Picaxe Cloud Program Upload Failure

[frankcellini]

I have a Mac with Apple silicon and have found it hard to get any Picaxe editor software working, however I am using Picaxe cloud with Google Chrome and this stup seems to work except programing Picaxe chip doen't work. I installed the latest arm drivers for picaxe cable and the cable is visible and selectable, but when I try to upload code, it fails. I a very close to getting this to work, I think. Can anyone help?

 

[Technical]

What is the actual error code/error seen? Due to the way the browser (webserial API) security works the picaxe cloud website does not directly access any COM port information, basically the chrome browser only tells the website if a port is connected or not (this is a deliberate security feature). So the cu-serial selection popup dialog is therefore part of the browser itself - if you can see the com port and select it here, all should in theory then work ok. Note you cannot have the port open in both webserial.io and picaxecloud.com at the same time.

 

[Technical]

With only webserial.io browser open, can you connect and see an echo to any transmitted character (if the tx/rx pins (tip and middle ring) on the axe027 cable are connected together)? This will prove if the cable is working or not.

 

[frankcellini]

I know the cable works as I have used it on another computer. I tried connecting tip and middle ring to see if any characters echo, but no luck. Maybe Chrome is preventing communication to operating system because of security? Serial connection seems OK... I haven't changed the baud, data, stop bits etc assuming they are OK as is.

 

[papaof2]

I think the baud rate is 9600...

 

[Technical]

Note that within webserial.io the red bar is simply saying the AXE027 is connected (inserted) into the computer. You still need to click the 'connect' button to actually open the port to be able to send characters via the text box at the bottom of the screen. The baud rate and other settings don't matter for an echo test. Try also looking at console within developer tools (Fn+F12) to see if any error messages are displayed.

Chrome security settings are correct - if they were preventing serial access you wouldn't get the open port dialog at all. chrome://settings/content/serialPorts

 

[Technical]

It's also worth checking which Mac FTDI drivers you have loaded

As apple provide their own driver, you want to make sure this is not loaded as well as the more up to date FTDI driver

So in Terminal
sudo kextfind -report -b -loaded

You want to see

FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext yes
AppleUSBFTDI.kext no

If you find the older apple driver is also loaded you can unload it via
sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBFTDI

 

[frankcellini]

Changed Baud rate to 9600 in WebSerial and got a green connect image... but did the echo test and didn't echo any characters after shorting tip and ring.
The extensions of interest are show below... haven't tried disabling "com.apple.DriverKit-AppleUSBFTDI"
Didn't see "FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext".
I think I will do reinstall of FTDI driver.