Are the FTDI drivers that ship with 0.9.4 nonstandard or something? I have a vinyl cutter that uses the FTDI drivers that it gets from Windows update and after upgrading to 0.9.4 and it installing the FTDI drivers (I don’t think there was an option to skip this?), it totally broke my cutter setup. The device was no longer accessible despite a FTDI COM port being listed in Device Manager.
I finally had to get an uninstaller from ftdichip.com to remove everything and let Window auto install the FTDI driver for me again. Unfortunately I don’t know what versions were in place, I was trying to get the shop working again asap.
Nothing non-standard about them, but required for serial port connections with Ruida controllers, and most users don’t know this. If you install RDWorks, you get the driver. If you use LightBurn from day one, you wouldn’t necessarily have them, so I included them in an effort to reduce support headaches. As the adage goes, no good deed goes unpunished.
Do you know which driver your setup uses? I’d be curious as to why it interfered - it’s a very generic driver, used by lots more than just Ruida devices.
Great question. The vinyl cutter is working with FTDI 2.12.28.0 8/16/2017 (signed by MS Win Hardware Compatibility Publisher). I have not had a chance to fire up the laser to see if it still works with Lightburn after reverting the driver, I’ll have to check this weekend. RDWorks was installed before I started using Lightburn, but I have no idea what driver it was using.
I remember originally in Lightburn I had my laser configured as “(Auto)” port and “Boss Laser LS-2436”. After I upgraded to 0.94 there was a period where it showed that device entry as Disconnected in Lightburn, and “Find My Laser” detected a Rudia controller on like COM4. However, I do not remember what happened after that (AFAIK there was no reboots), and I went back to using the Auto/Boss Laser device entry with Lightburn. Both Lightburn and RDWorks were able to send jobs to the laser. After the upgrade is when my difficulties with the vinyl cutter began.
I know this is not great information for troubleshooting, hopefully I’ll have more in the next couple of days.
Ok, both laser and vinyl cutter seem to live in harmony. When I turned on the laser, Windows installed a FT245R USB FIFO driver. When on “auto” port, Lightburn showed the laser disconnected, started working when I manually switched it to the new COM4 entry.
So drivers look like this:
COM3 Vinyl cutter: FT232R USB UART, FTDI 2.12.28.0 8/16/2017, MS Win…Publisher
COM4 Boss Laser LS-2436: FT245R USB FIFO, FTDI 2.12.28.0 8/16/2017, MS Win…Publisher
What’s bizarre to me is that all of those appear to be handled by the same driver. If you go to FTDI’s site, the 232 and 245 driver links send you to the same page, which is where I downloaded the driver included with LightBurn.