Ethernet

[rimai]

You can feed power to the board using the cable.

[DrewPalmer04]

Cool. Now. Thoughts on using it for the server and to get a slope on 2 PWM outputs ? I have two P drivers I need to ramp up and down with this same board. Possible?

[DrewPalmer04]

[rimai]

Possible, but you will need to come up with your own protocol

[DrewPalmer04]

Yikes. Over my head

[DrewPalmer04]

I guess I could hook into my analog spots on my relay box to do this but I really wanted seperate control over my two new drivers. What would be your suggestion?

[rimai]

How many drivers do you have?

[DrewPalmer04]

Two going now on the outputs. Two new ones. The thing is that I'm now adding red cyan green uv etc etc to my DIY setup. I need seperate control because if I use the same outputs for my royal blue and white the colors COULD look really funny!

[rimai]

Ahh so you got 4 total...
Are they analog or PWM drivers?

[DrewPalmer04]

Two analog on the existing (got analog on the relay box) but I got two more PWM drivers for the PWM output of the new board.

[DrewPalmer04]

And my wife got me the RF module. Man I have a Ton of work to do on the RA.

[rimai]

Even if you use the arduino board, you will need a booster or you will only get half of the power your drivers can output.
Is 1/2 power ok?

[DrewPalmer04]

Oh I'm sure it will be. My drivers are set to 80% based on mA and I run them at 80-85% on the output. So if I set the drivers to 100% and they max at 50% with no boost I think I'll be alright.

[DrewPalmer04]

What do you think? Possible? Where do I start?

[rimai]

You can use any PWM port on Arduino straight up.
Just code it to output the PWM % you want. Arduino uses 0-255 instead of 0-100, just FYI.
You will need some sort of RTC on your Arduino board or you will need to tap into the expansion bus to get the RA RTC.

[DrewPalmer04]

Will I need RTC if I want it to be stand alone? I mean once I get the PWM output and the server going for the portal I'll just let it sit there. Granted I know I need the cable to communicate the tank specs from the RA through the arduino

[rimai]

Well... You will need RTC if you want to sync it with time.
If you only want a specific % all the time, you won't need it.

[DrewPalmer04]

Good point. I'll be working on this. Thanks!

[00Warpig00]

I have some SUCCESS to report!!!

I received my 3.3V<-->5V IO level shifter today and decided to dig into the Wiznet 105SR Module and the level shifter. It seems I am having some success. I *think* we have two way communication between the RA+ and the Wiznet 105SR although things are a bit strange too and I'm not exactly sure whats going on.

I took the 4 wire cable (6 pin end) from the RA+ and stuck resistor legs into the connector. I pushed the red wire pin into the shifter PCB +5V connection. I pushed the black wire pin into the level shifter 5V side gnd connection. The yellow wire pin (TX) into the 5V side A0 connection on the level shifter. The blue pin (RX) goes directly to the Wiznet 105SR Ethernet module pin 7 (TX). The level shifter 3.3V side pin B0 connects to the Wiznet 105SR pin 3 (RX). The wiznet 105SR module pin 1 (reset) is held high (3.3V) via 150K Ohm pull up resistor that connects it to Wiznet 105SR module pins 2 and 4 (VCC). Wiznet 105SR pins 2 & 4 are connected to the 3.3V Regulated output from the level converter. The Wiznet ground pins 11 & 12 connect to the level shifter B side Ground. The shifter module has the jumper set on the A-->B setting to convert 5V IO level serial data to 3.3V IO level serial data to the RX on the Ethernet module. Return data to the RA+ is not level converted as Atmel microcontrollers will take a 3.3V IO high even on a 5V IO pin so i left this alone as opposed to using a bi-directional shifter.



I set up a DHCP reservation on my DHCP server for the 105SR. Downloaded the Wiznet Config utility and scanned my network and found the Wiznet module. Set the Wiznet 105SR's settings to the following.




Now for the results...

I think I have two way comms but I'm not sure. Here is what happens...

Portal seems to work. I can mask ports on/off on my RA+ from the portal. Portal also seems to get updates from my RA+. When I short an IO Module pin hooked to my RA+ that corresponding portal indicator turns green/red accordingly. Temps also seem to be updating since I have no temp probes installed at the moment and the temps all read 0. the Portal does seem to loose contact at times. I will try to mask a port on/off and I get the "unreachable address" message sometimes and "ready" (and it works) at other times.

Also the Android app seems to be able to mask ports on/off but is not getting data updates and all queries to the controller result in "Error 23: XML SAX Parser".

How can I positively verify two way communication with a) the portal b) the android app.

Any suggestions on anything with this now that it's hooked up and kinda working...

NOTE: I have made NO code changes!

Nick

[DrewPalmer04]

How are you comm with the RA? Are you using your wifi cable? I think I see it in the picture?

[00Warpig00]

Yes WiFi cable with the end that plugs into the WiFi Mod jumped.

Think I may have killed my Ethernet Module last night though I tried something I thought may not be the best idea and afterward I could not get it working again... Seems I may have freaked it out. It will no longer take programming from the config utility. oops. I will have to play more and maybe order another.

[rimai]

Pretty cool!!!
Because it is a hardwired device, you can sniff it...
I like wireshark to sniff network traffic.
You can sniff and see what's going on exactly with the network traffic. If you get it to bring it back, I can help troubleshoot if you export the capture file and post here, so I can take a look at it too.
You can also browse http://ipaddress:2000/r99
It needs to return the XML data. I've seen where the android app gives parser errors if the stream of data is broken into two packets. Webbrowsers don't mind the 2 packets, but android for some reason doesn't like it.
You experienced this issue in the past I believe, where we had to increase the size of the flush packet on the wifi attachment. Maybe there is a setting on this 105SR too.

[DrewPalmer04]

Oh no! I hope I don't kill mine.

[00Warpig00]

Whew. I have resurrected my Wiznet module. Problem was I could not program it any longer. No matter what I did the settings were reported as "invalid" I did firmware upgrade to preloaded firmware 4.1 and to the current 4.3 and neither resolved the issue. I attempted to wipe out the config by shorting the reset and factory reset pins to gnd at the same time. Still no love. Then I read the manual closer. It appears it is important that the factory reset is held to ground FIRST and then adding the reset pin to the gnd mix in order to factory reset. I was shorting the pins in the wrong order. I have now reset the settings by shorting first the factory reset and then adding a short to reset. Setting were cleared and I am now able to config the device again. Time for more testing. Funny thing is I already have another 105SR and a 110SR sitting at the local UPS depot waiting to be delivered as we speak. lol. Back to testing.

Nick

[00Warpig00]

Got the Wiznet ethernet board hooked back up and did a little testing and sniffing around.

The Portal seems to be working fine with the Wiznet module. Updates are being sent from the RA+ to the portal and I can mask relays on/off from the portal to the RA+ this leads me to believe two way communication is working fine between the two.

The Android app half works. I can push data into the RA+ from the android app and mask relays on/off but there is not successful communication from the RA+ to the Android app. XML SAX Parser errors only. I sent you a private message with a wireshark session of a wireshark exchange between my computer web browser (firefox) and the Wiznet module.

My wiznet config is the same as in my captures earlier in the thread with the exception of the fact that I changed both port settings to 2001 instead of 2000.

Nick

[DrewPalmer04]

Glad it is still working. That's progress. I have my cable on the way. Then I'll update progress

[00Warpig00]

Yes I think this is very good progress. I have no results on stability\reliability yet. in my opinion stability is paramount. Without it the entire purpose of having a controller becomes moot. But at least so far it appears as if this is a fairly easy drop in replacement for the wifi module to at least be capable of using the Portal. The Android app does not like to parse the XML data stream from the Wiznet module by any means which Roberto seems to think is Android being finicky about packet sizes of data that the module is sending. I am not a programmer and surely not an android programmer but it seems that this issue should be able to be resolved. Hopefully it will work out that way or the Wiznet module may not be a full solution even though it seems to work perfectly with the portal.

Since I am off work and have several days close to home I have decided to actually hook the Wiznet mod up to my controller and actually replace the wifi mod with it for now to see how it goes. I loose my ability to check on my tank from my Android for now but maybe some data to the portal for a few days can start to establish whether it will be reliable or not.

Nick

[DrewPalmer04]

Yeah test that stability first and try it out!!!

[00Warpig00]

Hmm... doesnt look like the portal is getting\saving data from my RA+ I have left my Wiznet Ethernet module attached for the past two days. My Banner still shows data from two days ago on all my posts and looking at my relay activity charts on the portal shows me no data since the same time frame. However when I go to the portal page it says connected and displays two day old data for a few minutes until it updates and then shows me current data. So it appears to be getting and displaying data when I am on the portal but not saving any of the data to the portal's database... Am i off base or misunderstanding how this is supposed to work? Is my RA+ not able to push data to the portal when I am not logged in live?

This capture shows I am connected and current data


but if you look at my banner below it shows two day old data. and the chart data on the portal shows two day old data too.

Nick

[lnevo]

Those are all signs that your ra is not "sending" data to the portal every 5 minutes. When you are on the portal page you are connecting to the ra and the portal is showing the data it sees.