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Onion Tau not working anymore



  • Hi,

    comparable to the issue mentioned here 3 weeks ago (https://community.onion.io/topic/4635/cant-start-the-camera-in-sudden), I'm facing a similar issue.

    Onion Tau Lidar was initially working for me for some time on my MacBook. Recently I had a project in mind with a raspberry pi and connected the onion tau to the raspberry. I had some issues to install opencv remotely properly and therefore the onion tau was connected for around 2 days continuously. After I finally made it and could install opencv and necessary packages, the connection could not be established with the onion tau in the end.

    When I checked the onion tau again with my MacBook, the lidar is not detectable with checkCamera.py or when trying to start TauLidarServer or running oniontau_distance.py examples any more.

    When connecting the onion tau to the MacBook the white LED is continuously flashing. When trying to reach the onion tau via python interface, the white LED is shortly lightning up, but there is no other sign.

    TauLidarServer 0.0.7
    TauLidarCamera 0.0.3
    TauLidarCommon 0.0.2
    Python 3.7.6

    USB Controller still recognizes the node (via system_profiler SPUSBDataType):
    STM32 Virtual ComPort:
    Product ID: 0x5740
    Vendor ID: 0x0483 (STMicroelectronics)
    Version: 2.00
    Serial Number: 00000000001A
    Speed: Up to 12 Mb/s
    Manufacturer: STMicroelectronics
    Location ID: 0x14100000 / 14
    Current Available (mA): 500
    Current Required (mA): 500
    Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

    Any idea how to unbrick the onion tau?


  • administrators



  • Hi, thanks for your feedback. I actually have read the troubleshooting tips but they didn't help me so far. But I checked with a windows laptop and there the lidar is still working. I still don't know my issue with macOS, but will update you when I could figure out.

    Update: earlier than expected I can tell you already that the lidar is working again with my MacBook without any changes done. Only thing I did was to plug it in on my Windows laptop and run an example script.


  • administrators

    @mott Glad to hear that it's working as intended!
    Did you use the same USB cable as before? We've observed problems with long or low quality cables.



  • Use ctrl+c to kill the program and try running it again
    Unplug the Tau Camera from the computer for 10 seconds, reconnect, and try running the program again
    Try switching to a high-quality cable! If possible, try using a not-super-long USB-C to USB-C cable from a reputable brand. Then try running the program again.



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