MicroBlocks connected to the micro:bit, the burning process became very slow

[YongYu]

Hi,Jhon. I have a big problem recently. Colleagues reported that when MicroBlocks connected to the micro:bit, the burning process became very slow, and there were disconnections during the programming process. These conditions first appeared in mid-October and will not appear before then. And colleagues also tested other student computers, which also showed slow burning and disconnection.
The computers tested were all Windows 10 and Windows 11. The version is V1.2.34.

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[YongYu]

Carefully check and find that the computer device manager has a driver that we have not installed, it can be uninstalled, and the above problems no longer appear. Do you know what this drive does? Because the computer in question is connected to many development boards, such as Arduino UNO, Nano, micro: bit, ESP32. Software such as Mind+ and mblock are also installed.

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[John Maloney]

Great detective work!

I wasn't able to reproduce the problem so I'm very glad you figured it out.

The mbed driver might used by the Arduino IDE for chip-level debugging using something called CMSIS-DAP. In that case, it might have been installed by the Arduino IDE when the micro:bit board support was added.

Does MicroBlocks still connect to the micro:bit after removing the mbed driver?

Here is a related issue to be aware of:

If programs other than MicroBlocks try to communicate with the micro:bit on the same serial port, communications between the MicroBlocks editor and the micro:bit will be disrupted. The protocol is robust, so it tries to recover, but things get slow and messages get dropped. This results in symptons such as not getting a result when clicking on a reporter block or scripts remaining highlighted after they have actually stopped running.

This problem can also occur if two instances of the MicroBlocks editor connect to the same micro:bit.

If you use Makecode as well as MicroBlocks, a common problem is that Makecode running in an inactive browser tab continues to communicate with the micro:bit, thus disrupting communications between MicroBlocks and the micro:bit.

This problem is confusing when it happens. Fortunately, beginners do not usually run into it since most beginners do not switch between multiple programming environments or multiple instances of MicroBlocks.

[YongYu]

Thank you for your reply. I feel very relieved to have solved this problem.
MicroBlocks can connect to the micro:bit after removing the mbed driver.
Students generally do not connect the micro:bit to multiple programming environments at the same time. Although there are, the teacher will give guidance accordingly.

[John Maloney]

Marking this resolved but feel free to keep adding comments.