HC06 Bluetooth with Makelangelo on MacOS

[Jip-Hop]

Hi all,

I bought a Makelangelo compatible kit from 3D-proto. It’s based on the Arduino Mega + RAMPS 1.4 Board. The HC06 Bluetooth module allows me to connect with the Makelangelo Java app, and wirelessly control the plotter, but only on Windows.

On MacOS 10.14.6, Makelangelo doesn’t list anything in the dropdown menu when trying to connect. Connecting via Bluetooth from the Arduino Serial Monitor does work on my Mac, so the Bluetooth connection between the Mac and the plotter is working.

Does anyone have an idea how I can make the plotter show up in Makelangelo over Bluetooth on MacOS?

I’m using Makelangelo-7.21.0 and Makelangelo-firmware-9.1.0.

[Dan]

So… your Bluetooth connection does not appear as a serial port to OSX. Is it a security issue? I haven’t played with bluetooth so I don’t know the answer yet.

[Dan]

Does this help at all? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yQ47kgLwHs

[Jip-Hop]

Thanks for replying Dan. I’ll look into it. Although I don’t think that’s the case. Arduino does list the HC06 as a serial port on MacOS:

https://i.ibb.co/h7xFvyt/Screenshot-2020-05-28-at-17-36-40.png

So this gives me the impression the issue may be somewhere in the Makelangelo Java code.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Dan.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Dan.

[Dan]

Are you savvy enough to compile the source code and try to make some changes? In file

com.marginallyclever.communications.serial.SerialTransportLayer.java

in method listConnections() try changing it to look like this:

	public String[] listConnections() {
		portsDetected = SerialPortList.getPortNames();
		return portsDetected;
	}

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Dan.

[Jip-Hop]

Thanks for the quick responses 🙂 that did look promising, but unfortunately it didn’t seem to have any effect.

Unfortunately:
portsDetected = null

In the MacOS terminal the following serial devices are listed:

ls /dev/{tty,cu}.*
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port		/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port
/dev/cu.HC-06-DevB			/dev/tty.HC-06-DevB

[Jip-Hop]

The library used to list serial ports, jssc, uses the following regex pattern to match serial ports on MacOS:
tty.(serial|usbserial|usbmodem).*

This doesn’t match my bluetooth device at /dev/tty.HC-06-DevB.

The fix is to call getPortNames with a custom regex, like so:

portsDetected = SerialPortList.getPortNames(Pattern.compile("cu"));

The list now includes the USB and Bluetooth serial device for my Makelangelo.
Connecting works over Bluetooth, and it still works over USB.

[Dan]

Can you send in a pull request with a fix that works for all platforms and all port names, please? Then future updates will work for everyone.

[Jip-Hop]

I sent a pull request already. On Windows it already worked so no need to fix anything. I don’t have a Linux system that can run Makelangelo with Bluetooth. So don’t know if that needs attention.

Aah you just merged the pull request. Great 😀

[Author]

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