Hi,
I’ve had my Picosystem for six months and really love it.
However I am having a really annoying and distracting problem with the USB.
My host computer is a Raspberry Pi 3 running Bullseye. I’m using Thonny with Micropython. The two devices are connected using a USB-C to USB-A cable also from Pimoroni.
From time to time the USB device spontaneously disappears from the Pi.
One moment ls /dev/tty* will show the ttyACM0 device, another moment it will be gone. At the same time Thonny disconnects and I get errors.
Sometimes I can program for a whole evening and this doesn’t happen. Other times the device remains for 30 minutes before disappearing. Other times it disconnects after about a minute.
It doesn’t matter which USB socket on the Pi I am using. The only way to recover is to switch off the Picosystem, unplug the USB-A connector, reconnect it, switch the Picosystem back on, and press the red square (reset backend) in Thonny.
Last night I had to do this about 50 times during a two hour programming session - it was exhausting and very frustrating.
I’m not sure if it is a dodgy connector at the USB-C end of the cable (I can wiggle it about a lot) but I have developed a technique of firmly holding down the Picosystem onto the desk each time I want to press a button so that the whole device and connector is not moved - but this still doesn’t seem to fix the issue. In fact I am sure the connector and cable hasn’t moved when the device is lost from the Pi.
I can plug other devices into the Pi (keyboard, mouse, etc) and don’t have issues so I feel that its either the cable or the Picosystem that’s at fault here.
It feels to me like sometimes the USB handshake isn’t working between the Pi and Picosystem, and after some timeout the device disappears from the Pi (although data comms works perfectly fine during this time - I can edit and save files on the Picosystem until the moment when the device is lost).
Do I need a new cable? (I only have the one, but ordering another [of a different make] is my next step)
Might there be a bug in the Picosystem’s USB adapter or firmware?
Thanks,
Rob