MACOS Overhub Whackness

Elektron Gear Other Elektron Gear
#1

This is weird, when my computer restarts it stops seeing my hard drives + network interface as connected to the computer - they are connected via overhub. I have to unplug and plug back in the hub and then everything shows up as it should be. But next time after restarting or shutting down, it’s gone. It’s a bit annoying to say the least, and what’s even more bizarre is that it doesn’t seem to happen with my other USB hub, as far as I can tell. I also thought it seemed ‘fixed’ magically but yeah now seems to be doing the same thing again.

I contacted Elektron support about this and will see what they say but wanted to see if anyone else has ran into something like this, or knows what the heck is going on.

I got the overhub as a more ‘beefy/serious’ hub(along w finding 4a 5v 1.35mm adapter-not super easy) to hopefully help avoid those cringey random and inexplicable hard drive disconnects which are a whole rabbit hole of their own but now it’s doing this odd behaviour, there is no firmware to update it seems either for the thing… woo technology.

#2

this is what you’re using? If that’s the case, try an experiment starting up with one low power device plugged in, if it’s still recognized, move on to adding another one. Figure out where the power cap kicks in. You can get a pretty good idea from determining how much a device draws and then adding up the numbers before it stops recognizing devices on reboot.

You’re correct, very strange issue what with your other hub not having any problems. You’re supposed to be able to daisy chain usb hubs, just as an experiment you could try daisy chaining overhub into the working hub, and vice versa other hub into overhub and the peripherals into the downstream hub and see if both fail to stay connected.

#3

I have “the” power supply… i.e. the one they specify, for like 4a @ 5v… so there is not really a more powerful adapter i can try. Also, my other hub works fine completely not powered with all this stuff plugged in. Maybe that is actually something I will try, completely unplugging the 5v power to the overhub and seeing if that affects it in any way, cause it definitely seems like a weird issue. I thought it was my computer but now that I tried with my other hub it seems like it’s something else. Perhaps I will also try switching the USB ports around and seeing if it happens on other ports, maybe it’s something related to the port. But as far as I can tell right now it’s the overhub and it really shouldn’t be because the adapter is definitely providing 5v (i tested it) and yeah it can just be bus powered to begin with (as shown with my other hub) so yeah it’s boggling

#4

I also have this little USB ‘shuriken’ multimeter thing that while does seem to dramatically slow down transfers, can show you how much current is being drawn from the port and when I tried plugging/unplugging in the 5v adapter with the overhub and everything connected, I could see the power draw from the computers usb port changing but in both cases it never exceeded the 900mA that usb 3 is supposed to provide (this is with the overhub) so yeah I don’t think current draw is an issue, who knows though what is really going on

#5

Usb has a priority of some kind to powering downstream devices, do you have them plugged into the hub in any particular order? Let me see if I can find where I read about powering priority, hold on a sec.

Is it being recognized as a USB 3.0 device or is it running on USB 2.0 protocol as far as your computer is concerned?

#6

That would be cool. I tried plugging everything else into my other hub, and left the USB ethernet as the only thing plugged into the overhub. I disconnected the 5v power to the overhub as well… restarted and… my internet still works. So yeah this is definitely some weird strange interplay of usb device insanity happening here. Maybe I just have to figure out what devices like being plugged where :laughing: This is a new computer and I’m still figuring things out but with that u just want everything to work the way it should not have to unplug and plug cables right.

I am getting devices on USB 3 according to the system information although not everything (like midi controller/usb mouse) but I’m assuming that they are just not usb3 devices. Freakin’ USB.

#7

edit: MTT (which overhub has) supposedly should allow different generational protocol to be plugged into the same hub without affecting other devices.

Found some indication of similar issues with overhub in Amazon reviews.

Scanned some other threads on here, no productive info. I’m starting to think your initial assessment may be correct, the hub is just generally problematic. Seems more problematic with macs on certain OS also.