Femtofox - Tiny, low power Linux node!

[nova frost]

I'm sorry, that bit is beyond me, really.
The only clue I have is that it should be possible to insert something around here:
https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/blob/11d6d3deda07dbf6d4b7e5e392c43b031e5fda0d/environment-setup/femtofox.chroot#L19

[forest current]

So actually I dont think the 8188fu is present in the kernel with the sdk (there are a lot of 8188 variants apparently). You may have to build the driver from scratch and load the kernel module with modprobe

This shouldnt be a big problem as the kernel headers are generated by the sdk now, so you should be able to add the code for building the driver to the femtofox.chroot

and then just make sure the .ko/.so go into the proper directories

[nova frost]

So inserting a reference to the driver where I linked will get it built/available in the menu(🤞 ), but how does the module get incorporated?

[forest current]

modprobe

[nocturne birch]

Thanks @forest current and @nova frost !
I'm trying to do this... but once im inside the chroot I don't seem to have internet access. Is that expected, or have I possibly done something wrong?
I'm in the pre-image-build chroot now -- but I can't get the files from the git repo to compile into the chroot 😅

[forest current]

Its been a while but Im pretty sure you can load them without dkms if its built against the kernel headers

[forest current]

Are you in the chroot as part of the semi-automated sdk build process? Or did you manually chroot in

Because if the latter, you need to mount/bind sys proc dev

[nocturne birch]

This is more or less what I did with the tun module -- so I think it works. That one was easier thought because it was just an option on the kernel build menu -- I just chose module, grabbed the file and ropped it on the fox

[forest current]

without sys there is no network

[nocturne birch]

Via the semi-automated method

[forest current]

Wait sorry, do you mean that the rtl8188fu specifically was an option in the kernel config menu?

Because its been a bit but I only remember seeing a few variants and then (other, experimental)

[nocturne birch]

No, it doesnt -- sorry I'm talking about 2 different things here 😅
Previously I did a build of the image to install the tun module -- which was just on the config menu.
Now im trying to do rtl8188fu which isn't on the menu

Entering chroot... make your changes and then type exit when you are done and it will build the image with your changes.
Press any key to continue entering chroot...
root@ubuntu:/# ls
bin dev home media opt rc-local.service run srv tmp usr
boot etc lib mnt proc root sbin sys userdate var
root@ubuntu:/# ping google.com
ping: unknown host

[forest current]

Ok yes so were on track then. Ill answer you in two parts:

1. Driver: Add the kernel driver source dir (that you got from github or whatever) to the sysdrv rootfs (during chroot step otherwise itll get nuked). Add the steps to build it to the chroot, dumping the resultant object files in their proper dirs in foxbuntu. When booting the fox for the first time, run modprobe rtl8188fu or whatever to suck the drivers in

2. Chroot: If you dont have network, it means for some reason either your chroot binds failed (namely /sys) or the chroot env isnt configured to auto connect to eth (again, it always does as thats how it builds and installs apt packages). Can you run an ip a and also cat /etc/network/interfaces?

[nocturne birch]

Thank you!

ip a:

root@ubuntu:/# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: tunl0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ipip 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0
3: sit0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0
4: ip6tnl0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1452 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/tunnel6 :: brd :: permaddr 2257:2338:4740::
5: eth0@if14: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 02:1b:ce:1b:b6:18 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
inet 198.19.249.116/24 metric 100 brd 198.19.249.255 scope global dynamic eth0
valid_lft 87631sec preferred_lft 87631sec
inet6 fd07:b51a:cc66:0:1b:ceff:fe1b:b618/64 scope global mngtmpaddr noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::1b:ceff:fe1b:b618/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

interfaces:

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
metric 10
post-up ip route replace default via $(ip route | awk '/default/ {print $3}') dev eth0 metric 10
pre-down ip route del default via $(ip route | awk '/default/ {print $3}') dev eth0 metric 10

I tried running dhclient on eth0 manually and no result. it just hangs forever looking for the dhcp server

[forest current]

Well it looks like you have an ip, 198.19.249.116. Maybe forget dhclient for now and lets do it manually. Can you run ip route

[nocturne birch]

root@ubuntu:/# ip route
default via 198.19.249.1 dev eth0 proto dhcp src 198.19.249.116 metric 100
0.250.250.200 via 198.19.249.1 dev eth0 proto dhcp src 198.19.249.116 metric 100
198.19.249.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 198.19.249.116 metric 100
198.19.249.1 dev eth0 proto dhcp scope link src 198.19.249.116 metric 100

it matches the host machine

its running on ubuntu under orbstack on osx... hence the weird IP's. But the ubuntu VM that the chroot is sitting in does have internet

[forest current]

Oh well that complicates things lmao

Fox.chroot > Ubuntu VM > Mac (Orbstack)

[nocturne birch]

Yep, that's it!

[forest current]

Honestly thats probably a NAT problem

try setting orbstack to bridge instead of nat, or to host or whatever

[nocturne birch]

Sorry, you're right it's probably something dumb going on in the vm setup

I wanted to sanity check that the chroot is expected to have internet... since it is -- it's back to the VM investigation for me lol

[forest current]

Yeah basically its doing like, just a DNAT and not an SNAT so traffic out cant get back in because the numbers dont match

[nova frost]

Can you break step 1 down for a less capable audience? 🙂

I can edit a text file...

[forest current]

So as I look at that github repo to write those instructions, it uses dkms

I dont think dkms is used on the fox

I dont know if it can be due to it using the android kernel and partition scheme

Actually it looks like it can but it has to be enabled in the kernel, I dont think any of us has ever tried this though

@mild hare have you ever poked around at dkms on the fox?

Ah-ha!

https://github.com/ulli-kroll/rtl8188fu

This will work

@nocturne birch

[forest current]

Ok so in femtofox.chroot, after the depmod line (so like line 19 or after), add the following:

git clone https://github.com/ulli-kroll/rtl8188fu.git
cd rtl8188fu.git
make
modprobe cfg80211
insmod rtl8188fu.ko
make installfw
cd

This should work as-is

[nova frost]

The driver I'm trying to use suggests dkms but doesn't require it.

[forest current]

As long as it doesnt require dkms and will build a .ko then it should be usable

[nova frost]

https://github.com/gschorcht/spi-ch341-usb

[forest current]

The one I found specifically works with kernel 5.10

[forest current]

Ok for yours just add the following on line 19:

git clone https://github.com/gschorcht/spi-ch341-usb.git
cd spi-ch341-usb
make
make install

Again, it should work but Ive never loaded kernel modules in a chroot

If it whines then on first boot running modprobe spi-ch341-usb should finish it up

[nova frost]

Remind me why we couldn't bring the kernel headers with us?

[forest current]

We do have them, which is why we can build modules without dkms

[nova frost]

I mean why can't we do it on the fox?

Luckfox say it's because it doesn't have the processing power, but some of these are very simple.

I mean, @twilit mountain compiled Meshtasticd on it.

[forest current]

I mean you can but its slow af

Doing it in the chroot is just way faster

[nova frost]

Well, yeah, but...

[twilit mountain]

That was to prove that you should never do it 🤪 you've misunderstood lol

[nova frost]

Nope, I've understood perfectly 😉

I mean, how long can a 1500 line driver take to compile really?

[forest current]

Thank you for volunteering for Science ™️

[forest current]

Just run this from within foxbuntu on the fox

Same process

[nova frost]

Make doesn't work - it calls build which doesn't exist

I've already tried

[forest current]

What do you mean it doesnt exist? Like a script or function called build? You may need to sudo apt install build-essential, idk if its preinstalled with the chroot

[floral marten]

Custom built drivers are fine if you don’t update your node (kernel version specifically). So you’ll need to remember not to upgrade until you have the time to fix your driver again. That’s the benefit of dkms (when it works LOL). It rebuilds it for you on demand.

But you’ll be able to upgrade Meshtasticd without upgrading the kernel if you are careful.

[nova frost]

I'm pretty sure the kernel is frozen at this point.

[forest current]

Until we get it building with the Lyra sdk two more weeks

[floral marten]

Ok.

So, my question is why is Foxbuntu its own distribution? Are there kernel optimizations to make it “smol” vs running another small Linux?

Or I suppose the hardware itself wasn’t directly supported by another Linux variant.

[forest current]

Its using the android linux kernel for one

With luckfox patches

[nova frost]

I'm not the wizard who did the Linux distro, so take this with a whole truckload of salt. The hardware itself is sufficiently obscure that there's nothing directly relevant. Luckfox's SDK is extremely sparse with information, because the expectation is that you will run it in buildroot configuration. It's pure luck that we've got what we have, really (well, judgement too 😉 )

It's basically a processor for a dashcam or video doorbell that has been popularised as an over-complex chipping tool for Playstations(?).

We're fantastically lucky that a) the board is barely populated and b) it's got a secondary application that makes it common enough for us to piggyback off.

Almost every other bit of hardware I've looked at is over-populated with extra stuff that saps the power.

[floral marten]

I ran the Luckfox for a while but got frustrated with the speed of anything at the CLI. I moved the Lora hat to a RasPi 4 for now. But I’m still interested in the luckfox side of the house.

[nova frost]

oh, 100%

This has 64meg of ram and isn't winning any races.

But if you don't switch anything on, it will run off the same or less power than an ESP32, and deliver full-fat python.

Which is really all I ever wanted 😉

[restive scarab]

I love my Femtofox, I love my Smolfox even more (and we're likely gonna start deploying them here in place of raspizero's + nRF52) but finally got around to playing with Luckfox Lyra Ulta W PoE and once I finally found the Ubuntu image to flash to eMMC it's everything I could want without the draw of and being smaller than a raspi. just install meshtasticd, copy cfg.yaml, plugin meshstick - done

(nowhere near as fun as building and then sorting out a femtofox though)

[nova frost]

Have you done any power consumption testing?

I'm still kicking around whether it is too power hungry to commit to solar.

oh, lyra ultra!

ok

[restive scarab]

i've done some on the femto/smol but not the lyra yet (cause PoE into a cheap unmanaged swith that doesn't give me any #s), I also have a pico ultra w that I wanna mess with to see it vs the femto/smol for more apples:apples

the #s I had for babelfox (pico non-mini) on bench psu are pretty close to USB-C but both are at or above 2W pretty much idle

[nova frost]

oof#

ok

time to open my wallet and get another testbed...

[restive scarab]

heh I have a switch that'll give me the power draw for poe, just need to move it off my desk but probably do the pico ultra w since it's the same poe module for either

[restive scarab]

okay, swapped to other switch which says 1.42-1.44W for the Lyra Ultra W PoE (and also had a STP freakout for a few seconds). let's see waht the Pico Ultra W PoE comes in at (and same PoE board so 1:1 as can be)

seems to be ~1W (.09-1.03W) idle-ish, hit 1.2W running apt update && upgrade -y but also didn't take 10s of minutes (thank you eMMC!)

(also with meshstick plugged in, but not yet installed meshtasticd)

heh yeah just installed 174 packges, eMMC really solves the SD card's pokeyness for Pico

ahhh but it's still got the 5.x kernel so no meshstick (womp womp)

[nova frost]

is that genuinely the problem, then?

we need the later drivers?

I've been bashing my head against this for so long

[restive scarab]

yeah that would be my suspicion, lsusb just returned nothing and meshtasticd error was terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >' vs the Lyra which just worked

[nova frost]

ok

going to have to compile something fancy...

[restive scarab]

https://tenor.com/4C6x.gif

[nova frost]

yeah, I'm getting a snack first

[coarse kraken]

I purchase a femtofox pro plugged in the USB-C. No led. Please assist.

[mild hare]

usually means the sdcard isnt being read. also use the usbc on the big board not the little pico board.

I boot, get ip and send lora message on every unit sent so it wont be DOA

I'm guessing sdcard

[coarse kraken]

I’ll give it a try.

[mild hare]

lemme know how it goes. I'm semi here

[coarse kraken]

Red led blinking waiting on 7min initial boot.

[nova frost]

Are you watching it over serial?

[coarse kraken]

Gtg, reflashed SD.

Initial flash stuck in bootloop. Now it’s gtg.

[mild hare]

right on!

[nocturne birch]

Thank you for this @forest current ! 🙏
I'll give it a try later on today and let you know how I get on with it!! 😄
Sorry to drop off before... I'm in Australia and it was getting up on 1AM for me, so I had gone to bed 😅

[nocturne birch]

@forest current sorry mate I'm struggling to get this to build... I've moved to a WSL environment, which has fixed my internet access issue!
I'm still struggling with the kernel headers. I added this snippet in the chroot file...

cd rtl8188fu
make
modprobe cfg80211
insmod rtl8188fu.ko
make installfw
cd```

(The only modification I made from your version was to remove .git from the second line to correct the checked out repo path)

But when I go to build it, it's complaining about not having the kernel headers....
> Setting localtime to UTC...
> Install rtl8188fu WiFi driver...
> Cloning into 'rtl8188fu'...
> remote: Enumerating objects: 4481, done.
> remote: Counting objects: 100% (607/607), done.
> remote: Compressing objects: 100% (112/112), done.
> remote: Total 4481 (delta 498), reused 589 (delta 495), pack-reused 3874 (from 1)
> Receiving objects: 100% (4481/4481), 3.38 MiB | 6.29 MiB/s, done.
> Resolving deltas: 100% (3592/3592), done.
> make ARCH=armv7l CROSS_COMPILE= -C /lib/modules/5.15.167.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2/build M=/rtl8188fu  modules
> make[1]: *** /lib/modules/5.15.167.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2/build: No such file or directory.  Stop.
> make: *** [Makefile:261: modules] Error 2
> modprobe: FATAL: Module cfg80211 not found in directory /lib/modules/5.15.167.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2
> insmod: ERROR: could not load module rtl8188fu.ko: No such file or directory
> mkdir -p /lib/firmware/rtlwifi
> cp -n firmware/* /lib/firmware/rtlwifi/.
> Installing packages...

[nocturne birch]

I've tried forcing the modules path like this...

make ARCH=armv7l CROSS_COMPILE= -C /lib/modules/5.10.160/build M=/rtl8188fu modules
...but unfortunately, it looks like no headers source is there.

Also tried with the linux-headers-generic package, but it looks like there are no armv7l headers included with it...
lib/modules/5.15.0-141-generic/build/arch/

Kconfig arm/ h8300/ m68k/ nds32/ parisc/ s390/ um/
alpha/ arm64/ hexagon/ microblaze/ nios2/ powerpc/ sh/ x86/
arc/ csky/ ia64/ mips/ openrisc/ riscv/ sparc/ xtensa/

[nocturne birch]

make KSRC=/lib/modules/5.15.0-141-generic/build/
make ARCH=armv7l CROSS_COMPILE= -C /lib/modules/5.15.0-141-generic/build/ M=/rtl8188fu modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-5.15.0-141-generic'
Makefile:720: arch/armv7l/Makefile: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** No rule to make target 'arch/armv7l/Makefile'. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-5.15.0-141-generic'
make: *** [Makefile:261: modules] Error 2

[nocturne birch]

I think I've tried everything I can think of... 😅
I guess the kernel source is there already, I've been trying to find it and see if I can build the module against it, but no luck.
I'd really appreciate any help when you're back if you wouldn't mind, please @forest current !

[nova frost]

We were chasing this til 3am for me. Josh thinks he's got something, but I'll have to wait til later to see if it works.

[nocturne birch]

You guys are legends, thank you for looking into this 🙏
I'll have another go at it tonight and post here if I have any success!

[forest current]

Basically I somehow built the kernel headers which none of you have, it was a white rabbit I chased, and I dont remember how I did it. DM me and Ill share the link to the tarball in Proton Drive and what to do with it

[dire shuttle]

I plugged in a new temp and humidity sensor (SHT41) that uses I2C, enabled I2C using femto-config and the environmental telemetry module but I'm not seeing any relevant packets. I'm not really sure which direction to troubleshoot this from. Any suggestions?
I'm hoping there's an easy way to see what meshtasticd is getting from I2C. Or something.

[fast adder]

You can watch the boot logs to see if it is detected. One way to do this is in one terminal window run journalctl -u meshtasticd -f. And in another run sudo systemctl restart meshtasticd

[dire shuttle]

I assumed a second SSH would cause the little LuckFox to just melt

It takes like 30 seconds to sudo

[fast adder]

Naw the lil guy will be okay

For the record, I do not have a femtofox so… proceed at your own risk.

[dire shuttle]

Should journalctl require sudo?

[fast adder]

Not usually but can’t hurt

[dire shuttle]

I don't know if it'll solve my problem, but this is already a very helpful thing

I've wanted to do exactly this so many times

Oh!

//\ E S H T /\ S T / C

INFO  | 04:28:43 0 Use /dev/i2c-3 as I2C device
INFO  | 04:28:43 0 Scan for i2c devices
INFO  | 04:28:43 0 SHT31 found at address 0x44
INFO  | 04:28:43 0 1 I2C devices found

So Meshtastic is seeing it and I just need to figure out why it's not sending out telemetry

Thanks!

[nova frost]

Did you enable the telemetry module?

It's still a node

[dire shuttle]

I don't think there's a master telemetry switch?

"storeForward": {
  "enabled": true,
  "heartbeat": true,
  "isServer": true,
  "records": 0,
  "historyReturnMax": 0,
  "historyReturnWindow": 0
},
"rangeTest": {
  "enabled": false,
  "sender": 0,
  "save": false
},
"telemetry": {
  "deviceUpdateInterval": 1800,
  "environmentUpdateInterval": 1800,
  "environmentMeasurementEnabled": true,
  "environmentDisplayFahrenheit": true,
  "environmentScreenEnabled": false,
  "airQualityEnabled": false,
  "airQualityInterval": 0,
  "powerMeasurementEnabled": false,
  "powerUpdateInterval": 0,
  "powerScreenEnabled": false,
  "healthMeasurementEnabled": false,
  "healthUpdateInterval": 0,
  "healthScreenEnabled": false
},

[nova frost]

Still need it

[dire shuttle]

I turned on Environment metrics module and set an interval for updates

Even setting the metrics and environmental metrics to 15 seconds each, I'm not seeing environmental packets from it

[spring juniper]

“When did you realize you had a problem?”
Probably that time a box of giant LTO batteries got delivered from China and I completely forgot I ordered them nor have a good way to charge at 2A 😅

[opaque abyss]

Those are some BATTERIES

[quasi onyx]

God dang

[hollow narwhal]

Hey guys

Femtofox power draw

Look I get this isn't its use case but its going on a high peak

I'm trying to design a pack for surviving the winter with solar

But I have a strange requirement. I'd like 14 days of power without solar

That is the longest sustained stretch of time without solar it is ever expected to see

I have 1000s of batteries I just need to know what you've all seen in terms of power draw and I can chuck those bad boys in

@mild hare @nova frost You might know sorry to bug

[hollow narwhal]

Also I'd love to know. I've got these INA boards I'm about to experiment attaching to the i2c lines on the femto.. Would adding these and a Bosch BME sensor of some sort be viable without issue

Its literally going on a mountain top and weather would be EPIC to take.. Cuz its a wild ride up there in winter haha

https://tenor.com/view/snowstorm-primal-survivor-heavy-storm-snow-cold-gif-19596522

Except with no trees to defend it

My fear is adding too much to i2c would hang the bus. So I'm curious what others have done

[quasi onyx]

i have ina and a bme

works fine

[hollow narwhal]

Which BME are you using might I ask

[quasi onyx]

bme260 iirc

[hollow narwhal]

Ready made module? Got a link?

[quasi onyx]

nvm it was 280

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006018085460.html

[hollow narwhal]

Right now I have a INA3221 Triple-Channel Shunt Current Voltage Monitor Sensor

[hollow narwhal]

Thx

[quasi onyx]

3.3V version

[quasi onyx]

i use these too

[hollow narwhal]

Excellent That's great to hear. Did you throw scripts on github somewhere

I've gotta get this puppy done up quick and off to the 9900 ft peak

[quasi onyx]

not on femtofox tho 😅

some i2c stuff works in native now iirc

[hollow narwhal]

I mean Linux is underneath

Skies the limit

[quasi onyx]

shouldnt be that hard to make a script to pull that data

[hollow narwhal]

True. I was just seeing if anyone already did the effort before compiling my own

It will take me 30 minutes tops

[quasi onyx]

https://chatgpt.com/share/684915ed-9e9c-8004-810e-02740dfb5ee6
didnt think it would be this easy 🤣

guess it makes sense

python

well that is not but its using pythong insine bash

so ye

just make a pythong script to pull the data and done

[hollow narwhal]

Excellent

😂

I'm probably not gonna copy that but I'll write my own thing. I really want it to get passed over mesh to native phone clients

At least partially

Maybe if I force it into env metrics and power metrics broadcast packets? With a bit of a hack haha

[quasi onyx]

🤷‍♀️

[hollow narwhal]

Yeah like I said I'll pop into the meshtasticD source and API and see what I can do

But chatgpt made me laugh

You know salty engineers opinion bit I hate Python and love it at the same time

I always love C

And C++ is a disaster area 🤣

[hollow narwhal]

@quasi onyx my other question

Power

I need 14 days if solar fails

In winter. So maybe 8x 21700s

Samsung 50Es

Under a 10W acopower panel

https://www.acopower.com/products/hy-12m-10w

Femtofox go brrr at 10k club 😂

I know this wasn't the vision but look.. Overkill is underrated

[nova frost]

This was 100% the vision.

I love it!

Ina3221 and bme280 should be supported out of the box, unless you want to process the data locally or something.

I have TinyFoxes with aht20 and ina219 sensors built in that work perfectly, so you shouldn't have any issue, I think.

Power consumption is difficult to gauge, because of the mesh load and any sensors or applications you're running.

I suggest (drumroll) do a bench test.

Power meter, simulate busy mesh (set it to repeater on a private frequency, have a load of other nodes bombard it with messages, etc.) and see how long it takes to flatten one of your cells. Multiply up from there.
Edit: don't forget that battery capacity is affected by temperature, too (LTO less than liion, tho).

[nova frost]

I would caution against putting any major infrastructure where you can't reach it, in case a firmware update is critically needed. See the recent changes to "unmessageable" nodes, for example.

I'd also suggest that bot nodes be put in a secondary location, rather than primary repeater - single points of failure, etc.

If it's unavoidable, I'd suggest twinning the node with another simple one, perhaps.

[hollow narwhal]

This ones reachable. We are going to set it as messagable which probably solves that issue but we are pretty set and forget about firmware. Our mesh literally worked find on 2.3.x nodes until things got too changed up

There's a road up to this one. Winter just means getting snow shoes out

[hollow narwhal]

Its twin lives in a bad spot currently 😂. The problem with all these good suggestions is that placing it down low means a bunch of extra hops and when your trying to build something large across mountains that now is likely to connect 3 states (working and vested interest towards getting it done in July).. Your choice of where you put stuff becomes very limited naturally

Making meshing around reliable I've found is about giving it a restart hammer

Every 6 hours.. Restart meshtastic in systemD haha

Its not that it breaks magically at 6 hours but sometimes after a week of uptime stuff gets weird

I also considered rebooting the femto but I consider that to be an unnecessary step

[hollow narwhal]

🥳

@nova frost I considered a hilarious idea.. I'd add a log periodic WiFi antenna.. Beam the WiFi down to a spot off peak where only I knew it was pointed at.. Make it remote toggleable. Walk to spot with laptop and directional antenna.. Profit 🤣

I'd just set it to 2.4 GHz and single channel and a few other tweaks and throw WiFi like they do with microwave ptp links but under 1 watt

[nova frost]

Yes, that might work...

[hollow narwhal]

But I'm also not worried as much about upgrading the firmware. We will take the latest stable version. Get it rock solid working and forget it until 3.0 next year probably

The rest of the network requires far more attention (if you recall from the Utah Use case)

[nova frost]

Yeah, I haven't forgotten

Well, like I say, get some bench test results

I am working on a solar charger for it, that should be able to squeeze a few more % out of a conventional panel, but that's a ways away from production.

[dire shuttle]

I made a spreadsheet for just this!

I came up with 11Wh per day, so you'd be looking at 160Wh minimum, plus any safety factor you want to add

If you're using 18650s, you should get basically one day of operation per 18650

That's about $50 in 18650s and good luck balancing that many. Also LTO may make more sense for you if you're worried about very low temperatures

For week-plus operating times, I'm going with a LiFePo4 battery.

[hollow narwhal]

Bro thinks I'm balancing them in parallel

Get that scottish golf accent out from robin willians

FUCK NOOOOOOOO 😂😂😭

I'm using second life lithium too

I don't care about all that jazz. Nickel fuses protect when one goes. Probably good enough. Maximum laziness LOL.

🤣

[dire shuttle]

Well, there's the math for you

[hollow narwhal]

Jokes asside I appreciate it homie

Think I'll put 8 21700s in

Should be enough with solar to give me at least 7 days

[hollow narwhal]

I have Toshiba SCIB 20Ah cells

But seeing as they are rarer

Harder to find 80/80 or higher

I put those in nodes I care about scientific data on.. That are extremely remote

Like for example I want to make a Peter sinks node

It sees - 66 F for most of December into january

This is a testing ground for Arctic nodes for me and my buddy I'm helping who lives in fort micky canada

[dire shuttle]

IIRC Lithium can only handle 0.05C like that

[hollow narwhal]

Except SciB

Toshiba certifies they will charge at 1 C down to - 40C

And 0.5 C down to - 65 C

But you have to have a circuit designed for LTO

Which increases cost so most don't do LTO

Its one of those chemistries that's extra good at this task. The shit part is.. Its not energy dense

[dire shuttle]

LTO is what I was suggesting you consider. It sounds like you were already well aware

[hollow narwhal]

Ahh yeah sorry I must have missed that.. Anyways yeah I had done the research a bit when I encountered a bunch of used LTO 18650s and I was like what are these. Found out they are hakadis haha

I have 24x Toshiba 20Ah LTO prismatics

I have 200 sodium ions.. And 1000s of lithium ion and lifepo4

All from used and over stock and e-waste. I test all of them. Any cell below 80% spec and doesn't good internal resistance numbers gets chucked

Battery packs all get welded on nickel fuses and I let the parallel connection handle equalization

Cuz most balance products cheap enough for this hobby are garbage lol

Unless you know of some cheap BMS that is actually good

[opaque abyss]

Battery building scares me

I might just chuck a V75 in mine and call it a day

[forest current]

@twilit mountain

idk if you need this

kernel module for fox

[hollow narwhal]

Just have some sand and a metal box near you.. Problems solved

@dire shuttle
https://youtu.be/zDGRnkboiPI

Welcome to Peter sinks 🤣..

[dire shuttle]

Weird!

[hollow narwhal]

Haha its awesome though for me to only need to drive 1.5 hours to get to an Arctic testing ground for electronics.. I'm going to initially just do it without permission but I'll work with cache county to get it official

It only ever sees an above freezing day from July 19th-July 23rd each year. Otherwise every night it falls back into the deep freeze. Nothing grows there

[twilit mountain]

Umm we don't use the ch341 kernel driver 🙃

[twilit mountain]

CC: @neat frigate @sonic wolf

[sonic wolf]

You can use one of the out of tree drivers, and tell meshtasticd to just use an spidev, but we pack a usermode ch341 driver in meshtasticd.

[forest current]

Tom asked me for this so idk if hes using it for something specific

Like to use it with the Fox

[nova frost]

I asked because we were concerned that the one in the kernel wasn't playing nice

running that driver that @neat frigate suggested seems to have allowed it to mount as a spi device ok

and I got it all mapped nicely to spi3.0

but now we have a new failure:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Exception'
  what():  ioctl failed, errno=110
Aborted```

so there's that...

[warm basalt]

https://wiki.luckfox.com/Luckfox-Pico/Luckfox-Pico-RTL8723bs/

maybe it’s been posted here before, but this is awesome

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Quantum-Mini-Linux-Development-Kit-p-4749.html

saw it here first

[warm basalt]

which, might be a fun one to run meshtasticd on…

[nova frost]

I saw that in #random . It'd be fun to run Meshtastic on, for sure, but it looks like the designer hasn't done much with it the last couple of years.

[warm basalt]

Hm, it has mainline U-boot and nearly complete mainline Linux support

[nova frost]

I can't be opening my wallet again!

[warm basalt]

The DTS is here https://gitee.com/coolflyreg163/quark-n/blob/master/sun8i-h3-atom_n.dts

[warm basalt]

Anyway, I'll buy one of those boards, with that DTS as well as the notes in that quark-n repo (I google translated it), it seems like it shouldn't be too hard (i say that too often...) to mainline support. I also dropped an email to Zhihui to ask if he would consider (1) mainlining his DTS file into Linux git and (2) mainlining work for U-Boot

and even if all fails, it looks like just having their DTB file in the boot partition should let any recent kernel boot

[neat frigate]

that dts look so farmiliar.... ah it was for my nanopi with pcbm5102 above -originally

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/3596-nanohat-pcm5102a-for-nano-pi-neo-air/

[mild hare]

https://youtu.be/E6Vk_IZy-Sk

[nova frost]

Yeah, you lot all need to get your heads together and sort it out.

[mild hare]

"For want of a PCB"

[nova frost]

oh, like that, is it?

dm me the model, I'll make something tonight

Is the CNC ready to go?

[mild hare]

I need to adjust a 1300mm lead screw. Has a tiny wobble.

Then I can destroy some FR4 until I get it right.

But FlatCAM parses gerbers for each pass/job.

[mild hare]

Sorry for being a ghost here. Tariffs made PCBs cost high, so I decided I would make PCBs at home. There was no room for a table, so I skinned the walls and put in shelves. Then there was no table for the cnc, so I built a table (250lbs of rigidity). Then the cnc was in boxes, so I built the cnc. Then the CNC was out of tune/tram. So now I'm tuning it. Once the cnc is acting like it should, I will setup the fiber laser for rapid prototyping. Long journey. But when I emerge from all this, we can begin to evolve rapidly.

[quasi onyx]

good luck

cant wait to see what happens

when reflow oven?

[mild hare]

Meshnet came to visit and brought me an extra ender 3 (for pnp) and said he has a reflow oven when I am ready

[quasi onyx]

dang

[mild hare]

And I have silkscreen and UV light bars

for mask

[quasi onyx]

osc pcb manucaturing inc. 🤣

[mild hare]

But man, I didnt think a framing nailgun and a miter saw were gonna be part of this process

[mild hare]

No way, just making boards for this stuff. I have seen JLCPCB on youtube and I am not them lol

[quasi onyx]

mainly a joke xd

it would be hella expensive xd

[mild hare]

The laser will be nice though, can help community with their designs too 😉

has a foot pedal to run a job.

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/velma-dinkley-driving-keep-that-gif-19471224

[mild hare]

Honestly it will take a minute to be proficient at all this, but no turning back now

[quasi onyx]

haha ye

[mild hare]

as long as I dont have to make FR4 and components at home should all be ok though 😆

[quasi onyx]

haha

[surreal iron]

@mild hare Let me know when you need help putting a Pick and Place together.

You'll see mine at Open Sauce!

Maybe I'll just let you "borrow" it so I have an excuse to build a new one. 😏

[quasi onyx]

Ahahha

[restive scarab]

if anyone else is still on foxbuntu 0.99 instead of 1.00 there's shenanigans around the root-less meshtasticd update - /etc/systemd/system/meshtasticd.service.d/override.conf is problematic as explicates ExecStart = /usr/sbin/meshtasticd so fix is remove the ExecStart line + run sudo systemctl daemon-reload . also good to double check permissions on /dev/gpiochip* as needed to sudo chgrp gpio /dev/gpiochip* and reboot to get the daemon working

[nova frost]

Is this ok in 1.0?

I need to make an update 😕

[restive scarab]

I had to manually restart udev instead of reboot, and my !userid also changed but seems less drama on 1.0

[nova frost]

I wonder why userid changes...

Oh, on 1.0 Vs 0.9?

Yeah, 1.0 is supposed to be fully based on the cpuid

[restive scarab]

0.9 was def new userid, even stopping service to recopy the old /root/.portduino since the systemd override.conf had string to set it from cpu serial # in the meshtasticd ExecStart command - gonna get the smolfox (also 1.0) out in an it and see what happens there

[nova frost]

0.9 is still weird.

Tbh, I almost never upgrade a live system - I just blast it away and start again.

[restive scarab]

too much customization, especially on the 1.0 running on the Babelfox

[nova frost]

Oh, I forgot about that.

[restive scarab]

it's a skulk! (waiting on smolfox to finish booting)

[restive scarab]

heh, forgot smolfox was already on alpha and already went through the same udev manual restart 🤦‍♂️

[restive scarab]

Same thing on Luckfox Pico Ultra with Luckfox Ubuntu, so meshtasticd thing - femto specific is if running foxbuntu .99 which had the override.conf incorrectly pointing to /usr/sbin

[spring juniper]

Hey folks... I'd really like to get an LTO happy MPPT for my solar foxes as I'm not getting quite enough charge from the KeithMon MPPTs. I found this build (https://oshwlab.com/wagiminator/y-cn3801-lifepo4-solar-charger_copy_copy) that looks pretty much spot on except the cn3801 needs to be a cn3795(?) and the R1 needs to be different values depending on 1S or 2S (thanks ChatGPT). I've never dabbled in anything IC before so excuse the n00b questions. Is this really oversimplified? e.g. swap 1 components and replace the R1 with a switchable version?

[chrome tide]

Won't the one from KeithMon work ? https://www.etsy.com/listing/1609406536/mppt-solar-battery-charger-for-iot

[spring juniper]

Those are the ones I have - the 1A limit I think is holding them back

[chrome tide]

Ah

[spring juniper]

Also, I am hoping to run WiFi 24/7 on those nodes so it’s way more watts to keep up with than the RAKs Keith was targeting AIUI

[polar pawn]

Hi all. I'd like to deploy a smolfox with a 5v poe source, but also want to have a solar/battery backup. On other nodes I've deployed, I've put the 5v into usb and connected the batteries to the node's battery pads with a bms in-line, but there are no such markings or documentation suggesting where one should connect a battery. I have some thoughts but wanted to ask for opinions here.

[floral marten]

Ask a question! 😏

[restive scarab]

yeah there's no schematics published for the l'il one. i've run myne with 5V off bench psu and USB-C with an OTG adaptor/wifi nub and it seemed to be fine with both connected, defering to the USB-C (aka bench psu stops drawing) but just not clear if that is actually an intended way to run it.
also: .22W idle w/WioSX1262 off the bench supply

[nova frost]

Smol fox is same as big fox, just with fewer components.

[nova frost]

There is no onboard charger on any of the published designs.

You are able to feed battery voltage to the 3.3-5vin port, and it runs quite successfully. However, it will experience some weirdness below 3.3v, which represents about 20% charge.

I.e cant recover from a reboot, etc.

It's fine, really. With a small battery and. 2.9v LVCO it will drain the voltage to 2.9 very quickly, and the BPC hysteresis will prevent it restarting til 3.1v

[chrome tide]

Just buck it up to 5v, then you don't have to worry about the board side low voltage, right ?

[restive scarab]

guess some of my confusion was smol has the polyfuse but never really ohmed out the pcb other than the 3v3-5v header to the fuse / mosfet / cap in the corner

[nova frost]

Yeah, it just dumps that in the 5v rail, and then the onboard bucks take it down to 3.3v for the radio and peripherals.

The Luckfox Pico is literally just some connectors, a sock, and a simple buck converter.

SoC

I'm not correcting that.

[restive scarab]

Fox in Socks - a children's classic

[olive jungle]

Hi, I randomly found your comment about meshing-around. I just started running it on a Pi zero 2W. I don’t know much about mesh networks and less about python. Mind if I ask you some basic/stupid questions? I don’t want to derail this thread so I could DM you but I also thought others might be interested.

[nova frost]

The best place to ask would be in #1255754522303922217

[polar ingot]

smolfox, with smol panel, and 1800mah LifePO4 with a 5v booster has been on for 2w 4d 37min.... even handled a few cloudy/rainy days.

[nova frost]

I'm just adding this to the wiki

how do you want crediting?

and do you want to give it a once-over in a sec?

[nova frost]

https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/wiki/SSL-Certs

[pallid basin]

Looks fine to me. Hope it helps someone

[pallid basin]

It’s kind of niche. You need to have a cloud flare providing dns names to the host(s) on your local network. But I find it’s the best way to do this. — buy a cheap domain name and assign subdomains to your private IP addresses

Works great with overlay networks too like nebula mesh vpn

[nocturne birch]

Hey guys! Has anyone had any success getting an LR1121 module onto a Femtofox? The dimensions and pinout on these are a different to the E22-900MS... these LR1121 ones are smaller and a few pins are swapped around. Unfortunately doesn't seem to match up to any of the 3 sets of pinouts on the board as far as I can tell.

I've managed to make a 433mhz one by swapping the equivalent 433mhz version of the E22.. and that's working... but a group of us here in Australia are interested in seeing if we can get an LR1121 on there for the better RX this module apparently has.

I'm guessing it would take a modification to the PCB design (we're planning on getting a run done of the community edition) but I wanted to see if anyone else has tried this!

[chrome tide]

Is there a 64bit OS for luckfox ?

Or cuz its single core, it won't work ?

[nocturne birch]

I could be wrong here but I think the ARM A7 CPU is only 32-bit...

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
BogoMIPS : 48.00
Features : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0xc07
CPU revision : 5

Yep.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A7

[nova frost]

It's not currently supported - physically or in the software/FW

Physically - I've not put the footprint on there (although it wouldn't take much to put it there - if enough interest, I will do it)

FW - we need to get the RF switching into portduino/MeshtasticD

I have some ideas, but I never seem to get very far.

If someone would like to take up the torch on the FW side, I will bang out a new CE version that will r0x0r the s0x0r of anyone who cares to try 😄

[olive jungle]

Okay, cool. Thanks for pointing me there.

[nocturne birch]

Hey hey @nova frost !
If you’d be willing to add the pads on the hardware, I’d be happy to take the torch from there!

I’m about to do an order from JLC for a few things.. which would include some Femtofox’s.

I’d be happy to send one of the boards your way as a thank you if you’re interested!

Looking at the firmware side of things.. I’m a software dev, but not specifically in firmware.. I’ve done a couple of firmware customisations on Meshtastic so I’m reasonably comfortable I could figure it out!

[nova frost]

DM sent.

[nova frost]

Yeah, Spud will know all about his own bot, and everything else is in the different channels.

[twilit mountain]

@nocturne birch is correct, rv1103 / rv1106 (luckfox pico) is an armhf platform. 32-bit only.

Thankfully armhf is still really well supported on Debian/derivs ♥️

[floral marten]

I’m sure this has already been asked: what is the appropriate setting to get max power with this e22 1W radio on the Femtofox? With the ikoka (different node variant) it used to be setting Meshtastic to 22 would give us 30 at the radio after PA. They changed things with that variant and now have to go revisit to make sure I’ve got the correct setting. That’s what got me thinking about the FemtoFox which is my other “shouty loud” node variant.

On a related note, the setting for Boosted RX: there was talk by @warm basalt and others that the PA in the e22 is also amplifying noise and one may get better RX by leaving this boosted setting disabled. I’ve validated that with the ikoka but wondered what people running FemtoFox with 1W radios have seen?

[nova frost]

Same deal, I think. I know there were some pull requests from @warm basalt to sort that out, but it's still a case of turning it up to 11 30 in the settings, and letting the firmware sort it out.

[nova frost]

I'm interested, too. It's interesting that you saw an improvement with the setting turned off. @forest current reported no improvement with that toggled.

[warm basalt]

I’m still waiting on my xiao PR before i start to look at those, i’m guessing it needs more reviewers

because i’m finding a home for the PA gain definitions too, which will make the user tx power reflect the actual tx power

[forest current]

It may have to do with just how much noise there is, not sure

[restive scarab]

Not on a Femto but have it working with Luckfox Pico (non mini) on a Babelfox - only takes 3 jumper wires to correct the faulty schematic/PCB 🙄

[spring juniper]

has anyone killed a pico due to temps

I've got one that went AWOL and doesnt respond to power now so I swapped in backup and all seemed fine on the fox side.... also put in a temp sensor in enclosure this time just in case

[nova frost]

Have you got the RF switching sorted on that?

I feel like a broken record, but I remember how much better it was once I got that working on the promicro

[restive scarab]

RXen/TXen is wired to E21-900G30S which I'm still not 100% is working properly, but I can tx/rx ok and the chip gets warm and after frankensteining the board to get the E80-900M2213S and ethernet working, and finally sorting out a reliable way to have the SIM7022 talking to the sim card I kinda gave up on it for a while. I think there's still something off with either the charging circuit, or my assembly of it too but it was an effort just getting it to this point

i've also had the tx_power set to 9 while sitting on my desk and with a crappy antenna, but def see better SNR / RSSI from another E22-900M30S + PCB antenna at same tx_power in the apartment

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/background-gif-13995757361380697855

Much as I detest mr. Depp, this gif is too appropriate

[opaque abyss]

Whats wrong with depp?

[nova frost]

There is a UK supreme court judgment detailing it.

And he's leant in to typecasting in recent years.

[dense latch]

refreshing to see a correct opinion online

[nova frost]

Ok, someone is agreeing with me. I must be wrong...

[dense latch]

no no, it's everyone else that's wrong

[floral marten]

We’ve had mixed results. So the “improvement” may be statistically an outlier.

[floral marten]

That was the working theory. I am currently playing with an Acasom and an Airframes filter. That should eliminate the noise from outside the core Lora airspace.

[chrome tide]

@mild hare Those SD extenders you recommended don't work w/ LuckFox.. The PCB for teh SD card is to wide.. :\

And the PCB is to long to fit it seems..

[mild hare]

the one I have works, will look it up tonight

[chrome tide]

This is what you had linked back then, and what I ordered.. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CKRDFTH

[mild hare]

oh no no. that"s the one I got test with alley's case

[chrome tide]

Yea, that's what I was going to use them for

Then SD card PCB is to wide, and doesnt fit between the headers..

Heven after sanding it down to the metal contacts..

This is what you have for your test SD card, right ? https://www.amazon.com/PinQiongZhe-Extension-Adapter-Flexible-Female/dp/B0CZSY1896

I'm gonna get that one and this one to test I think.. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09KMZ56H9/

And this one.. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D29JZST1/

[mild hare]

I cant find the one I use in my amazon or aliexpress orders

[chrome tide]

I think the first and last might be best..

[surreal iron]

If you guys find one that will be the standard recommendation, I’ll make a spot for it on the case.

[chrome tide]

That's my plan.. 😉

They will be here tomorrow

[hollow narwhal]

Just thought I'd share what's going on for our new femtofox mountain top router..

We are going metal enclosure
10W solar panel
8x21700s
This little bad boy for solar charging

BME280

INA3221 for voltage readouts

Its gonna be epic. Host our BBS probably. Sadly no internet on it but whatever

We want to make it tankey af. Got suggestions?

This is our panel

Its going on an abandoned radio tower so it will have a super beefy metal mount

We think it won't get screwed with

But in case... We want it to be a PITA and a good bit of special tools

[quasi onyx]

Just to let u know, that isn't the best charger

[hollow narwhal]

I kinda figured it wasn't but it's all we have that can do 5V 3A

The rest of mine aren't rated for 22V solar panels

They are geared for Soshines
haha

[quasi onyx]

Fair, for me that charger drained the battery instead of charging it 😅

[hollow narwhal]

Huh should I do some testing right now with a make shift pack and see what happens?

That's weird

What was your config

I'm putting a deep array on it

[quasi onyx]

15V 6W panel in total

Then seengreat sent me theirs and its been charging without issues

Its larger than waveshare tho

[quasi onyx]

2x 7.5v 3w panels in series

[astral marsh]

Anyone know how i can get the meshing around software to start on its own after a reboot etc?

[opaque abyss]

Doesnt the installer do that?

It would create a service file (probably in /etc/systemd/system) called mesh_bot.service. try sudo systemctl enable mesh_bot

[hollow narwhal]

Drop a link

On deeply discharged 1 V 21700s

And it woke up easy

I'm running a crude test

Gonna see how it does it

We use polymer fast reacting, ultra low ESR Ruby-con caps for smoothing.. So I also have one hooked up

[astral marsh]

I shall try this

[quasi onyx]

https://seengreat.com/product/303/5v-24v-solar-power-management-module-with-mppt-type-c-power-adapter-5v

[hollow narwhal]

Thanks

[hollow narwhal]

The waveshare charger is working fine tbch

It went to 75%

Gonna see if it falls over night

[quasi onyx]

Well that's good then :)

[hollow narwhal]

I hope so. I'm giving it a couple days and nights to see how it does standalone

[chrome tide]

@mild hare @surreal iron Got the batches of extenders today.. The FFC ones are the only ones that will work. The shorter of the 2 works but the one I got, the SD card keeps falling out, so getting a replacement for that.

Anyone else using wifi and getting 2 IPs ?

But wifi NIC only shows 1.. It's like Meshtasticd is grabbing it's own IP..

[mild hare]

Haven't see that, sudo ifconfig and maybe netstat

hopefully some clues there

[chrome tide]

Nope

[dire shuttle]

I just saw this on the list and suddenly I want to add wifi

• Ability to activate or deactivate WIFI via Meshtastic admin

[mild hare]

It takes a few seconds every time you activate or deactivate wifi, and you have exit the settings and re-enter settings menu in the meshtastic client to see the change (at least used to be that way, client has changed since I tested). But it works, at least for me.

[dire shuttle]

If I can find the damned thing on my network so I can SSH into it, I'll start trying wifi dongles

[mild hare]

you try femtofox.local ?

works on some networks

[dire shuttle]

That did work, even though my router's interface says it never issued an address to that

Thanks!

[nova frost]

Have you got a dual-band WiFi?

If you're not running on battery power, I have some spare WiFi modules I can tape to a post card...

[chrome tide]

I dont think that adapter is dual band. It's what ever you guys recommended, for chipset..

[nova frost]

8188eus? Might be 802.11n...

[chrome tide]

No, I think its older chipset.. Ill look in a few..

mt7601u ?

[nova frost]

Oh, that works ok, too.

[chrome tide]

That's the chipset I have, and I get 2 IPs If I don't configure femtofox w/ Wifi, and configure meshtasticd w/ wifi, I only get 1 IP..

[hollow narwhal]

@quasi onyx

Yeah this bad boy doing just fine

Imma risk it for now but I'll reshare your link

[chrome tide]

Hmm... Can't seem to get I2C working on the new Femtofox 1.1 that I got..

Gonna have to pull my cable from the working femtofox, and see what I screwed up..

[chrome tide]

For some reason I think the SDA/SCL pins are flipped vs silk screen..

[chrome tide]

Ok, so I2C is not working on the new board I got.. Unless I messed up and didn't configure something..

What do I need to do, to get I2C working ?

[quasi onyx]

what module do u have?

[quasi onyx]

i will be making my own board soonish :) no extra features just charging and battery protection

[chrome tide]

I know my cable and BME280 work..

As I pulled them from my first femtofox..

[quasi onyx]

did u enable the enviorement module?

[chrome tide]

Well my display wasn't being detected either..

[quasi onyx]

ah

[chrome tide]

In Meshtasticd logs, is says no I2C devices detected

Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]: INFO  | 03:17:08 0
Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]:
Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]: //\ E S H T /\ S T / C
Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]:
Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]: INFO  | 03:17:08 0 No I2C device configured, Skip
Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]: INFO  | 03:17:08 0 No I2C devices found
Jun 23 20:18:33 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[598]: INFO  | 03:17:08 0 S:B:37,2.7.1

[quasi onyx]

thats not good

[chrome tide]

Is there anything like on rPi that I need to do to enableI2C ? I don't remember having to do that, but just wanted to make sure..

[quasi onyx]

nope afaik tho i could be wrong

[chrome tide]

Swapping luckfox to see if that's the issue

Hmm...

Jun 23 20:39:50 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[595]:
Jun 23 20:39:50 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[595]: //\ E S H T /\ S T / C
Jun 23 20:39:50 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[595]:
Jun 23 20:39:50 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[595]: INFO  | 03:38:53 0 No I2C device configured, Skip
Jun 23 20:39:50 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[595]: INFO  | 03:38:53 0 No I2C devices found
Jun 23 20:39:50 femtofox-2 meshtasticd[595]: INFO  | 03:38:53 0 S:B:37,2.7.1

Different luckfox, same thing..

[chrome tide]

Anyone w/ a femtofox and BME280 feel like testing 2.7.1 ?

[hollow narwhal]

You know my thing is I want to support all chems. I have a need for something like this but supports automatically charging sodium ion, LTO-SCiB, lithium ion and polymer, as well as lifepo4

I want something I can plug any chem into. For all iot projects but it's so hard to find

I can make one probably

[quasi onyx]

cn3795

same ic what keith uses

u can set the charging voltage

tho it has higher minimum solar voltage

[hollow narwhal]

I'll take a look. Can I variably set it with a small MCU

[quasi onyx]

if u can control the voltage going into the pin then yes

[nova frost]

Is this being used as a pi hat? Check continuity to the hat header, and check if the system is able to see the i2c devices.

[nova frost]

Define automatically charge?

As in recognise the chemistry without input, or just have a soft-settable target voltage?

[hollow narwhal]

Without input. I have a variety of ways to actually accomplish this

[nova frost]

Ok, I may as well be open about it: I have a workable multi-chemistry charger design at the moment. I had vague dreams of using an MCU to do clever things with it, but the reality is that it needs to be set and forget, so I'm watering it down to a jumper to select cell count (because even the mighty TI can't do everything) and allowing a soft-set of the cell chemistry (which may turn into a hard set, actually. One jumper vs. 2).

Auto power handling from the panel is easy - a proper MPPT algorithm will full-sweep the panel anyway.

[hollow narwhal]

I have an idea. I'll just share the idea. It's honestly too cheap to make money on 😂🤣. This is my thoughts for just something I spin up quick and dirty

MCU - Role: Controls detection, charging, MPPT, I2C stats, passthrough; Device: STM32L011F4P6 ($1.20)

Charger IC - Role: Multi-chemistry charging, current sensing; Device: TI BQ25171 ($1.50)

MPPT IC - Role: Solar power optimization; Device: TI BQ24650 ($2.00)

Temperature Sensor - Role: Temperature compensation, stats; Device: TMP116NAIDRVR ($1.00)

Boost Converter - Role: 3.3V/5V/12V rails, stabilizes voltage; Device: TI TPS55340 ($1.00)

Passthrough Switch - Role: Direct battery output; Device: DMN2041L MOSFET ($0.10)

Smoothing Capacitors - Role: Smooths MPPT/boost output; Device: Rubycon 50YXM470MEFC10X20 ($0.50, x4)

Filtering Capacitors - Role: Reduces ripple; Device: Rubycon 50YXM100MEFC8X11.5 ($0.25, x6)

Filtering Inductors - Role: LC filtering for MPPT/boost; Device: Bourns SRR6040A-100M ($0.30, x3)

Resistors - Role: Circuit support, I2C pull-ups; Device: Generic 1% 0805, 4.7kΩ for I2C ($0.01, x12)

Diodes - Role: Protection; Device: Schottky MBR0520L ($0.10, x2)

PCB - Role: Board base; Device: 2-layer 40x40mm FR-4 ($0.50)

Misc Passives - Role: Decoupling, boost config; Device: Caps/resistors ($0.21)

This is something I've been just shopping or components on for a while and this is a cut paste from my notes

@nova frost

I was gonna be simple about it stm is low power enough. Might seek out a lower power mcu

[nova frost]

Do you have an MPPT algorithm for the MCU, or is one of those chips doing all that?

I know TI have at least one MPPT algorithm example code.

[hollow narwhal]

The TI is the MPPT. The role of the MCU would be simply doing some voltage detection. Changing the config of the TI with its default algo

Like start and stop voltages etc

I was gonna role a couple test devices out the oven

And see what I could code up

The whole point of the mppt IC and dedicate charger is so I can reconfig the charger with ease and let the mppt ic do its thing

[nova frost]

What's the plan for the battery chemistry detection? All my ideas involved dummy loads and impedance testing whatever cell was fitted.

Which uses a huge amount of space for something that is 2 jumpers and done 😉

[hollow narwhal]

So my idea is sample OCV (12-bit ADC), internal resistnce and temperature (MCP9700/TMP116) 10 times, average values, and match against EEPROM-stored chemistry profiles (e.g., Li-ion: 3.0–4.2V). The idea would be to have some kind of redundant check as well. But also consider this. Once the chemistry is detected.. Reconfigure the BQ25171 via its registers to do the deed

I know that's simplified but thats my idea

So far

Temp is the dead give away if you have ambient

Temperature adjusts OCV thresholds, as chemistries have different temperature coefficients (e.g., LiFePO4 OCV drops ~0.5mV/°C, Sodium-ion ~0.3mV/°C).

So really all you need to do is know ambient. Compare expected values across the curve. Might take time though to get the curves in and calibrated. But that's my idea

[nova frost]

Do it

I'm interested to see what you come up with.

[hollow narwhal]

@nova frost I think I'll go actively actually. Apply a 0.05C current pulse (e.g., ~25mA for a 500mAh battery) for 5s via TI BQ25171, controlled by MCU I2C. Measure voltage response (dV/dt) and current decay. Pulse is low enough to avoid degradation (below self-discharge rate, per IEEE battery standards). Use a pre-trained decision tree (EEPROM, ~2 KB) which uses OCV, temperature, and dV/dt to assign probability scores. Trained on battery data (SOC 0–100%, -60°C to 60 C). LiFePO4 shows slower dV/dt than Sodium-ion at 3.2V. You know? So it should work

I really need to draft this up and rev some boards but life has me busy. Work (career).. Grad school. New girl. Life's responsibilities.. Other hobbies (I'm a very outdoorsy person).. Between all that I'm basically WIPED when I get home hahahaha but I'll try to do so soon

😂 literally booked 16 hrs a day lately haha

I'll probably try to squeeze some time in this weekend to get into Kicad and choose a pcb house to do my stuff and get everything drafted

[chrome tide]

Can you use luckfox and pi at the same time ?

[quasi onyx]

Id say probably not

[nova frost]

I mean, why would you even..?

[chrome tide]

No clue at all.. Thats why I was asking if it's possoble..

I tested with the luckfox that came with it, along with the luckfox-b that I bought..

Both result in no I2C devices being detected, but the same devices are detected on my first board w/o issues..

[nova frost]

Ok, I was suggesting checking the pi headers and the i2c sockets and the luckfox sockets, because I can't remember what the routing is.

[chrome tide]

I'll check that after work today.

[nova frost]

One other thing is that I think i2c needs to be enabled in the sfc menu.

But yee, check i2c device(s) are seen by Linux,

• if yes, enable in SFC menu and debug from there,
• if no, check wiring

[spring juniper]

@hollow narwhal I think I'm looking for same kind of uber charger! Although, I'd be happy enough to set with a knob/jumper. Let me know what you come up with happy to also do testing but no skills here on making PCBs. At some point I found this bad boy DC2038A-J (https://www.analog.com/media/en/dsp-documentation/evaluation-kit-manuals/DC2038A.pdf) which lets you adjust voltages via software but $106 for a single demo board might be past my threshold for overkill hah. The 3801 board referenced earlier in thread looked like a good starting point though.

[nova frost]

Is setting via software very important? I was thinking about the steps to setup, and without a screen or keys, setup has to be via serial etc.

[spring juniper]

I'd be happy enough to turn a knob - but it seems like the resitor combos needed to cover all the potential voltages wasn't so simple

[nova frost]

I quite like the idea of setting fewer things, like the whole point of MPPT is that it tracks it, not nailing it to a single value.

[nova frost]

Ah, I can do cell qty on one, and chemistry on another.

That's easy enough.

But yeah, too many variables and it starts to feel like top gun.

[hollow narwhal]

Yes. If you watch chemistry auto detection that actually works. You want the ability to reconfigure the charge controller..

And you want the MCU to run the tests. You never want to do more than pulse when detecting

[chrome tide]

That's what I was asking. Where do I need to enable this ?

[chrome tide]

I'll do that first before doing any further testing..

[chrome tide]

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This does not happen on my first femtofox board..

I also don't have Enable I2C option on my older Femtofox..

femtofox-1

femtofox-2

I think it's foxbuntu 0.9 vs 1.0

0.9 on -1 and 1.0 on -2..

[nova frost]

That's way old

How familiar are you with the image building?

[chrome tide]

Yea, well no backup method, so I'm stuck with what I have..

[chrome tide]

I spun up a VM in my virtual env to be a build server for it. I've built a few, but never actually flashed them to an SD card to see if they worked..

[nova frost]

No time like the present!

Run off a fresh image and see if it helps

[chrome tide]

How do I back everything up, so I keep my node list, etc ?

I've been asking about this for a few months now..

[nova frost]

Um...

Well, first of all, use another SD card for testing!

[chrome tide]

I always do.. LOL

[nova frost]

Ali3n wrote a short script to back it up to usb.

I'm not sure if it does the node list

But also the node list is fleeting.

[chrome tide]

@lavish sorrel Does your backup script do node list ?

[nova frost]

Do not cling to it!

Embrace the chaos!
🧘

[chrome tide]

I don't care about the node list file.. I just want to keep the nodes that I have seen..

That's why I haven't upgraded to 2.6.x for a lot of my nodes..

[nova frost]

-# hoarder

[chrome tide]

Also, on foxbuntu 0.9, I did not have to enable I2C, it just worked..

[nova frost]

It may have been enabled by default back then

[chrome tide]

I'm not a hoarder.. I'm a collector! Get it right.. ;P

[nova frost]

You collect hoards? Gotcha.

[chrome tide]

And I only get the devices that are installed, not 40 I2C devices that aren't installed..

[nova frost]

Or hordes? 🤔

[chrome tide]

My wife won't let me collect those anymore.. Says they cost to much, and infested w/ STDs.. LOL

[nova frost]

I think to do any meaningful debuggery you need a fresh image to start

[chrome tide]

I'm going to put 0.9 on a new SD card and see if I get it working..

[nova frost]

Put 1.0 at least!

[chrome tide]

I know 0.9 works tho..

[nova frost]

I know 1.0 works, tho

[chrome tide]

And 1.0 is giving me problems..

[nova frost]

Start with a fresh image.

[restive scarab]

you should be able to just edit /etc/luckfox.cfg and make sure these two lines are present:

I2C3_M1_STATUS=1
I2C3_M1_SPEED=100000

well, that and reboot - but that's all enabling it via SFC is doing and is a Luckfox thing so should be consistent across Foxbuntu releases (at least is between .99 and 1.0). if you wanna backup your existing nodedb preserve /root/.portduino which when you get latest root-less meshtasticd will need to be restore to /var/lib/meshtasticd/.portduino with the correct user/group permissions (e.g. sudo chown -R meshtasticd:meshtasticd)

[quasi onyx]

@nova frost femtofoxes are in Finland btw :)

Let's see if they get delivered this week

One person asked me few days ago when they could get one and i just said i have some on the way 😅

[lavish sorrel]

it does not capture node list or the vfs. I always found it easier to just reapply my keys and settings and start clean. Hell, I clear my nodedb more frequently than I wash my car.

[lavish sorrel]

what type of problems?

[chrome tide]

I2C issues

[nova frost]

I clear the nodedb more frequently than I clear the lint trap on my dryer

My car has an annual wash with the MOT, so its not a useful measure

[restive scarab]

I made a silly - upgraded 0.98" OLED on the smolfox to 2.4" which is bigger than smolfox (and looks soooooo good, I can actually read it from 10ft away without my glasses)

[lavish sorrel]

Does it come with its own kickstand?

[quasi onyx]

@nova frost i gotta declare the boards ofc 😅

this is always a hassle

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/FHVxQU.png

well go with this lol

[nova frost]

Hang on

I got a less suspicious one

8537109150

[quasi onyx]

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/zkDRxH.png

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/lfDrKH.png

hahaha

[nova frost]

Try 847330

[quasi onyx]

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/A1OI0L.png

maybe electronic assemblies?

this is hard xd

[nova frost]

What's heading 8471?

[quasi onyx]

🤷‍♀️

[nova frost]

Scroll up

[quasi onyx]

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/I2AGkU.png

[nova frost]

Yeah, that'll do

8473 30 20 00

Electronic assemblies for parts and accessories for a pocket calculation device.

Idk, could be fscking anything at that point.

[quasi onyx]

haha ye

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/S7cHhq.png

welp xd

FR4 xd

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/h8MrqE.png

then again why is it saying this 😅

anyway

ill go with this and see what happens

had to pay 51.80€ for tax

[nova frost]

Oof

That's... Normal VAT, tho.

[quasi onyx]

25,5%

[chrome tide]

Ok so what do I need to backup to be able to restore everything to a new SD card ?

[restive scarab]

/etc/luckfox.cfg + /etc/meshtasticd + /root/.portduino or /var/lib/meshtasticd/.portduino if you've already installed the rootless update - rest is impossible to say because only you would know what other changes you've made

[chrome tide]

/root/.portduino is not used anymore..

at least for me, since I run Alpha and dailys..

[restive scarab]

yeah, hence the qualifier "if you've already installed the rootless update"

[fading river]

What is max nodedb size on Linux native? Any way to increase it?

[mild hare]

1k afaik. Dunno about increase.

[chrome tide]

@nova frost New SD card, w/ 1.0 on it, and still having the same issues..

Sorry, no, with 2.7.1 installed, I just get a crash..

So I need to talk w/ JB more on it..

[fading river]

1k should be enough for my use case, thanks!

[warm geyser]

you can stick any number you want in the config file, pretty much

General:
  MaxNodes: 10000

(in config.yaml or equivalent)

[twilit mountain]

Aww yeah 💪

[dire shuttle]

sudo apt install tealdeer
Followed by 20 minutes of building a dependency tree.

I am definitely going to forget this is happening and then SSH will time out due to inactivity before I remember to say yes to the install prompt

Next time: -y

(tealdeer is a Rust-based implementation of one of my favorite Linux packages, tldr, which aptly self-describes as "man pages for humans")

[nova frost]

Whatcha doin with it?

[dire shuttle]

Being hilariously bad at Linux

[nova frost]

Ah. Same, same...

[dire shuttle]

If you haven't used tldr, you should

It's one of the first things I install on every Linux box

[nova frost]

Can you sum up what it is?

[dire shuttle]

Man pages for humans

Man pages want to take you to the moon

TLDR pages want to help you cross the street so you can get some groceries

[nova frost]

Ah, kk

Who writes the stuff that goes into it?

Or does it filter what's already there?

[dire shuttle]

Contributing
This repository is an ever-growing collection of examples for the most common UNIX, Linux, macOS, SunOS, Android and Windows commands.

You're encouraged to create or edit pages in the pages/ folder at the project's repository and submit a pull request.

[nova frost]

Ah, ok

[nova frost]

Ah, ok

I presume it needs internet to get going?

[dire shuttle]

The first time, yes

On first run it asks you to pull down the cache

[nova frost]

How complete is it?

I need something like that to help me through all the things™

[dire shuttle]

It's a fairly robust project, but "complete" for me as a Linux-using-person is likely different than you as a Linux-using-person

[nova frost]

👈 Linux-visiting-person

[dire shuttle]

You might also like explainshell

[nova frost]

I've written those down for later

[dire shuttle]

So I picked up one of the wifi adapters in the supported hardware list, an "EW-7811Un V2", theoretically, but when I try to connect to wifi, it associates and then immediately drops:

[151975.110975] R8188EU: assoc success
[151975.250547] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[151976.647783] R8188EU: assoc success
[151976.693426] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[151978.085151] R8188EU: assoc success
[151978.199828] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[151979.623697] R8188EU: assoc success
[151979.670388] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[151992.124140] R8188EU: assoc success
[151992.484692] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[152188.159565] R8188EU: assoc success
[152188.409810] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[152220.974733] R8188EU: assoc success
[152221.069479] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[152283.330996] R8188EU: assoc success
[152283.832721] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[152346.929463] R8188EU: assoc success
[152347.065179] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[152439.684773] R8188EU: assoc success
[152439.796344] R8188EU: indicate disassoc
[152533.380796] R8188EU: assoc success
[152533.744263] R8188EU: indicate disassoc

It appears to show up correctly in lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 7392:b811 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd Edimax N150 Adapter

[spring juniper]

any chance you can confirm the adapter is working on other device(s) before going too far into debugging on this one

[dire shuttle]

I figured I was hitting a bump that everybody else hit and I just didn't know the obvious five commands to run

Okay, yep, just tested it on my desktop

It is able to connect to the same SSID that I was trying to get this FemtoFox onto

[spring juniper]

whats this say
dmesg | grep -a 8188

looking for something like [ 7.887834] r8188eu 1-1.2:1.0 wlx40ae30b7e57a: renamed from wlan0

after that try sudo dhclient wlx_your_name_here

[nova frost]

I'm not convinced it's actually an r8188eu

I have one here and I couldn't get it to work, but it also doesn't work on my windows pc.

[dire shuttle]

That's how it's reporting to dmesg

[spring juniper]

can you check dmesg for the wlx name and then run dhclient on it?

if it works on a different machine it could be simple as wrong config settings when trying to associate

[dire shuttle]

It's wlan0, I've run dhclient and that's what made it try to connect, AFAICT

[spring juniper]

ifconfig reporting anything interesting? ifconfig wlan0

I see some other distro chatter about power_save mode being a potential issue: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=273162&p=2

[dire shuttle]

        ether 08:be:ac:44:14:a2  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 2  bytes 3364 (3.3 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 17  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 1  bytes 1395 (1.3 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 1 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

It still reports NO-CARRIER when I run ip a

[dire shuttle]

Is there a known-good device I should use instead?

I'm sure I can put this N150 to use somewhere else eventually

[nova frost]

Usb, or "usb"?

[dire shuttle]

...?

[nova frost]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008IFXQFU

[nova frost]

Or DM me your address and I'll post you a solder-it-yourself

I have a lil stack of ones I don't want to use, for... reasons.

[dire shuttle]

I don't know what that means? I feel like I'm missing some context

[nova frost]

I have a little stack of those postage stamp ones that I was planning to use for Tiny boards, but they're too power hungry to use on battery.

They're fine on a wall plug

[dire shuttle]

alas, this will be solar powered at my in-law's house

I appreciate the offer

I just ordered the tp-link one that you linked

[nova frost]

They're not awful.

They're just 30mA more than the other ones.

[dire shuttle]

And I appreciate the offer, but would really rather not have to wait for another transoceanic shipment for this particular build

[nova frost]

Ok, well let me know if you change your mind. I'm trying to run down my stocks of "stuff"

[quasi onyx]

Hahah

Like u did with the few femtofoxes 🙃

[nova frost]

Perhaps

[chrome tide]

Still no I2C on foxbuntu 1.0..

[graceful zephyr]

What kind of stuff are you looking to move on?

[spring juniper]

after a new pico shows up I can try to replicate

[chrome tide]

I'm tested w/ a mini b, and the one that came with it.. Both result in the same..

And the same BME/cable work on my 0.9 system..

[nova frost]

Which bme?

[nova frost]

Honestly, just random shite that can be posted internationally for very little. WiFi modules, random test PCBs, stuff like that. Only of use to someone who knows what they want to do with it.

[spring juniper]

i had a bm280, aht260, 219 and 3221 on a single grove 8port hub working on 1.0.0rc3 so I feel like i2c was pretty well sorted at some point

[nova frost]

Oh, and which image? Self-made or the one on the release page?

I may have an hour or so spare to replicate

[chrome tide]

280

[chrome tide]

release page

[nova frost]

Ok, will burn a new one in a bit.

[mild hare]

I thougt BMP280 worked but not BME280

[spring juniper]

worked in meshtastic or worked in linux

I thought WillE was saying he can't see the devices at all on at the OS

[nova frost]

Bme680 isn't supported

[mild hare]

got it

[nova frost]

Bme280 is..I don't have one, but I have other i2c stuff

Bme680 needs a proprietary firmware blob that can't be used on Linux.

There's an open equivalent but nothing ported as yet.

[chrome tide]

Jonathan has some BME680s to continue working on it tho.. 😉

[mild hare]

sorry dude, literally watching paint dry rn

[chrome tide]

I think he needs a femtofox tho.. ;P wink wink

LOL

j/k

[mild hare]

he has multiple

[chrome tide]

Oh.. LOL Last I talked to him, he said he didn't have one.. 🤷

Either way doesn't matter..

[graceful zephyr]

Yeah probably not me then. My family is the UK so I can get stuff sent over here pretty easily. Definitely interested in one of your mppt boards. Happy to buy direct or do you prefer Etsy?

[nova frost]

Ok, freshly downloaded march-made image.
Flashed to SD card.
Plugged into node with usb-config setup, so it will do all the fiddly bits.
Updated Meshtasticd via SFc menu - took a little walk while that was happening.
Service wasn't running after that.
Enabled i2c anyway.
Restarted, Meshtasticd is working.

[chrome tide]

@nova frost Are you running 2.7.0 ?

[nova frost]

Enabled environment metrics and ran away...

[chrome tide]

Actually, that's daily I'm running..

[nova frost]

I found a bme280 tho

[chrome tide]

femto@femtofox-2:~$ apt info meshtasticd
Package: meshtasticd
Version: 2.7.1.202~ppac144bd0~jammy

[nova frost]

2.6.11

Hang on, need to swap over.

[chrome tide]

I think it might have been pulled. So I need to downgrade. Not sure..

rPi daily doesnt have any updates either..

2.7.0 is alpha right now.

[nova frost]

remind me how to swap branches to alpha?

[chrome tide]

Adding this PPA to your system
You can update your system with unsupported packages from this untrusted PPA by adding ppa:meshtastic/alpha to your system's Software Sources. (Read about installing)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:meshtastic/alpha
sudo apt update

https://launchpad.net/~meshtastic/+archive/ubuntu/alpha

[nova frost]

Sorry, fell asleep and forgot to hit enter...

Updated to 2.7, works with telemetry.

[quasi onyx]

already sold 3 femtofoxes, well 2 and one is reserved xd

or

not sold but sent onward to other ppl at cost lol

aka what i paid lol

will leave one board for myself :)

thx @nova frost :)

will do business with u again sometime lol

[nova frost]

All good.

[chrome tide]

This is what I see when meshtasticd start. Normally it would just show the i2c devices it found..

[spring juniper]

So…. Luckfox pico mini … should light up with just a USB right

(No fox - just dangling)

[mild hare]

no bootable microsd, no lights.

[spring juniper]

Well that makes more sense than my femtofox is killing picos

Time for new SD card

[mild hare]

or reseat it maybe

reburn?

[spring juniper]

I’m swapping the Card between them and both no lights

[mild hare]

oh, then bad burn or bad card

[spring juniper]

PNY Elite if anyone is keeping score
I have an endurance I guess I may as well use now

[mild hare]

So I used this card for the development of foxbuntu (meaning imaged hundreds of times and hot powered off) https://a.co/d/8KxpjKT

Still going strong to this day

[chrome tide]

I use Samsung Evo/Endurance for the most part, and haven't had any issue with them. I use them in everything, 3D Printer, rPi, security cameras, femtofox, etc..

[upper salmon]

after I write the femtofox image to the SD card.....where do I plug the SD card in, and where do I power it?

[mild hare]

take off the pico from the mainboard and slot sdcard underneath and resocket pico. then plug usb-c in mainboard (because it also has a usb to serial converter on it)

[upper salmon]

I've not seen a connector like that! I didn't see it in the instructions so I was like, ummmmm, what am I missing

thank you

[mild hare]

You bet. I need to make a video at somepoint.

[upper salmon]

OH, there is the blinky light I was promised!

[mild hare]

usb-c on the main board (femtofox) is also a usb to serial so you can console in.

[nova frost]

That's only on the pro version!

The CE version needs powering through pins - the 3.3-5V in, or the fox plug

[dire shuttle]

I picked up one of these, but it's behaving identically to the other adapter I tried: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP>. No amount of sudo dhclient -i wlan0 or -r seems to be working

I tried using femto-config to enable wi-fi and restart networking, but neither seems to have helped

[nova frost]

This post seems to think a typo in one of the conf files might be the cause.
This post thinks that it may not be associating with the SSID correctly.
This post blames some stuff that is definitely installed correctly in the default image.

[dire shuttle]

Off to a promising start!

cat: /etc/dhcpcd.conf: No such file or directory

[nova frost]

This post seems to blame some other stuff, too

Do you have a second fox (or second SD card with a fresh image) to check functionality?

I must admit, 99% of my config happens with the USB stick at first boot.

[dire shuttle]

I have both a second Fox and plenty of microSDs

[nova frost]

I'd try a fresh image, and try the wifi setup on another board.

[dire shuttle]

Apparently I don't have plenty of microSDs, I have two... and one is unresponsive and the other is 128GB.

Tried on another fox, same basic problem, but I found a tutorial that said to run wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf. Being a responsible power use, I promptly pasted it into my shell with no idea what it did.

That at least gave me some feedback:

# wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or connect commands
nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan0 disabled_11b_rates=0
wlan0: Failed to initialize driver interface
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all

[mild hare]

what adapter is this? not all are supported

[dire shuttle]

The one Tom linked, lemme check again

Theretically a TL-WN725N https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008IFXQFU

I've had similar results with one of the Edimaxes on the supported hardware list

I would think my OTG adapter was at fault, but they can scan just fine

[mild hare]

weird. The one you linked looks like it should work.

[dire shuttle]

I'm completely certain the problem exists between the chair and keyboard

[mild hare]

I have seen people do the password wrong and have issues. I would mess with wpa_cli and see if you can get it to associate.

Normally the supported dongles just fire right up. Make sure region is US too in wpa_supplicant.conf

[dire shuttle]

I've gotten it to connect from Windows and I've re-entered the password a half-dozen times

So once I check wpa_supplicant.conf, I should run wpa_cli?

[mild hare]

wpa_cli is just a tool that lets you manually check the status and try to connect

[dire shuttle]

Ah. It claims it can't connect to wpa_supplicant
Could not connect to wpa_supplicant: (nil) - re-trying

[mild hare]

sorry not near a linux box or I'd give ya some strings

sudo systemctl status wpa_supplicant

make sure service is running

Wondering if it's just an error in wpa_supplicsnt.conf

also sudo ifconfig shows wlan0 right?

[dire shuttle]

Well, that's an odd set of results:

● wpa_supplicant.service - WPA supplicant
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-02-20 21:24:13 +08; 4 months 9 days ago
   Main PID: 230 (wpa_supplicant)
        CPU: 84ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/wpa_supplicant.service
             └─230 /sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s -O /run/wpa_supplicant

Feb 20 21:24:12 femtofox systemd[1]: Starting WPA supplicant...
Feb 20 21:24:13 femtofox systemd[1]: Started WPA supplicant.
Feb 20 21:24:13 femtofox wpa_supplicant[230]: Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
femto@femtofox:/etc/wpa_supplicant$ sudo wpa_cli
wpa_cli v2.10
Copyright (c) 2004-2022, Jouni Malinen <[e-mail]> and contributors

This software may be distributed under the terms of the BSD license.
See README for more details.



Interactive mode

Could not connect to wpa_supplicant: (nil) - re-trying```

Oh

Uh, no, it doesn't show up in ifconfig now. It did before, on the other fox

[mild hare]

weird. may be as simple as .conf problem.

[dire shuttle]

Trying the other dongle

[mild hare]

oh no wlan0 in ifconfig is not good.

[dire shuttle]

That's a new thing, to be clear

[mild hare]

lsusb

just to make sure

lsmod

[dire shuttle]

It would be great if there were a maintenance mode or something that would upclock a core in these. I love the low power draw most of the time, but I did a apt get upgrade and it was an overnight operation

[mild hare]

yup

it aint a pi.

[dire shuttle]

It ain't

Okay, so

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:8179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188EUS 802.11n Wireless Network Adapter
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
femto@femtofox:~$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
r8188eu               263095  0
lib80211                2723  1 r8188eu
cfg80211              184648  1 r8188eu
video_rkcif           162117  0
sc3336                  9940  0
phy_rockchip_csi2_dphy_hw    10066  0
phy_rockchip_csi2_dphy     9338  0
ipv6                  226809  18```

That's with the Edimax dongle plugged in

[mild hare]

looks legit

[dire shuttle]

It shows up in ifconfig

[mild hare]

shows in ifconfig now?

kk

[dire shuttle]

Still in NO-CARRIER in ip a

[mild hare]

dhcpd

[dire shuttle]

sudo: dhcpd: command not found

[mild hare]

um hang on

[dire shuttle]

dhclient is what I've been trying

[mild hare]

yeah that sry

[dire shuttle]

sudo dhclient
RTNETLINK answers: File exists

[mild hare]

sudo dhclient wlan0

[dire shuttle]

I have launched that

It always takes forever

[mild hare]

yeah if not associated no love

sry I dont have a wpa_supplicant.conf close by

[dire shuttle]

Ran it with -v and got this:

Listening on LPF/wlan0/7c:f1:7e:fa:b3:e6
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/7c:f1:7e:fa:b3:e6
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 (xid=0xca408d11)
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8 (xid=0xca408d11)```

The supplicant file looks fine-ish when I compare it with other stuff online

update_config=1
country=US

# the first network in this file is the one edited by the various UIs and tools (USB config, femto-config, web UI, femto-network-config.sh...)
network={
    ssid="Wija-Mesh"
    psk="snip"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    priority=100
}```

[mild hare]

not sure about the 2 lines at the top from but rest seems ok

wpa_cli -i wlan0 status

[dire shuttle]

wpa_state=DISCONNECTED
address=7c:f1:7e:fa:b3:e6
uuid=cad7d132-e88f-5153-b125-b8941459b6c2```

[mild hare]

try reconnect instead of status and run status again. I really want to guess it's a conf thing. maybe hidden chars.

[dire shuttle]

I did cat -v to get that conf for you a minute ago

[mild hare]

I know, but not at a machine to full compare

[dire shuttle]

$ sudo wpa_cli -i wlan0 reconnect
OK

State is still DOWN in ip a

[mild hare]

sed -i 's/\r$//' wpa_supplicant.conf

[dire shuttle]

I had to change that to sudo sed -i 's/\r$//' /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf, but that ran

[mild hare]

then restart the wpa_supplicant service

[dire shuttle]

Ran sudo systemctl restart wpa_supplicant

Status shows as active(running)

Still DOWN in ip a

[mild hare]

check the wpa_cli status maybe a clue

otherwise I would start digging in dmsg

it's not supposed to be this hard

[dire shuttle]

Selected interface 'wlan0'
wpa_state=DISCONNECTED
address=7c:f1:7e:fa:b3:e6
uuid=cad7d132-e88f-5153-b125-b8941459b6c2```

"it's not supposed to be this hard" is literally every single time I use Linux

The common thread here is me though, so....

Traditionally, it's "You get two of network, mouse, display, GUI, and audio. gl on the rest!"

[mild hare]

And I'm guessing this a fresh image?

[dire shuttle]

It's not 100% fresh, I've installed mesh_bot and done the basic Meshtastic config, but I haven't ducked around with drivers

[mild hare]

ok

[dire shuttle]

I just wrote a completely new one to a 128GB microSD because it's all I had handy, but IIRC the Pico doesn't like 'em that big

[mild hare]

128gb is fine. it's max

[dire shuttle]

Alright, time to veeeeeeeeerry slowly shutdown and swap the cards

Getting them out of that little socket is a trick

[mild hare]

sudo halt right?

I'm terrible, I usually just yank the udb cord like it was a chainsaw

[dire shuttle]

I always use sudo shutdown now

No clue on the difference off the top of my head

But it tastes more Windows-y

[mild hare]

use halt on these

[dire shuttle]

As you wish

My CLI vocab here is limited

[mild hare]

it's faster

one other thing before I head to workshop, stop wpa_supplicant service and try this sudo wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -d
this will let ya know if conf is ok.

[dire shuttle]

I just finished booting the fresh foxbuntu image

And then finding which IP it acquired since the hostname registration takes forever and gives SSH fits

[mild hare]

ah ok nm lol

that's weird. when I do QC on boards before I send em, I get DHCP lease from eth and send a test radio message with python and it's pretty quick in general

[dire shuttle]

It's not DNS
There's no way it's DNS
It was DNS

wpa_cli and my adapter are now tired of my nonsense

$ sudo wpa_cli -i wlan0 status
wpa_state=INTERFACE_DISABLED
address=7c:f1:7e:fa:b3:e6
uuid=cad7d132-e88f-5153-b125-b8941459b6c2```

[mild hare]

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

[dire shuttle]

Association request to the driver failed

...

<3>Associated with 32:36:26:d4:1f:60
<3>WPA: RSNXE mismatch between Beacon/ProbeResp and EAPOL-Key msg 3/4```

It sounds like it failed but succeeded?

[mild hare]

yeesh, I dunno lol

[dire shuttle]

I'm six hours farther into this effort than I expected it to take and I think I'm going to accept that while it would be nice for this node to have wifi, it would also be nice to get it on the air

I appreciate your assistance troubleshooting

[mild hare]

yeah np, sry man. It's usually really easy.

[sour horizon]

WPA3 failure to link; fall back somewhere to WPA2

I keep a SSID for stuff which isn’t 3

[dire shuttle]

Ah, I've basically done that but for 2.4GHz instead of 2.4+5.8+6

Dot effing dot dot. As soon as I gave up and left, it worked.

Sadly, /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log doesn't exist

[restive scarab]

yeah, welcome to the wonderful world of systemd - sudo journalctl -u wpa_supplicant -f should work

[dire shuttle]

-- Boot f87b002a3fb74b82ae5ff9858fdb4f4c --
Nov 21 20:57:27 femtofox systemd[1]: Started WPA supplicant.
Nov 21 20:57:27 femtofox wpa_supplicant[255]: Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
Jul 02 00:44:55 femtofox systemd[1]: Stopping WPA supplicant...
Jul 02 00:44:55 femtofox systemd[1]: wpa_supplicant.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jul 02 00:44:55 femtofox systemd[1]: Stopped WPA supplicant.```

I'm afriad to touch it now that it's working for once

[restive scarab]

hehe don't even look at it!

[chrome tide]

@nova frost Did you see this message ? I can't see my I2C device. #1329096340700921898 message

[nova frost]

This is what I get:

Portduino is starting, VFS root at /root/.portduino/default
Set up Meshtastic on Portduino...
Using /etc/meshtasticd/config.yaml as config file
Also using "/etc/meshtasticd/config.d/femtofox_SX1262_TCXO.yaml" as additional config file
Also using "/etc/meshtasticd/config.d/femto_config.yaml" as additional config file
MAC ADDRESS: A2:0D:F0:A2:C4:BC
GPIO16
GPIO23
GPIO22
GPIO25
GPIO24
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 

//\ E S H T /\ S T / C

INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Use /dev/i2c-3 as I2C device
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Scan for i2c devices
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Device found at address 0x32 was not able to be enumerated
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 BME280 found at address 0x76
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 1 I2C devices found
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 S:B:37,2.7.0
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Init NodeDB
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Load /prefs/nodes.proto
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded /prefs/nodes.proto successfully
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded saved nodedatabase version 24, with nodes count: 2
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Load /prefs/device.proto
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded /prefs/device.proto successfully
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded saved devicestate version 24
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Load /prefs/config.proto
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded /prefs/config.proto successfully
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded saved config version 24
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Load /prefs/module.proto
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded /prefs/module.proto successfully
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded saved moduleConfig version 24
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Load /prefs/channels.proto
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded /prefs/channels.proto successfully
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Loaded saved channelFile version 24
/root/.portduino/default/prefs/uiconfig.proto does not exist
ERROR | 01:00:48 0 Could not open / read /prefs/uiconfig.proto
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Wanted region 3, using EU_868
INFO  | 01:00:48 0 Running without TFT display!

INFO  | 00:00:48 0 External Notification Module Disabled
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Start meshradio init
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Radio freq=869.525, config.lora.frequency_offset=0.000
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Set radio: region=EU_868, name=LongFast, config=0, ch=0, power=27
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 myRegion->freqStart -> myRegion->freqEnd: 869.400024 -> 869.650024 (0.250000 MHz)
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 numChannels: 1 x 250.000kHz
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 channel_num: 1
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 frequency: 869.525024
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Slot time: 28 msec
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Final Tx power: 27 dBm
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 SX126x init result 0
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Frequency set to 869.525024
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Bandwidth set to 250.000000
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Power output set to 22
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Set RX gain to boosted mode; result: 0
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 sx1262 init success
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Use webserver port from yaml config 443 
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Webserver started
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Web Server framework started on port: 443 
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 Web Server root /usr/share/meshtasticd/web
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 API server listen on TCP port 4403
INFO  | 00:00:48 0 PowerFSM init, USB power=1```

[chrome tide]

So I need to figure out why i2c is not picking up a know working bme280..

[chrome tide]

The luckfox headers are all directly connected, right ?

I.E. if I plug I2C into the outside headers, it's like plugging directly into the luckfox.

[mild hare]

Totally, that's why they are there.

Your RTC still working?

[chrome tide]

That's gonna be my next test. I don't have a RTC on this board..

[mild hare]

Ah ok. I just remembered you had one on the first at least

[chrome tide]

Yes, this is the second board I got that I'm having issues with.

[mild hare]

Packing to go camping out of range of babylon for 5 days.

[mild hare]

I wont be much help but let me know how it goes, try an rtc just for sanity

[chrome tide]

Nice, where you heading ?

[mild hare]

Private property on a river way up in the mountains. Hopefully get sunburnt on a hunting kayak.

[chrome tide]

Have to find my bag I got.. LOL That's the only reason it doesn't right now.. Been lazy..

[chrome tide]

Nice! We have a 42' 5th wheel and a camp ground membership that gives us access to like 5000+ RV parks..

[mild hare]

This place is like you bring a skin stapler, etc. cuz you'll bleed out before reaching civilization if you screw up

[chrome tide]

The best park about our membership, is that my daughter, and her kids get to have it also, if/when she has them.. She's 10 right now, so better not have them for 20 years! LOL

[chrome tide]

I've been to similar when younger.. Wife doesn't like those camp sites, and the 5th wheel is def to big.. and no gen/solar on it..

Need 50a service for the beast..

[mild hare]

So, wife hated camping, and I dont glamp but I'm techy about the survival runs. She went last time and loves it now. Thought I was sleeping in the dirt or something. 😆

[mild hare]

EcoFlow River 2 and 100w panel

[chrome tide]

Yea, wife is a glamper for sure! LOL

I speed solar to run our rig, and I needed 600w min..

Thats for 24-36 hours summer camping.

I want to get an anker setup, honestly..

I want 2x500w panels on the roof, and a nice battery setup.. like a 72v.. LOL

That's if I DIY'd and didn't get Anker setup..

[mild hare]

This was last year, but packing same setup

[mild hare]

Anker is legit

[chrome tide]

This grey truck is my current truck, 2020 Ford F350 DRW Platinum, and the white one is my old one, 2016 F250 SRW Platinum

[mild hare]

oh snap, that's a command center!