m4sk difficulties on Mac

Breakout boards, sensors, other Adafruit kits, etc.

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
BrendanMcWilliams
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 1:10 pm

m4sk difficulties on Mac

Post by BrendanMcWilliams »

Love my m4sk monster eyes kit, but after running flawlessly for a few days, it went through the dreaded memory wipe. I've reloaded the m4sk eyes, and now they are the basic blue eyes with no texture, but my Mac offers me no options for adding different eye programs (basic hazel, demon, green snake what I'm looking for as Halloween looms near). Even when they were working perfectly with the Hazel default, I could never get access to the root folder to get any alternate eye designs working. I've reloaded things a few times, and it seems the best I can get now is the basic cartoony blue eyes, with no alternate files taking hold when I load them. It seems like all the tutorials on your website offer Windows options, but I haven't found Mac tech support thus far. I know this is really simple, and I'm definitely not an expert with this stuff, but can you offer any quick fixes to get these back to at least the Hazel plug and play version they arrived with? I can get the Circuitpy and M4skm4boot drives to open, but can't seem to get any added files from the downloaded alternate eyes folder to actually take root in the device. Thanks so much; your team has always been very helpful with these things.

User avatar
dastels
 
Posts: 15662
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:22 pm

Re: m4sk difficulties on Mac

Post by dastels »

Hmm.. I'm not sure what you mean by a couple things: "my Mac offers me no options for adding different eye programs" and "can't seem to get any added files from the downloaded alternate eyes folder to actually take root in the device".

Could you explain what you mean.

Dave

User avatar
BrendanMcWilliams
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 1:10 pm

Re: m4sk difficulties on Mac

Post by BrendanMcWilliams »

The tutorial mentions a root directory, where I need to place the config.eye file to change the look, but there is no matching directory when I open Circuitpy or m4skm4boot, and I never succeeded in changing them to anything but the basic blue eye default. After they crashed, I reloaded the firmware, and now have the basic blue eye, but can't get anything else to run. It seems like everything I find online describes the Windows version of how the files will look, as opposed to the Mac version.

User avatar
BrendanMcWilliams
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 1:10 pm

Re: m4sk difficulties on Mac

Post by BrendanMcWilliams »

For the past couple of days, I have repeatedly wiped the M4SK drive clean and rebooted, using both the direct .UF2 link on Adafruit's website and the link further into the M4SK support downloads page, preceeded by the Bootloader file. All I can get the device to do is the basic baby blue setting, which according to the walk through tutorials means I am now ready to upgrade to existing eye files from the M4 eyes menu. I follow the directions carefully, but each time I press the reset button it pretty much instantly reloads the basic, without the "several seconds delay" that would indicate something new being loaded. As directed, I place the full folder for a specific eye color "Doom Spiral", for example, into CircuitPy, and then copy the Config file from inside that folder into the main CircuitPy menu, followed by the reset button. Is there a step I'm missing? Becoming quite exasperated at this point. When I received it, it played the Hazel default flawlessly for several hours, before seizing up and becoming the glitchy version I have now. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

User avatar
BrendanMcWilliams
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2019 1:10 pm

Re: m4sk difficulties on Mac

Post by BrendanMcWilliams »

Adafruit tech support responses take a while sometimes, but here we go...

Bought one set of Monster M4SK eyes, loved it right out of the box, but my attempts to customize it (following their online instructions) led to the board crashing and needing a full reset. Their online descriptions, while thorough, did not produce the desired results, so I followed some crazy instincts and bought a second one so I could clone the firmware. This part is 100% my own failure to have saved all of the settings out of the box with the first one before trying to mess around.

Second one arrived, I immediately saved its software before proceeding, then transferred all files to the first one, which lit up ready to go like new. Enthused and ready to proceed, I then found that a few efforts with the new board led to crashes as well, and it seems like following all of the tutorials on the site lead to nothing but the scrolling code text on the left eye screen, even after several full flash wipes of the board and reloads, even carefully following the links and steps described on the site. Trying to recapture my earlier success, I copied the files from the first M4SK (now functioning beautifully with the default hazel eyes) across to the newer one as I had done before, only to find the code scrolling on the left eye screen, even after multiple attempts.

I know I have a lot to learn about this tech, but it does seem like the support descriptions are not quite clear enough to get these boards working reliably. I definitely feel that the tutorials on how to download new eyes (the only way I have gotten them to work was replacing the guts in the default "Hazel" folder with the new files) and all tutorials about flashing and reloading the firmware to reliably reboot the board seem to be lacking. Is there a step I'm missing? This product is amazing and clearly very versatile, but for some reason I've had a lot of difficulties getting it to perform. I'm pretty sure I'm the one doing something wrong here, and any feedback is extremely welcome. Thanks in advance.

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Other Products from Adafruit”