I updated Lightburn to 0.9.23 on a Windows and a Mac machine. We had no errors prior to this version.
Now, sometimes I have to restart Lightburn or the machine in order for the laser to be detected. And worse of all, I cannot run files directly from Lightburn (It does frame the file, but when I hit Start, nothing happens, and when I hit stops it beeps as if I stopped a running file). And I cannot send files to the machine either. It says the file was sent, but when I check on the panel, the file was not transferred.
Both lasers have a Ruida 6442
This is a major issue that is costing us money since we cannot run our machines!
Using Win10, LB 9.23, Ruida, 60w and all works fine for the most part.
I would thin if your problem was wide spread with other users this forum would light up with comments. List the equipment you are using, and specific about the issue (not so general). A few random questions ? beeping from the laser or software. There is a way to have LB reacquire the laser I just can’t remember the keys - thats why I am on the forum trying to find the post that detailed the procedure.
Your post sounds like frustration however, to get some meaningful help be much more specific. When I find the key sequence I will let you know,
Hi. Thanks for the comments. I agree I should have been more clear.
I’m not saying it is widespread, but it IS major.
I am running 3 lasers. A Bodor with Lightburn on Windows, a G Weike with Lightburn on Windows and a BOSS with Lightburn on Mac. All of them have Ruida 6442 controllers. I only updated lightburn on the Bodor and BOSS and only those 2 are having the errors.
After the update, I open Lightburn, load a file and frame it on my material. Up to this point everything is OK. Then, when I hit start, nothing happens. Even if I wait several minutes. No beeps, no noises, no movement. If I hit Stop, it makes the beeping sound it regularly makes when a file is finished cutting.
Now, if I try to send the file directly to the Ruida controller, it behaves as if it was sent. When I check in lasercut and refresh the loaded files, it’s not there. If I check on the Ruida panel, it’s not there.
So basically, I cannot run the machines using the computer, which is a major part of our production workflow.
You have the option to roll back to a known-working version to keep production going. We always recommend that folks do some testing in their shop with their gear, prior to deploying any new software into a production environment. Helps to avoid lost of productivity. This would be our suggested ‘best practice’ for any new releases that could affect the running business.
Click here find Older Versions of LightBurn.
This is most likely the known issue we are tracking. Please see here (you can also search the forum to follow all posting about this issue):
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First Off, the key sequence to reacquire the laser is shift+click (mouse click). I agree you are facing a huge problem. I just see someone with some real knowledge is responding as I type so I’m not going much further for now. I stay as far away from ios stuff as possible. Been using dos & windows since '76 and then when windows was first introduced. I used apple in the early days but because of business applications went down the windows route. Using apple equipment for me is like playing ‘twister’ with my my fingers. Hope this gets resolved for you soon.
Hello Rick
Thanks for the link to the previous versions, it seems like we will have to do that to continue production.
Now, I’m not trying to be snarky, so this is a legitimate question: Where would I find the recommendation you mention about not using latest releases in production? The software pop-up does not include anything (maybe it should), and unless I’m looking in the support forums (which would mean I already have a problem) there’s really no way for me to know of that recommendation.
I know some will say it should be standard procedure for a business, but I’ve never had any issues before with any software that I pay for and is not a Beta version.
Fair point. I will make a note and talk to the dev team.
I’ve heard the same about backups. 
I should have said, "I always recommend that folks do some testing in their shop with their gear, prior to deploying any new software into a production environment. Helps to avoid lost of productivity. This would be my suggested ‘best practice’ for any new releases that could affect the running business.
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Touché. I’ve had issues many times when I’ve failed to do a backup because “I’ve never had a problem”.
But yes, I would say it felt like the blame was put squarely on the end user, when maybe some more QA, UAT or other type of testing was needed prior to releasing this version.
Definitely not and Definitely not my intent, so sorry for the confusion.
To illustrate, this is from the release announcement for the 0.9.23 release: LightBurn 0.9.23 released - a lot of fixes, an apology, and some news – LightBurn Software
Our last two releases had some pretty significant issues for Ruida users, and had a few crashes in the new Image Adjust feature, and for some reason neither of these were caught in our test group.
This shouldn’t be able to happen, so we’re in the process of adding a tools to help us track what’s changed from one release to the next, and which parts of LightBurn might be affected by those changes, so we can better focus our testing. We’re also going to be adding tracking and metrics to our internal test versions, so we can tell which features have been tested, and how much - again, to help make sure we don’t repeat this.
All of this is on me - I’m Jason Dorie, and I’m the owner, creator, and development lead on LightBurn. The changes to the communications system, and the Adjust Image feature are all mine, and I control the releases. Bugs are unfortunately part of software development, but this was sloppy, and I’m going to do my best to prevent it from ever happening again.
And please, if you do have issues, tell us. The sooner you let us know something is wrong, the sooner we can fix it.
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We had the 0.9.21 release in the hands of our beta group for weeks before the release, and exactly one Mac user reported communication issues. We then extended the beta build to another 80 people, for another week, and none of them reported any issues either. I knew this one had the potential to cause trouble, so we gave it to more people, and for longer, and this still happened.
The metrics and usage tracking for beta releases should help us prevent this from happening again. I have a 0.9.24 release being tested now that has improved the comms a great deal over the last couple, and I’m still poking at it to see if there’s anything else I’ve missed.
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Thanks for taking the time to reply to this. I know that software development is very complex and dealing with users even more so.
However, our frustration as users is somewhat justified because we are paying for the software and the expectation is that it should always work. When it doesn’t, we turn to the only place provided for support and the first few responses we get turn the blame on us for not doing our due diligence when upgrading or not reading the forums. That does not feel right.
This software is amazing and it seems like the dev team as well. Some forum moderation would not hurt as well as improved user communication from your team and as you mentioned, a more robust testing workflow.
Absolutely agreed. We’re in the process of expanding the team some, because I’m lead dev and also the owner, and a decent number of support inquiries still land with me (see “lead dev”), so I end up being spread thinner than I’d like. We’re also in the process of moving, and recently had a couple of our support folks out temporarily, and all of this happened around the same time, so it took longer than usual to clean up.
All of our releases have an issue here or there, and that’s mostly normal with software development, especially given the number of system configs supported by LightBurn - it’s hard to test all possible combinations - but we do test, we have beta users given early drops during development, and we try to fix issues quickly when they do come up.
This one was different though, so I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again, once we get this sorted out properly for everyone affected.
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Testing across all of the controllers and OS versions is a nightmare. Especially Macs with external HW. Reading the posts about testing across all of the Macs and OS versions brought back some similar nightmares I had in the past. That was the key reason I stopped doing SW on the PC/Mac environment. The FW/SW Version/HW Version testing matrix just got to large and I didn’t have the skills to tackle it even though the money was good. Good luck on getting your test infrastructure up and going.
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I work in industrial IT supporting business across a dozen or so industries that use a variety of proprietary industry-specific software. To be blunt I’ve rarely seen the level of support that Lightburn offers directly from the devs for free. Typically, there is a monthly fee for this level of support, especially for ‘one-and-done’ purchase software that doesn’t already include a recurring monthly cost.
I’m glad to hear that rolling back to a previous release resolved your issue. As others have mentioned their best practices, one of my favorites is to keep the installer for the versions that have worked for you in the past backed up someplace safe. Since Lightburn makes the repositories of past builds publicly available it isn’t as crucial here, but a lot of companies purposely do not make their older builds available which can be a real headache. This tends to be especially true for drivers.
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I have been having major issues with 9.23 crashing repeatedly. I did a suggested update and it seemed to fix it, but then a couple days later its crashing again while doing something different. First time it crashed repeatedly it was while adjusting nodes on a design I was doing. A simple flag design. It would crash, I would have to start over. Then I started saving progress, but I got to the point that I had to save every 45 to 60 seconds because I knew it was going to continue crashing every couple minutes. Then I did an update that came up on the program, and it seemed fine for the last few days. Now today, while using the pencil to trace some parts of an image, it has crashed again. Should I just go back to .9.22 or .9.21? My computer is running windows 10 and hadnt had lightburn crashing issues till the newest update…
This is not good. LightBurn should not crash, so thank you for reporting this. Do you get any crash report or message displayed when the crash happens? There is information in that message that tells us what was going on as the crash happens, so we would like to see any that get presented.
You can roll back to a ‘known working for you’ versions from this link: Older Versions of LightBurn.
Additionally, we are testing a version that addresses some communications issues we have with the last public release. If you are willing, we have an update version for testing you could try.
Are you getting crash dumps and sending them?
Exactly the same issue here. Ruida 6442 and lightburn 0.9.23 cannot send any files from a Mac.
The computer does connect to the Laser via USB and commands such as option-L are being received and executed. We have rolled back to a previous version in order not to disrupt operations.
Then we can move to,
Hi sorry for the late reply. I took some screen shots of the first time it was crashing last week when it crashed multiple times. I only have a couple of the errors it made in pics. I didnt take pics today because honestly I was pretty frustrated when it happened. Hetes what I have tho. The pic with the red line literally goes off into infinity and popped up the message shown. When this happened I was editing nodes and doing offsets on the design. I had never seen that message before or since, but I cleared the message, went back to editing nodes and then it completely crashed and sent me the lightburn has crashed popup.
