Has anyone accomplished setting up a wireless Biped BRAT configuration with a Wiport+WiportBoard V3 combination? I’m having some complications, I power up the board (3.3v) though only the Power LED lights up, the Wi-fi Power LED doesn’t turn on, and the Wiport Unit doesn’t radiate (get warm) at all. Futhermore, my laptop doesn’t pick up the LTRX_ISSS wireless signal at all, I don’t belive that the Wiport board isn’t even receiving power. I’m using the TTL method to configure the Wiport, though after reading the manual, it seems that my only resort now is to make my own serial cable (DB9) and remove the jumpers that enable 1 and enable 2 to provide access to the RS-232 ports. Does anyone have any comments that may be helpful?
Comments:
- some of the early v3 boards had soldering issues with the capacitors on the rs-232 chips. you want to make sure that the V+ and V- voltages on the max232 chips are both there when enabled.
- I assume by your comment about using TTL to configure the WiPort that you are able to talk to it’s firmware… which eliminates any question about power or mis-alignment of the wiport header.
- it is possible to configure the wiport to use the rj-45 port and not the wlan port. I seem to remember the earlier ones were able to use one or the other and not both at the same time. I do not know if this applies to the newer ‘g’ compatible ones or not… it’s been awhile since I messed with mine.
- if you are trying to use the rj-45 port then be aware that it is not configured using isolated magnetics like a normal LAN card. this may or may not be an issue depending on what you are plugging it into. I re-wired one of my v3 boards for an isolated rj-45 jack and it was not… trivial.
- the wlan LED only lights when it is actively accessing the wirless network, much like the wlan led on a firewall/router.
I essentially just remove the rx and tx jumpers on the SSC-32, made wires to connect to the tx, rx, and gnd pins on the TTL port (1) on the WiportBoard V3. The voltage pumping out from the SSC-32 to the TTL port is ~4.5v, within the margins of 3.3v and 5v. Yea, I followed the guide provided by Lynxmotion to do this. The Enable 1 and Enable 2 jumpers were placed to enable the TTL port, when removed they enable the RS-232 port (this is from the Breakout Board manual from wibotics.com). I haven’t successfully gotten a signal from the Wiport. I haven’t yet used DeviceInstaller, which is supposed to recognize the Wiport…In addition, I provide 3.3v to the designated pins near the end of the GPIO pins. Yea, I believe I might’ve encountered a short; this sucks…the other method that you mentioned I’m not really familiar with, is there any kind of manual available for that?
Sorry if I am a bit off topic here, but I have a wiport 2 board that I assembled awhile ago, but did not get it to work. In particular the links to the software that was on the WIPort brat page no longer exists. I have gone to the lantronix page and tried to figure out which software I need to install, but when I last tried it (last night), the device installer failed (vista).
Any suggestions on what software I should install and how to setup the link from the PC to the wiport board?
Thanks
Kurt
@Titan I need to dig my boards out to help you so it will probably be friday or saturday before I get into that stuff. I do not remember back-feeding the 3.3v from the gpio pin header though, I just used the regulator on the board and powered it from a 6V NiMH pack. You did not actually confirm my assumption about your having configured the wiport using a serial port and a terminal program on the pc. My network at home has all the encryption stuff turned on so I had to configure the wiport to find it. I don’t know much about the whole ad-hoc thing they talk about in the manuals, and I didn’t want to mess with my firewall/router/ap or my laptop so I just configured the wiport to find me rather than the other way around. anyway, with the hardware questions I need to get my stuff out and I’ll get back to you towards the end of the week.
@kurte, I don’t know anything about vista support on device installer or the comport redirector. I looked at the lantronix site and did not see anything really talking about vista on the driver download pages. I am running the current release of dev installer and redirector on my PC under XP pro but I remember on the laptop (under XP home) I had to use an older rev due to some changes in the ports used by the newer software and getting that through the firewall stuff. I suppose I could have figured out how to properly configure the firewall and make it work but it seemed like less work to use the older version and there was no apparent loss in functionality so that’s what I did.
I would suggest sending an e-mail with your vista support and driver file questions to lantronix. odds are a nice lady named Jenny will get back to you pretty quickly and if she can’t either answer your questions or point you to the correct files she will elevate it up to someone who can. I have asked some pretty odd questions and they always seem to have answered them rather painlessly in the past so you should have similar luck I would hope.
I will say that once you have the redirector installed it is very important to configure it exactly the same as the wiport is configured otherwise it doesn’t work.