Difficulties getting serial access

[gtrabanco]

Wi-Box Firmware: V500.R001.A103.00.G0021.B013 Computer OS: MacOS/Raspbian

Physical Connections

Board power supply

I have connected positive (red) and negative (brown) of the board to external Power Supply of 18V.

I could get the board in Wi-Box app and connect it to my wifi.

I have done this because I am not in the flat where the board will be located.

Board serial access

I have soldered the cables as expected.

And linked the cables manually using same "port" on wage connectors to make sure they are getting contact. Because I had no black I used Green dupont cable. and they are linked as you can see here.

I have connected GND (yellow) to GND, TX (black that ends in green) to RX and RX (red) to TX.

Accessing

I connected usb and it is accesible through /dev/ttyUSB0 in a raspberry but I also checked on macOS which is accesible through /dev/cu.usbserial-1420. I will give this value as $PHYSICAL_PORT var in the connection command.

I tried to connect using picocom on raspbian and tried with screen in macOS and Linux:

sudo -v # prompt for sudo password
sudo screen $PHYSICAL_PORT 115200

And with all this done just provide me a good black screen if I try to use the serial connection after the board got power on (and connected to my wifi) but if I connected first the USB and later power on provides me on the screen @@@H@ sometimes.

Other information

The board has opened 4 ports:

PORT      STATE SERVICE
80/tcp    open  http
443/tcp   open  https
6683/tcp  open  unknown
34567/tcp open  dhanalakshmi

If I browse http://wibox-ip or https provides a 404 not found. Sometimes this is used to provision the wpa_supplicant at start configuration but remains open after configuring the wifi.

[duhow]

You should get at least serial messages from u-boot (when powering on the board). If you don't, check the solder, and your USB/TTL adapter (permissions, speed to baud-rate 115200)

After u-boot, if you don't get any messages, check https://github.com/duhow/wibox/issues/14#issuecomment-1304806472 .

I will update this into docs shortly.

[gtrabanco]

You should get at least serial messages from u-boot (when powering on the board). If you don't, check the solder, and your USB/TTL adapter (permissions, speed to baud-rate 115200)

After u-boot, if you don't get any messages, check #14 (comment) .

I will update this into docs shortly.

I will check

[gtrabanco]

I have connected positive (red) and negative (brown) of the board to external Power Supply of 18V.

Is the ground of the USB-TTL converter also connected to the ground of the external power supply? It can't work if the potentials are different.

The ground of TTL is connected to the ground of the board only.

[gtrabanco]

I removed the soldering and tried with 2mm pins with same result. It should be something with the soldering I have done wrong so I am closing the issue.

[gtrabanco]

I managed to receive something after change the soldering and tried many pins but I just see a lot of characters...

I have received similar issues with CISCO routers due baud rate but I think this is not posible because it is the same board for all of us and similar software.

I tried no flow with: screen -fn /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 but I have the same problem. Do you have any clue?

Do I need a resistor or similar in GND or TX, RX (I know almost nothing about electronics)?

[gtrabanco]

When I messure the Voltage in TX it gives me values between 0 and 3.5V and RX between 0 and 1.5V

[duhow]

Make sure GND is properly solded / connected, and in serial, disable "hardware flow" (if applicable). You may want to try with another USB TTL?

[gtrabanco]

Make sure GND is properly solded / connected, and in serial, disable "hardware flow" (if applicable). You may want to try with another USB TTL?

I tried different TTL.

I used this kind of wiring this time due my (better not to do) soldering abilities:

But if It still can be the wiring is clear that's the problem 😅 I will look for someone that can do the soldering for me near me =)

Thank you @duhow