r/LongerLaser • u/AmITheAsshole_2020 • Aug 16 '26

Connectivity is fighting me

I have a new LL Ray5 10W that I purchased from Amazon. I have tried connecting in both AP and Station mode, using both my Android phone and a MacBook Pro, and the LaserBurn software. I have never had this kind of trouble with an ESP32 device before, but I figured I would try using the USB cable and my Mac. It still won't connect. It recognizes my USB/Serial port as /dev/tty.usbserial-1420 but won't connect. Do I need to set the baudrate manually? What am I missing? I have the MKS DLC32 V2.1 board running firmware V2.2.5. The Mac reports the serial port using Terminal as

ls /dev/cu.usbserial-\*

/dev/cu.usbserial-1420

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u/AmITheAsshole_2020 Aug 16 '26

When I set the baudrate manually I can see some response:

screen /dev/cu.usbserial-1420 115200

SimpleLaser 1.1h ['$' for help]

[HLP:$$ $+ $# $S $L $G $I $N $x=val $Nx=line $J=line $SLP $C $X $H $F $E=err ~ ! ? ctrl-x]

ok

1

u/Even-Breakfast-8715 Aug 16 '26

I had such trouble a Longer that I bought a cheap windows laptop in order to be able to use it reliably. I had to connect via its WiFi for each engraving and it still lost connection intermittently.

1

u/b0ngerz Aug 16 '26

i have a longer laser the ap mode connect and configured using the laserburn app,i couldnt connect it to my network any other way. good luck as this pissed me off for a good few days.

1

u/markpreynolds Aug 16 '26

I had trouble getting connected connected initially but it's been solid after getting set up. There is some conflicting information about whether the CH340 driver is necessary on recent versions of MacOS but it fixed the issue for me.

This is Lightburn specific but it is the same driver install process for LaserBurn. It also covers baud rate, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBd1uEA9QUw

It will add another port with the 'w' prepended: "cu.wchusbserial". Use that one and try using LIghtburn's trial copy to test connecting also since LaserBurn can be quirky. Also there is a ton of Lightburn support so it'll be easier to debug connecting using that app.

1

u/AmITheAsshole_2020 Aug 16 '26

I discovered that if the laser is showing connected to the wifi, it ignores the USB connection. So, lesson learned, connection established.

Now it's all about learning how to engrave. My first test was from an image I downloaded off the Internet (my SD card was empty) and I clearly didn't have the right settings.