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Kernel panic when uploading to NRF52840 board #2715

@rsispal

Description

@rsispal

Describe the problem

I'm experiencing sporadic macOS kernel panics during uploads to a Seeed Studio XIAO NRF52840 board. 

I have noticed that it happens at the following stage in the upload:

Performing 1200-bps touch reset on serial port /dev/cu.usbmodem101

To reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Connect an NRF52840 board to the macOS system (SEEED studio xiao NRF52840)
  2. Open the Arduino IDE and configure it for the NRF52840 board.
  3. Attempt to upload a sketch to the board.
  4. When it gets to Performing 1200-bps touch reset on serial port, a kernel panic might occur.
  5. If a kernel panic did not occur, repeat steps 3-4 until it does.
    In my case there's a crash every 1 in 10 flashes.

Expected behavior

The sketch should upload to the NRF52840 board without causing a system-level kernel panic.

Actual Behavior:

The macOS system crashes and restarts with a kernel panic. The error is a Kernel data abort.

Arduino IDE version

Version: 2.3.6 Date: 2025-04-09T11:22:51.016Z CLI Version: 1.2.0

Operating system

macOS

Operating system version

Sequoia 15.4 (24E248)

Additional context

The logs produced by the kernel panic:

panic-full-2025-04-19-230931.0002.txt


I've tried changing ports, USB-C cables and even switched to using a USB-A to USB-C cable via a USB-C adapter (Apple official)


I've never had a crash with an ESP32 board, only the NRF52840 which makes me think there's a driver issue in relation to Nordic.


The same crash also occurs at the same 1200 baud reset step when I upload to the board using PlatformIO instead of Arduino IDE.


My Mac has an Apple Silicon CPU.

Issue checklist

  • I searched for previous reports in
    I verified the problem still occurs when using the latest
    My report contains all necessary details

Activity

vdmprojects

vdmprojects commented on Apr 29, 2025

@vdmprojects

I can replicate the behavior. It happens frequently, every few uploads.
It is really, really annoying lol.

Ardiuino IDE 2.3.6 (but has been happening at least since 2.3.5)
Boards file: Seeed nRF52 Boards V1.1.10
CPU: M1 Max
64MB Ram
MacOS15.4.1, but was also crashing on nRF52840 uploads at least one OS upgrade ago.

changed the title [-]Kernel Panic on macOS (Apple Silicon) when Flashing NRF52840 via Arduino-cli[/-] [+]Kernel panic when uploading to NRF52840 board[/+] on Jun 3, 2025
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          Kernel panic when uploading to NRF52840 board · Issue #2715 · arduino/arduino-ide