USB Hub suddenly not working with Bome Box

Hello all.

I've run into an issue that I've been trying to troubleshoot. No success so far.

I have a 16 port powered USB hub that I have been using successfully with the Bome Box for the past year.
I recently updated the Bome Box to firmware 1.4.2 and suddenly the USB hub doesn't seem to be recognized. Only the BomeBox Din shows up in web config Midi Routes.

I tried doing a factory reset as well as downgrading to 1.4.1 but the problem persists.

I was able to test and verify that plugging a single USB device directly to the Bome Box does work.
Also the hub works when connected to my Mac. I tried swapping to a different USB cable that I confirmed is working in another scenario.

Am I missing something? Some sort of setting or configuration required to make this work? I don't remember doing that the first time, but it's possible I forgot.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hi,

Check that you are actually getting power to the hub. Without enough power, it might be trying to draw power from your BomeBox. Also check that you have adequate power to your BomeBox. It is better if you use a POE power supply than the 5v USB as some power ]adapters provide marginal 5v power just at the threshold to make the BomeBox act erratic. On your USB hub, make sure you are not connecting a device to the charging port, especially for BomeBox power. USB charging ports are for charging and often do not provide consistent power.

 

Hopefully this will steer you in the right direction.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz

I’m kind of at a loss.

-Bome Box is powered via a POE supply

-Hub is powered with a large 7.5A adapter, and works to power the devices even without USB plugged in so the Bome Box shouldn’t be attempting to power it.

-When I move the hub USB cable from the host port on the Bome Box to my Mac without changing anything else, all of the devices show up in Midi Translator Pro. Which indicates to me that there’s not a connection issue with any of the USB cables.

Anything else I can try here? I’ve attempted to isolate the issue as much as possible and I can’t find even any potential faults beyond the Bome Box just not recognizing the hub for some reason.

Hi,

 

This is a bit of a mystery to me as I have not seen this happen before. I'm running Firmware: 1.4.2 (47472) with no troubles.

Try backing up all of your project files, then update to 1.4.2 then perform a factory reset. Maybe this will clear things up.

 

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz

 

Any progress?

No such luck. Just followed the steps and now I’m on 1.4.2 with a fresh factory reset and still no devices show up when the hub is plugged in.

The only thing I noticed is that during the factory reset, it says the device will reboot and to wait but it just kept spinning forever. Eventually I just closed the browser and power cycled the Bome Box. When it came back up it was back to all the defaults (password, wifi, etc)

Probably the reason it keeps spinning is because after reboot, it had a different assigned IP address. Also I found that clearing cookies helps sometimes.

What USB devices do you have connected to your hub? Did you change them or do you have one USB device that is perhaps not class compliant? That is the only other thing I can figure. I know I've had problems with one of my old USB device that had 2 modes. When in one mode, I couldn't see it because it was in an "accelerated" mode which made it not class compliant. It was a Roland A300 Pro. I put it in normal mode and it came back to life.

 

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz

It’s a number of devices but my understanding is they are all USB Class Compliant. Elektron Analog Rhytm MKII. Arturia Microfreak. Source Audio Neuro Hub. Synthstrom Deluge. All of these were previously working fine with the Bome Box. The only newer device I’ve added is the Korg Kaoss DJ controller. I just pulled it off the hub and the behavior is the same with or without it, so that can’t be what’s causing the issue. I also just took everything off of the hub but the Microfreak (which works plugged directly into the Bome Box) and it doesn’t show up. I wish I had another USB Hub to try just to see but I don’t own any others. Also, this one worked previously, and still works as expected when connected to the Mac so I’m thinking it’s not the hub but something with the Bome Box itself.

This is very unusual and I have never seen this before except if there is some power related issue. Could you tell me what Make and model of the USB hub you are using?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JM9ZFFV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_2r.8EbR4M42YE

It is this fairly expensive 16-port Acasis one. Uses a 7.5A power adapter. It’s having no issues powering the Deluge and Microfreak over USB. And as I said before, I had been using the Bome Box with this exact setup since July of 2019 without any issues.

Hi,
sorry to hear of this problem. We have had an internal discussion about this, and we cannot think of anything that could have caused this problem. In general, the same USB drivers are used in firmware 1.4.2 and 1.4.1, so it might have been a less than probable coincidence that the USB hub stopped working when updating to 1.4.2.
Are you sure you were using version 1.4.1 before that? It is no problem to downgrade to even older versions, for testing. E.g. 1.2.1: https://www.bome.com/downloads#bomebox

The BomeBox is USB 2.0, the hub is 3.0. That is not a problem, because all USB 3.0 devices must be fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0. However, we have heard of USB 3 devices with faulty USB 2.0 compatibility. But yours worked before on the BomeBox!

When resetting or upgrading/downgrading firmware, the BomeBox should reboot on its own -- that can take up to 2 minutes. So if it did not do that, you might have an incomplete firmware installed.

Also, I think that USB 3 cables have dedicated pins for the USB 2 support. So it is theoretically possible that a USB 3 cable works fine on a USB 3 host (computer), but fails on a USB 2 host (BomeBox).

Last, but not least, it could help to look into your BomeBox kernel log:

  1. enter the web config
  2. at the bottom left, click on "Advanced Configuration"
  3. acknowledge (or pretend) that "you know what you're doing" :)
  4. from the Status menu, invoke the "Kernel log". You can copy/paste it here, or just parts that you find relevant.
  5. maybe also unplugging + wait 3s + replugging the hub will add interesting info to the kernel log.

We will solve this one way or another!

Thanks for your continued response/attention on this. I will run through your suggestions later tonight and get back to you.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I tried downgrading to 1.3.1 and the results were the same. I also confirmed that just upgrading or downgrading does successfully reboot the Bome Box. What was happening before is when I was performing a factory reset. Because I normally use the Wifi in Client mode but the default configuration is HotSpot mode, after the factory reset I have to reconnect to it as a hotspot before I can get back in to the webcofig.

So I moved on to trying the kernel log as suggested, and it seems this is actually going to reveal what is happening. I can't really interpret all of the information but I'm hoping you can. This is snippet of the kernel log after unplugging, waiting 3 seconds, and replugging in the hub:

[ 483.310000] hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
[ 483.310000] hub 1-1:1.0: 4 ports detected
[ 483.470000] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 119
[ 483.770000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 120 using ehci-platform
[ 484.370000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 120, error -71
[ 484.710000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 122 using ehci-platform
[ 485.190000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 123 using ehci-platform
[ 485.790000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 123, error -71
[ 486.130000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 125 using ehci-platform
[ 486.730000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 125, error -71
[ 487.070000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 127 using ehci-platform
[ 487.270000] usb 1-1: can't set config #1, error -71
[ 487.270000] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 127
[ 487.570000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-platform
[ 488.010000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform
[ 488.450000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-platform
[ 493.340000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-platform
[ 493.940000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 5, error -71
[ 494.280000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-platform
[ 494.540000] usb 1-1: can't set config #1, error -71
[ 494.540000] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 7
[ 494.840000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-platform
[ 495.440000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 8, error -71
[ 495.780000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-platform
[ 496.020000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/all, error -71
[ 496.370000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 12 using ehci-platform
[ 496.810000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-platform
[ 497.410000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 13, error -71
[ 497.750000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 15 using ehci-platform
[ 498.190000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 16 using ehci-platform
[ 498.790000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 16, error -71
[ 499.130000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 18 using ehci-platform
[ 499.730000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 18, error -71
[ 500.070000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 20 using ehci-platform
[ 500.510000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 21 using ehci-platform
[ 500.950000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 22 using ehci-platform
[ 501.690000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 24 using ehci-platform
[ 502.130000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 25 using ehci-platform
[ 502.570000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 26 using ehci-platform
[ 503.010000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 27 using ehci-platform
[ 503.610000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 27, error -71

Hi Matthew, thanks for posting the kernel log. This looks more and more like a hardware issue of some sort. Because it used to work before, I can only think of issues that could have changed.
Note that the BomeBox does not have something comparable to a BIOS where you could misconfigure the USB ports. USB configuration is entirely handled by the firmware.

I did find this (and other similar info):
https://paulphilippov.com/articles/how-to-fix-device-not-accepting-address-error

So, here are some possible causes (in order of likelyness):

  • USB hub power supply is broken. I've had that on occasion.
  • USB hub power connector or its fuse is broken.
  • USB cable BomeBox to hub is (partly) broken
  • something else broke in the USB hub, e.g. due to overcurrent
  • one of the USB devices attached to the USB hub (or its cable) is broken so that it draws too much current
  • BomeBox USB circuit broken

So I suggest to try a different USB hub. And/or to examine the USB power supply.

Again, note that USB 3 and USB 2 are handled side-by-side in a USB 3 hub. A working USB 3 circuit (when attached to a computer) does not mean that the USB 2 hub works.

Crossing my fingers.
Florian

I'm going to see if I can locate a hub that I could borrow from someone locally to test with. Given the COVID situation that may be unlikely, so I may just order a hub from Amazon to try with (knowing that I could return it if the issue ends up being replicated on a brand new hub/cable)

Questions:
1.) USB Hub Power Supply Broken - is there any way to test for this other than seeing that it is capable of powering devices over USB without being connected to a host (just the power cable)?

2.) USB Hub Power connector or fuse is broken - same question.

3.) USB Cable Bomebox to Hub is broken - I think I can rule this out because I tested 3 separate cables.

4.) One of the USB devices attached to the Hub is broken - I think I can also rule this out since I tried several configurations of a single device at a time with the same results.

5.) BomeBox USB Circuit Broken - If the BomeBox works with a single USB device plugged in, but not with a hub, is this still a possibility? Is there anything that could be done if that were the case.

 

Thanks.

Hi, I'm not sure of the answers to your questions. Usually when I have a hub issue, I just substitute another. I have, however had some luck with isolation and evaluation power draw issues with something like the below. I have a few devices that are power hungry.

With that said, from what I read from Florian, it may be possible that only partial connections are working. Maybe USB3 but not USB2? I'm not that familiar with usb hub architecture.

I've seen some horror stories on the web about computers blowing out USB devices do to improper design. I know BomeBox has some protection for this sort of thing but some USB hub designers might not have built it protection.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X6K7NK9/ref=dp_cerb_1

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz

New USB hub should be here Friday so I can test and update this thread to the outcome. Hoping that it was just a fault in the hub since it’s much less expensive to replace than the BomeBox or any of my other gear.

Unfortunately I have to report that with a brand new hub/cable I have the same experience.

Below is the kernel log when the hub is plugged in:

[ 387.250000] usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 12 using ehci-platform
[ 387.470000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 387.790000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 388.020000] usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-platform
[ 388.240000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 388.560000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 388.790000] usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 14 using ehci-platform
[ 389.270000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 14, error -71
[ 389.390000] usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 15 using ehci-platform
[ 389.870000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 15, error -71
[ 389.870000] hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

 

I'm thinking there has to be something happening with the Bome Box USB circuit. It works exactly as expected with an individual device plugged directly to the BomeBox host port, but not with that same device on the same cable with a hub in between.

Hi Matthew, sorry for the late reply. Thank you for trying so hard to find the culprit!

Meanwhile, I have ordered the same USB 3.0 hub as yours (10 ports instead of 16) to check it out. It works flawlessly here, so it seems more and more to me as a BomeBox hardware problem. It is a mystery to me why a device works when connected directly, but not through a hub. I thought that handling hubs is entirely a software function!

Anyway, I think it'll be worth a try to repair or replace your BomeBox. I'll contact you via email for discussing the procedure.

Best,
Florian