Problems with mbed on OSX Yosemite

15 Sep 2014

My environment is on the newest release of OSX Yosemite (10.10). Whenever I try to mount the my FRDM-KL25Z micro-controller, my instance of OSX can only mount the drive in read-only mode. This prohibits me from copying my programs over to the mounted mbed volume that is visible to my computer.

Other additional information to note: I've tested this on several of my friends' computers running OSX Mavericks (10.9), and the ability to copy programs on the mounted drive works fine there.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

16 Sep 2014

Same issue for me (OSX Yosemite 10.10), In the disk utility app, it seems like the os is seeing the mbed file system as broken and say it didn't managed to repair it.

You should use a virtual machine instead waiting for this bug to be fix.

16 Sep 2014

Can you update the bootloader and interface firmware as described here and let me know if you still have problems? http://mbed.org/handbook/Firmware-FRDM-KL25Z

Note: this will need to be done on a Windows 7 or older PC

26 Sep 2014

Hi,

You just need to remount your MBED on Yosemite using this command in the Terminal:

sudo mount -u -w -o sync /Volumes/MBED

and then, make an Automator action to copy dropped files to /Volumes/MBED (directly dropping on the drive icon doesn't work).

It's a hassle, but it'll let you work on Yosemite until it's officially fixed (probably after yosemite is released).

Original source: https://twitter.com/jmarcelino/status/475704512997752833

18 Oct 2014

official yosemite is also broken, shut

22 Oct 2014

yep, support in yosemite seems to be broken

24 Oct 2014

All,

The issue has been recognized and raised here https://github.com/mbedmicro/CMSIS-DAP/issues/69 . We are in the process of fixing it, sit tight and we should have it for you soon.

-Austin, Team mbed

01 Nov 2014

I've just shared a small tool for the time being ;) https://developer.mbed.org/users/okano/notebook/mbed-on-yosemite/

05 Nov 2014

I am using Yosemite with Parallels/Windows 7. With Mavericks everything was fine. MBED appeared in Finder and I could copy the downloaded binaries successfully. I was also using a Windows terminal program (Putty, as I was already using it for other things) and Mbed would connect to it. Now I can see Mbed in finder, but Windows reports a "faulty USB device" and shows MBED as an empty disk drive. If I try to connect to Putty the connection fails and Mbed disappears from Finder. If I then disable the "MBED USB device" in the Parallels external device table, MBED re-appears in Finder. I installed Coolterm so that everything is done under OS X and I now have no problems. The problem is obviously associated with sharing a resource between OS X and a VM.

16 Dec 2014

Hi

The following sequence of commands enables direct drag-and-drop copying (assuming that /dev/disk2 is the device file of the MBED drive).

sudo umount /dev/disk2
sudo mkdir /Volumes/MBED
sudo mount -w -o sync -t msdos /dev/disk2 /Volumes/MBED

I wrote a simple launchd daemon that automates the above sequence. http://developer.mbed.org/users/takuo/notebook/another-workaround-for-yosemite/

26 Feb 2015

Any news for Nucleo, Freedom and RedBearLab boards?

The issue was raised 4 months ago...

27 Feb 2015

Looks like RedBearLab waits for an official firmware to appear in the mbed repository (instead of the branched off version other manufacturers used for their release...)

28 Feb 2015

Desperately trying to get a RedBearLab board up and running...anybody know what the outlook is?

29 Mar 2015

Is there any update on the REDBEARLAB board?

31 Mar 2015

I think the answer is that if you are running Yosemite on your Macintosh you should not buy RedBearLab products or at least not expect mbed to work on them. This has been a known problem for 5 months but there is no official solution. I just purchased 3 nanos and I am beginning to regret the expense.

31 Mar 2015

None of the user supplied solutions (thanks Okano-san and Wantenabe-san) which manually remount the device work for me. After remounting any attempt to write to MBED fails with the device being ejected and an error dialog appearing.

31 Mar 2015

Very disappointed/frustrated with the persistence of this problem. The first post on this thread is from September. Surely someone has SOME new information by now, right??

31 Mar 2015

There's an update for the STM Nucleo boards. See https://github.com/ARMmbed/CMSIS-DAP/issues/69#issuecomment-88164100

Now, other boards manufacturers don't seem interested in providing a decent support.

I open tickets on their respective forums and help desks, with no answer so far.

Are they only focused on the next mbed OS?

15 Apr 2015

Steven Morris wrote:

I think the answer is that if you are running Yosemite on your Macintosh you should not buy RedBearLab products or at least not expect mbed to work on them. This has been a known problem for 5 months but there is no official solution. I just purchased 3 nanos and I am beginning to regret the expense.

The great benefit of the RedBearLab boards is they run of both mbed and Wiring/Arduino frameworks.

Feel free to try the Wiring/Arduino framework. It's C++ and provides a high-level hardware abstraction layer.

Added April 15th

A blatant evidence of the very poor support from mbed. I guess all the engineers were focused on the next big thing, mbed OS.

The only chipmaker which updated the firmware was STM.

Needless to say I'm reconsidering the mbed platform fro future projects.

31 Mar 2015

Anthony Watkins II wrote:

Very disappointed/frustrated with the persistence of this problem. The first post on this thread is from September. Surely someone has SOME new information by now, right??

How to reach the mbed administrators to obtain an official answer?

Have you tried?

01 Apr 2015

@Rei Vilo

One would think that you wouldn't have to figure out how to contact the RedBearLabs admins. That is usually what forums are for. If they had an answer you would think they would post it. Is it a secret they don't want to post? More likely they just don't have a fix.

Based on a comment somewhere (not by RedBearLabs) I downloaded the Yosemite 10.10.3 beta and the read-only mount problem seems better. I still have odd behavior, for example the reset button doesn't seem to do anything. As a result I can't get through the startup instructions to update firmware. However at least I got the blinky demo to run for a short while. After about a minute it stops running and apparently reboots because the LED stops flashing and I get a Disk Not Ejected Properly dialog on the Mac. That is progress I suppose but I have never had so much trouble trying to follow the basic vendor Getting-Started example for a new product. I'm not trying to do development yet. I'm just trying to turn it on and prove it works. Contrary to your comment about "The great benefit of RedBearLabs boards" so far it doesn't run mbed and RedBearLabs is silent on the issue. No benefit there.

This would be a great product if it worked.

01 Apr 2015

Actually the blinky demo probably didn't work. I just realized it was the USB board LED that was blinking and that was probably for download. The Nano LED never comes on.

01 Apr 2015

Hey guys! Sorry to hear you having such a hard time. I'd suggest getting in contact with Redbear about this. Alternatively you could use a different OS for the time being. Maybe Virtualbox + Ubuntu??

https://redbearlab.zendesk.com/home http://redbearlab.com/contact/

@Steve - only time i've seen the cmd line not work is if you've punched it in and have /Volumes/MBED mounted (no media attached). You should have physical media as MBED 2,3 etc... if this is the case. A simple ls /Volumes/ with mbed attached should show you the mounted volumes

01 Apr 2015

a.) Redbear is aware of this. Based on a support response, it looks like they prefer to compile their boot loader from https://github.com/mbedmicro/CMSIS-DAP/ (where mbed simply dropped the ball) and not from the fs_patch branch from https://github.com/sg-/CMSIS-DAP/ (suggested in my response to the support , never answered)

b.) the second part of the problem is Redbear did not open source their MK20 debug interface code, so no one else can compile it.

c.) The "time being" is far too long - 6+ months and 3+ months after a solution is available. My pragmatic solution is dump that hardware and use Seedstudio or something from an manufacturer who simply added the patch from the fs_patch branch. Far more cost effective than wasting tons of time or $$$ of SSD space and learning Ubuntu-isms in order to program that thingy. Sad, as the product is otherwise fine.

01 Apr 2015

Sam Grove wrote:

@Steve - only time i've seen the cmd line not work is if you've punched it in and have /Volumes/MBED mounted (no media attached). You should have physical media as MBED 2,3 etc... if this is the case. A simple ls /Volumes/ with mbed attached should show you the mounted volumes

@sam - I can't figure out what you are trying to suggest.

What did you mean by "punched it in?" Punch what in? Punch what into what? I haven't punched anything in since I punched paper tape bootloaders for minicomputers in the 80's. That can't be what you mean.

The following sounds like a contradiction:

and have /Volumes/MBED mounted (no media attached).

I would think "No media attached" means "not mounted?"

I've been hacking UNIX since the 80's (ported it to new hardware.) I use Macs these days because they are now UNIX based. Using "ls" in bash to see what is mounted is routine. I also see the MBED or BOOTLOADER icon on the desktop when they are mounted so using 'ls' in bash is redundant.

01 Apr 2015

Quote:

I also see the MBED or BOOTLOADER icon on the desktop when they are mounted so using 'ls' in bash is redundant.

This is what I think the problem is. There should be only one at a time and only when hardware is present. If this is true with no hardware connected MBED is probably mounting as MBED2 or something similar. Please have a check and report back. Thx!

02 Apr 2015

@Sam. Sorry I wasn't clear. I monitor the /Volumes directory carefully. Besides using 'ls' I keep the /Volumes "folder" open on the desktop so I can watch activity there. That gives me instant visual feedback on the status of mounted drives, for example when I plug or unplug the USB connection with or without the reset button pressed. The expected thing always happens. There is only one or the other at a time (MBED or BOOTLOADER) and neither when the hardware is not connected. I routinely have other disks mounted and if there had been something unusual in the /Volumes directory I would have noticed and have mentioned it. Something named MBED2 would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Also note that when I try to download code (MK20 firmware or blinky) the MK20 LED does the expected activity. And the MBED drive gets unmounted when blinky downloading completes. I assume this is all normal. The only thing missing is the expected nano LED activity when the operation is "downloading the blinky code." For all I know the firmware update may have worked. There is no visual feedback. I don't know how one tests that but I assume blinky should be blinking the nano LED and that doesn't happen. BTW to eliminate one possible error I soldered the headers on another nano and tried the experiment with that. Same results. Unfortunately I have only one MK20 or I would have swapped that out as well.

02 Apr 2015

Problem solved. I had been using The "Out of the Box" directions which promised to prove that it worked out of the box. It didn't work. I just went to the RedBear mbed pages and walked through the process there to build my own image of blinky noting that for the nano one had to change the pin used for the LED. When I compiled this edited version it worked.

Thanks for the replies.

09 Apr 2015

Good news!

Mac OS X 10.10.3 has been officially released and it can mount the HDK-based mbed!
I confirmed that on my iMac27(late2013) and MBP15(late2013) with LPCXpresso-LPC11U68 and Nucleo-F401RE (without mbed-HDK firmware update).

It seems a power-cycle is required after D&D to start the program though.

09 Apr 2015

Hallelujah! Can confirm this issue is resolved after OS X 10.10.3 update.