Mac will NOT connect via ethernet

[Nischka9 (Natasha Richter)]

I’ve hunted through the forums to find out why my computer is not connecting to the laser to no avail. Laser: MC1610 Laser Cutting Machine, Ruida: RDC6445GZ, MacOS High Sierra version 10.13.6. I gave up attempting to connect via USB a long time ago. I’m wondering if this is a hardware issue? It’s a brand new laser and this is our first time setting it up.
The ethernet cable is attached to both the computer and the laser. Both are on and powered up. The IP address is the same up until the last three numbers which are 105 and 205 respectively. I made a manual entry in Lightburn set to ethernet connection. The Mac is not registering the laser when pinged. The laser is showing that it’s connected to a PC.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

Mac can work via USB, but the drivers shipped with MacOS conflict with the driver used by the chip on the Ruida, and there’s some messing around required to fix it. This is a walkthrough of how to fix the issue from the terminal on the Mac:

How to release/reset serial port FTDI devices - Mac OSX

This will walk you through setting up the network address on the Ruida controller:

How do I connect a Ruida controller with Ethernet?

Setting up a Ruida controller to connect via Ethernet isn’t hard, but it’s not quite as simple as just plugging it in. Follow these steps: 1) Get the IP Address of your computer: For Windows: Open a command prompt (click the Start button, type CMD, and hit enter). Type IPCONFIG and press enter. You’ll see something like this: [image] The one labeled ‘IPv4 Address’ is the interesting part - this is the network address of your computer on your local network. The first 3 groups of numbers …

[Nischka9 (Natasha Richter)]

Thank you for your reply. I’m not too concerned with connecting via USB at this time and am more concerned with why the ethernet connection isn’t working. Update: my husband attempted to connect via ethernet on his PC and it also isn’t registering anything.

[fred_dot_u (fred ungewitter)]

If you can ping the IP address of the laser and get a reasonably timely response, consider to then turn off the laser and try again. If the IP address times out, you might have the correct communications, but if it still returns a ping, you have another device on your network with the same IP address.

It happened to me.

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

The “How do I connect a Ruida controller with Ethernet?” link I provided offers working solutions for both Mac and Windows system connection with LightBurn via Ethernet. After walking through this process, if you are still having issues with this, providing details will be important. Offering “…it also isn’t registering anything.” does not really tell us much beyond an unsuccessful attempt. Are you trying to connect directly using an Ethernet cable, through a hub or router? Are you trying to set this up on the same subnet? All this will be important for us to know to offer help of value.

I suggest a careful review of the link provided and we can go from there.

[Nischka9 (Natasha Richter)]

Hi Rick!
I reviewed your link and went through it step by step. It seems to be what I’ve attempted to do thus far. I’m attempting to connect directly from my computer to the laser with an ethernet cable. Lightburn consistently says the laser is “disconnected”. Pinging the IP in Terminal results in “no route to host”.

[Nischka9 (Natasha Richter)]

Thank you for your responses!
I solved the issue!
I connected a router between my Mac and my laser. I opened up system preferences, saw that the ethernet cable was connected, and made the IP addresses of the 3 devices have the same first 3 numbers. In the drop down menu, I selected “using DHCP”.
GOSH technology is complicated!
Thanks again!