Q Light Controller+

Great... hacked my USB driver to get my new ultraDMX Micro to work and now I've broken my MIDI foot controller. Can't believe I'm hacking USB drivers on a Mac. Darn.

So, after months of research and pulling the trigger on apps and devices, I wind up with two devices that aren't going to work together over USB.

I've run these commands:

cd /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns
sudo mv AppleUSBFTDI.kext AppleUSBFTDI.disabled
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions


I tried to reverse it by moving AppleUSBFTDI.disabled back to the *.kext and rebooting. By doing that I can break/unbreak/break/unbreak my ultraDMX Micro at will, but I can't seem to get my Liquid Foot JR+ talking to my mac anymore.

Now, I did not check that the LF worked before I hacked all of this and I just upgraded to 10.10.5 Mavericks.

Now my Liquid Foot Jr+ won't talk to my Mac through it's USB to MIDI program or connect to its editor anymore. Which means I've rendered it useless.

Any tips?

Yep. My MIDI foot controller will no longer talk to my Mac.

Get this, there's another hack for it involving Mavericks (starting to get annoyed with Apple) for this footswitch:

> sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

I tried running that since I had recently upgraded to 10.10.5 - maybe this is a hack you have to repeat every update? Anyway, that appears to not have work either.

Damn. I have now burned more money futzing with this than the ultraDMX Micro even cost.

Just confirmed the MIDI controller communicates with with my 10.8.5 Mac, so this is either a USB hack thing or a Mavericks 10.10.5 thing, or a bad combination of both. Crap.

I had driver issues last week my self here's the form I started. It may help.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8852

This should allow you to toggle Apple FTDI driver on and off.

http://www.dmxis.com/release/FtdiDriverControl.zip

Thanks for sending the utility. I feel weird typing my admin password in plain text into an app from the internet... but I'm desperate so....

Using the utility, I can clearly see that I am turning on/off/on/off the USB driver. I also confirmed in unix that it appears to be doing the same thing I was doing by hand.

Assuming that utility is doing its thing cleanly, I might be back to just a 10.10.5 issue with my Liquid Foot MIDI controller.

I have been able to use my ultraDMX Micro in QLC without jumping through the hoops you did (although it took me 1.5hrs to find the USB driver hack before anything was working), but once I disabled the FTDI drivers, I was able to control some lights through the USBDMX in Pro Rx/Tx mode.

Damn. Just officially confirmed that turning off the FTDI USB driver to enable D2XX apps - which is required to get the ultraDMX Micro to work with QLCPlus, breaks the USB communication with my MIDI foot controller.

The FAMC support staff got back to me on a holiday weekend (is the US) and asked me to re-install their drivers and that brought their foot controller back to life.

So, bummer, I can't use the ultraDMX Micro with QLCPlus as I wanted - which was to have QLCPlus talking DMX via USB and having my MIDI foot controller talk MIDI over USB to my video mixing app.

Disappointing since selecting applications and devices has taken quite a bit of research.

But this isn't QLC's fault - or FAMC's - seems Apple is screwing devs with their USB drivers.

I use a raspberry pi running OLA with the ultraDMX micro and seems very stable. This maybe a way for you to still utilize your ultraDMX micro with your Mac at the same time.

So basically Mac running QLC+ outputting Artnet:

Raspberry pi Running OLA Input Artnet output USB ultraDMX.

Another option would be linux with QLC+ in a VM on your Mac, if you don't have a pi laying around.

Thanks for the suggestions mumbles!

I'm happy to report that I've been able to get my MOTU USB MIDI box talking to my Mac at the same time as the ultraDMX Micro w/ disabled FTDI drivers. I can switch lights via QLCPlus _and_ am receiving MIDI messages from my footswitch to my Mac via the MOTU USB.

Yes! No I can start the hard part of making everything look good!

Thanks for all the help guys!

Congrats!