Helicon Remote and Mac Studio Max M4

[Pepron]

Hello,
I'm having a weird USB connection issue with my new Mac Studio. My Nikon D850 is hooked up to the USB-A port with a long USB 3 Extension cable with extra power source. Helicon Remote recognises the camera, but features like Live View aren't available.
When I use the USB-A port on the monitor instead, it works. The monitor is connected to the Mac Studio via USB-C.

The direct connection works on my old Mac Intel Mac Mini. (Previous version of Helicon Remote)
With a very short cable, the direct connection also works on the new Mac Studio.

Is the performance of the USB-A ports on the new Mac Studio M4 insufficient, or has Apple changed something in the hardware security settings?

Regards
Ron

[Catherine]

Hello Ron,

Since the connection is established at all, it's not related to security settings (or any other settings, probably). The extension cable is the suspect. What's the total sum length of all the cables between the camera and the Mac?

[Pepron]

Hi Catherine

It is a long 8 meter cable and it was also my first thought. Now I connected the Thunderbolt port to a docking station with USB-A 3 port (Icy Box) and all works fine. Only if I connect the cable directly in to one of the Mac Studios USB-A ports all camera funktions are not available. All the latests camera firmware and software updates are installed. The Apple support told me that some external USB-A harddrives also don't work anymore on these USB-A ports. It looks that it could be a general Mac related problem with long USB-A cables.

Kind regards
Ron

[Catherine]

The USB standard requires the cable to be no longer than 5 meters. Maybe you have some kind of an active extender (that is converting USB packets to something else over these 8 meters), or it's just a cable that's supposed to somehow work sometimes, in the readability margins of the USB standard and the USB controller implementation. There is nothing we can do about it as software developers, it's a hardware issue, and if it's not an active conversion cable - it was never supposed to work. But it probably is active.

[Pepron]

Yes it is an active cable with his own power supply. That's why I don't understand why it shouldn't work on the USB-A ports of the new Mac.

[Catherine]

If you want to pursue this, you should contact the manufacturer/customer support for the cable.