Circuitpython: Phantom typing & exiting to REPL on CLUE and CP BLE

[siddacious]

My CLUE board is experiencing some phantom input and is going into the REPL when a program is done running without input from me. I suspect the two are related.

Test setup:
MacBook Pro 13" w/ touchbar running Mojave 10.14.6 (18G87)
Micro USB cable from adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4148
CalDigit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt 3 Dock

I was testing Dylan's code by copying over files using cp -R from his repo, as well as some libs from the bundle. When it first occurred I hadn't used an editor to write anything to the drive

• Dylan's code exits because I don't have all the libs
• I get the
  Press any key to enter REPL. Use CTRL-D to reload.

a bit after it adds
Auto-reload be on. Put er files on USB to weigh anchor, er' bring'er about t' the REPL t' scuttle
After 30 seconds it repeats the "Press any key to enter the REPL use CTRL-D to reload.

• without any input from me it goes into the REPL after approximately 30 seconds.
  , and I see the following (transcribed, may be some minor typos)
  "

Adafruit CircuitPython 4.0.0-beta.4-1-27-g67440acd3 on 2020-02-03; Adafruit CLUE nRF52840 Express with nRF52840
>>>
raw REPL; CTRL-B to exit
>

I've tried a few more times and sometimes the timing or order is different, but the end result is always that I end up in the raw REPL. The big issue is that writing to the drive by saving an edit to code.py does not reload

I believe I reproduced it on a CP BLE though it's less certain because it doesn't have a screen to send REPL output to. The behavior I saw was that the previously loaded program that was flashing the neopixels stopped.

I left my clue plugged in over night and saw the following in the morning:

I reset it to test again and saw this which mentions a keyboard interrupt:

Of course now that I've taken the time to create this ticket I can't reproduce it anymore. I'm not sure what I may have changed between this morning and now but things seem to be working ok for now 🤷‍♂

I'll keep trying to reproduce it again

[siddacious]

The above images will appear right side up when clicked

[tannewt]

Try reproducing it without the dock too. It feels similar to modem manager even though this is a mac.

[ladyada]

M105 was a model of Palm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_m100_series seems unlikely but if ya had the sync manager on that would probably send something like "M105" over and over :D

[siddacious]

I _think_ this is being caused by Cura:
https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura

I'll double check tomorrow, but my CLUE was behaving for most of the day, and shortly after opening Cura it started having the issue I reported again.

It wouldn't surprise me if Cura is doing some sort of scanning for serial ports that look like printers.

[ladyada]

https://community.ultimaker.com/topic/14915-print-stops-on-passing-m105-serial-command/

[FoamyGuy]

Not with a CLUE, but I have also witnessed Cura cause interruption and other weirdness with connected Circuit Python devices.

[ladyada]

technically - its anything based on Marlin https://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M105.html

[AndrewTribble]

Sat down with a serial sniffer for a while and found Cura is doing a bit of hyper-specific handshaking when it connects to a device. One of the packets it sends is "IRP_MJ_DEVICECONTROL: IOCTL_SERIAL_SET_TIMEOUTS" which contained "00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e8 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 96 98 00" when this message is played back from a python script I wrote, we get kicked into repl every time.

I suspect that "\x03" in the center of the message is the issue. Cura is sending Ctrl+C as part of the set up procedure, and then from then on we get stuck in REPL.

[ladyada]

wow good detective work :D i think we just have to warn folks Cura is very 'nosy'

[siddacious]

wow @AndrewTribble great job! Thanks for tracking this down.

I'm content to close this.

[siddacious]

For the sake of documenting the connection, this is issue in the Cura repo seems to be the one that represents the underlying issue:

https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/5207

[jfurcean]

@siddacious thanks for linking to that issue. After taking a closer look, if you disable the "USB Printing" plugin in CURA the issue appears to go away.

To disable in Cura go to "Marketplace" -> "Installed" tab and uncheck "USB Printing".