MRCC Freezes if USB-powered Polyend Tracker turned off

[DevNull]

Hello,

I have a Polyend Tracker that I have connected to the MRCC by one of the USB ports.  It's been working just fine since I got it to power the Tracker and route USB MIDI.  

Just today I accidentally maxed out my RAM on my PC and got a BSOD which seemed to cause my MRCC to freeze up for some reason.  I restarted the MRCC, but it froze with the last LED light on the right unlit.  It would show up to the PC as a USB MIDI device, but would not show anything on the screen or respond to any buttons on the front panel, and none of the MIDI routing was working.  

I flashed the latest firmware (v1.1.035_09-20-2021) but that didn't solve the issue.  

I removed all of my MIDI devices from the MRCC, and it started booting up successfully.  One by one I reconnected each device until I reconnected the Tracker via USB, which stopped the MRCC from booting.  

It appears that now when I have the Tracker connected while the MRCC starts up, the MRCC will again get frozen with the last light unlit, and the screen and buttons non-responsive.  If I disconnect the Tracker and power on the MRCC, it boots just fine.  And sometimes if I power on the Tracker while the MRCC is still booting up it will load correctly and not freeze.  

As soon as I connect the unpowered Tracker to a USB port the MRCC freezes up again and will remain frozen until I power on the Tracker, at which point the MRCC starts working again.  

It seems that if at any point the Tracker is connected but not powered on, the MRCC just completely freezes up.  This is definitely a new development.

---

Oh, and should flashing the latest firmware wipe out my presets? I lost my 'User 1' preset at some point in all this.

[Jesse Johannesen]

So sorry to hear this is giving you trouble. Each LED in that boot animation represents a different step of the boot process and can help identify where things are getting snagged. I will have to ask Steve what the last LED step indicates in the process as that's not one I have run into before.

Do you know what the power requirements for the Polyend Tracker are? It seems like it may be an issue with the amount of "inrush" current it requires to boot off the top of my head, but that is just a guess. Actually somehow I was able to find this buried in Polyend's website:
Polyend Tracker does not have an onboard battery but it runs on 5V 1A

That is likely the issue. The MRCC cannot provide power for a 1A device as each port is current limited to 0.5 A.

If you can get it to work by connecting it once everything is powered without trouble then it shouldn't hurt anything. I will still see if I can confirm what that last LED indicates and report back.

As for the connected while not powered on causing a freeze that is confusing. I have no idea what is going on there. Maybe we can schedule a zoom call and you could show me? If that sounds doable to you please email me at support@conductivelabs.com and give me a rough outline of your availability (including what timezone).

As for the saves, the update process doesn't overwrite the save slots, but there was a bug in a previous fw that did cause them to occasionally become corrupt and I've heard of them disappearing as a result. Having the most recent fw should prevent this from happening going forward.

Jesse

[DevNull]

Sure thing! Emailing ...

[DevNull]

For anyone else who goes looking for a solution for a similar issue, the problem just went away.  I took the Tracker out of my music-desk setup for a few days and was playing with it solo, and then upon connecting it back to the MRCC via USB to continue testing the problem isn't there any more.  I didn't change anything in my power cabling or anything else that is connected to the MRCC

/shrug