User Manual

proportional to the servo period (the amount of time between pulses on a single channel);

with a period of 20 ms the flashing occurs approximately once per second. The number of

flashes indicates the state: a single flash indicates that none of the servos are enabled (no

pulses are being sent) and all output channels are low, while a double flash indicates that

at least one of the servos is enabled or one of the output channels is being driven high.

Also, when a valid serial command is received, the yellow LED will emit a brief, dim flash

which ends when the next valid serial command is received or when the main blinking occurs

(whichever happens first). Mini Maestros with firmware version 1.00 only emit single flashes

unless a servo channel with a speed or acceleration limit is enabled. This behavior was fixed

in firmware version 1.02 to be consistent with the Micro Maestro.

When the Maestro is reset in some other way than being initially powered up, the red and/or yellow

LEDs blink four times to indicate the reset condition:

• Yellow off, red blinking: A brownout reset. This occurs when the Maestro’s 5 V line drops

below about 3.0 V, usually due to low batteries or an inadequate power supply.

• Yellow blinking, red off: The Maestro was reset by a low voltage on its RST line.

• Yellow and red blinking together: A firmware crash resulted in a “watchdog” reset. This also

occurs immediately following a firmware upgrade, as a normal part of the upgrade process.

• Yellow blinking, red steady: A firmware error resulted in a soft reset. This should never occur

during normal usage.

1.d. Supported Operating Systems

The Maestro USB drivers and configuration software work under Microsoft Windows XP, Windows

Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Linux.

On ARM-based Linux machines such as the Raspberry Pi, the Maestro’s graphical configuration

program (the Maestro Control Center) does not work. This is caused by problems with Mono’s

implementations of WinForms on those systems.

We do not provide any software for Mac OS X, but the Maestro’s two virtual serial ports are compatible

with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and later. The Maestro must be initially configured from a Windows or Linux

computer, but after that it can be controlled from a Mac. If you have Mac OS X 10.11 or later, you will

need to update your Maestro’s firmware to version 1.03 or later to use the Maestro’s virtual serial ports

(see Section 4.f).

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