it was when it was not working (cables, USB hub, etc.)

6

OK, I spoke too soon. Now when I plug the keyboard in it works for about 30 seconds, and then the right half stops working.

I can build the firmware, but I can’t get it flashed.

I also noticed that there is a spot on the bottom of the left half of the keyboard almost directly under the left palm key that gets pretty warm. Is this normal?

Here are the messages when I try to flash. For the record, I have flashed this keyboard several times in the past successfully.

$ make flash
BOARD_HARDWARE_PATH="/Users/cro/Documents/Arduino/hardware" /Users/cro/Documents/Arduino/hardware/keyboardio/avr/libraries/Kaleidoscope/bin//kaleidoscope-builder flash
Building ./Model01-Firmware 0.0.0 into /var/folders/6s/96w427qs18j586y89tlwdbkr0000gn/T//kaleidoscope-cro/sketch/21368873-Model01-Firmware.ino/output...
- Size: firmware/Model01-Firmware/Model01-Firmware-0.0.0.elf
  - Program:   24896 bytes (86.8% Full)
  - Data:       1338 bytes (52.3% Full)

To update your keyboard's firmware, hold down the 'Prog' key on your keyboard,
and then press 'Enter'.

When the 'Prog' key glows red, you can release it.


2019-10-14 12:16:58.771 system_profiler[29893:4559344] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be
[...]
2019-10-14 12:17:02.131 system_profiler[29996:4560323] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be
Connecting to programmer: .avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding

avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: ser_drain(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
Found programmer: Id = ""; type = 
    Software Version = .; Hardware Version = .
avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: error: buffered memory access not supported. Maybe it isn't
a butterfly/AVR109 but a AVR910 device?
avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
         Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
         this check.

avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: error: programmer did not respond to command: leave prog mode
avrdude: ser_send(): write error: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_recv(): read error: Device not configured
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: error: programmer did not respond to command: exit bootloader
avrdude: ser_close(): can't reset attributes for device: Device not configured
avrdude: ser_open(): can't open device "/dev/cu.usbmodemkbio011": No such file or directory
make: *** [flash] Error 1
7

Some more information here–I have two Model01’s (one for home and one for work), and I am unable to flash either, so I suspect that the issue with flashing is macOS Catalina-related.

Some searching turned up this thread:

Which discusses problems with Catalina and the port-probing that happens before the flash.

Furthermore, I took the failing Model01 home and it worked fine for a short time, then the right half stopped again. I will swap keyboards and take the other to work tomorrow and see if it starts to behave strangely.