5 replies to this topic

[SteveS123]

I have many ND+2's and there is one in particular that doesn't respond to plugging in an ethernet cable until I press the onboard button.  

This is a fresh flash of version 4.3.  I am able to execute code on the device but there is just no ethernet activity until the button is pressed.  The version 4.2 did the same thing.  

1. I'm positive the cable and switch is good.

2. I can get activity if I press the onboard button.

 

What would cause this the device to obtain an IP address only if the onboard button is pressed?

 

Thank you in advance,

Steve

[Chris Walker]

Hi Steve,

The onboard button resets the device. If you unplug and re-power your Netduino really quickly, do you see the same thing?

Technically there should be no software difference on the Netduino between "power up" and "reset": either way the microcontroller starts from the first line of code. But your router may respond differently to the network traffic coming from a device which was just powered vs. a device which has been powered for a while (and which may have unsuccessfully negotiated a connection). There's also the chance that a small power supply (or power decoupling) part on your board is defective or damaged and the networking chip only gets proper power during its initialization sequence if power is already flowing on your board.

If we could repro that case here, we could look at what is happening software-wise. It's possible that normal slight differences in decoupling capacitors' ratings make the difference here...and that NETMF's ENC28J60 drivers just need a few more "wait and retry" cycles during ENC28J60 initialization.

Chris

[SteveS123]

Thank you Chris for your response.

 

To answer your question:

1. I plugged the ND2 in and no ACT light

2. I pressed the reset button and the ACT light shows activity.

3. I unplugged the ND2 for 5 seconds then plugged it in and no ACT but I quickly unplugged and plugged the device back in and the ACT light started flashing.     The time between unplug and plug was approx. 1 second.

4.I unplugged for 5 seconds and then plugged it back in and got no ACT light.  

 

I was able to replicate the process over and over.  It does sound like a hardware issue.

 

I'm looking forward to hearing about your research, let me know if you would like me to send this ND to you.

 

Thanks,

Steve

[Chris Walker]

Hi Steve,

Do you happen to have a second Netduino Plus?

If you don't, no worries.

If you do, then does it exhibit the same behavior?

It really sounds like a network initialization timing issue (either in the Netduino or related to how the router reacts to the Netduino). Standards are great--but sometimes they're a little too strictly or loosely implemented.

Chris

[SteveS123]

Chris,

 

I have nine of them running on the same network and this is the only one that has this behavior.

 

Although, every morning when I come in all of the ND's that were connected the previous evening and are communicating will drop their connection.  I tried pinging them all this morning and all nine are not reachable.  They are all set statically in the router.  I am running two threads on each of them, one that runs the socket and the other is communicating through the SPI.  The socket receives the data and sets a global variable and the second thread changes the lighting scheme based on that variable.  Could that cause them to drop their connection?

I know this is a different topic but just thought it is worth mentioning.  I'm designing kiosks to that will be installed all around the US and am in hopes of using the ND's for the lighting control so if this problem can be corrected we will be buying a lot of devices

 

Thanks again,

Steve

[Chris Walker]

Hi Steve,

You have PM. Let's see if we can repro this in our engineering labs. Thank you very much.

Chris