Hi all - longtime fan of Mac Power Users, first post… I have learned much from you all, so thank you!!
I’m totally stumped stuck on this one. I recently acquired a Stream Deck +, but when I plug it into my dock the webcam video feed goes black. The laptop still sees the camera and the “active” light even comes on. Everything looks healthy, but the video feed itself is black. This is true across apps.
I’m running all my peripherals listed below, plugged directly into a Caldigit TS4 w/ a single USB-C to the macbook pro.
That said, when I plug either the webcam or streamdeck+ directly into a second USB-C port on the laptop they both work fine. A bit crazy I know, but I really want a single cable to the laptop. It is like the Streamdeck (or dock?) thinks it is a video source that takes over preventing the Mac apps from accessing the video from the webcam.
If would be most grateful if any of you some thoughts on what this might be or what else I might try!
My setups is:
16" MBP M1
CalDigit TS4 dock
2x LG 27BLU85U monitors
2x Stream Deck XL’s
2x Elgato Air llights
Logitech C930e webcam
Attempting to add
Stream Deck +
Things I’ve tired is at this point pretty extensive…
full wipe & re-install of the OS (several times)
entirely different M1 MBP of the same spec
different doc (Dell’s WD22TB4 thunderbolt doc)
diff webcam (a slightly older logitech)
w/out & w/out powered USB bus
w/out the to streamdeck XL’s attached
Using both all provided cables and others
Tested with various apps (facetime, zoom, meet etc.)
support ticket w/ Elgato (still open, but not going anywhere yet)
Some USB devices just work better (or at all) plugged directly into a computer rather than in a hub or dock. There’s obviously some conflict between the two, This would be expensive to try, but I do wonder if plugging in another Streamdeck XL would have the same issue as the Streamdeck +
What happens if you unplug one of the XLs and plug in the + instead? Same issue?
With all 3 Streamdeck’s plugged in You have 2 monitors and 3 Streamdecks all displaying images which are sent from the MBP, maybe the volume of data being sent OUT from the MBP is too great to allow bandwidth for the video coming IN to the MBP.
Thank you! That put my on the path to narrowing this down. It does look like through-put to the laptop is the root issue. With more targeted plug/unplug on the “third” streamdeck it clearly kills the video feed - regardless of which one. It seems I was too focused on the SD+ which messes up the audio to no end when it has issues. Adding/removing one of the two XL’s does the same thing re: video. I wonder a 2.0 powered hub for the (3) streamdecks might be reduce the throughput requirements by effectively dumbing down the connection to the caldigit doc… I might have one laying around and will report back.
Have you reached out to CalDigit? i wonder if it’s a bandwidth limit but doesn’t seem like that should be the case. Maybe the company can offer support or other ways to handle it.
I think you’d need to get pretty technical to understand exactly what’s going on, it may even come down to bus speeds in the M1. That is a lot of kit you’re plugging in all at once though.
This maybe a bit late, I know, but I’m planning for Caldigit TS4 soon and I found this interface diagram, which helps to distrubuite your bandwidth loads: https://www.caldigit.com/ts4-interface-bandwidth-allocation-and-diagram/
On the other hand, what you have is overkill for one TB4 connection to handle. You may want to consider ivanky docking station if you only use mac.
