mDot Box Configuration via UART issue

[Alex Sneed Miller]

Hi,

I’m trying to get an mDot box configured to work with my LoRa Network.

I’ve connected the ribbon cable to the mDot Box and to the Micro UDK, and then the UDK is plugged into my laptop over USB. It enumerates a serial port, and I am able to connect to it with a baud rate of 115200. Sometimes I see dots (“.”) come through, but most times I do not see any characters coming in. When I send “help” or “?” I get nothing back.

Here is the order in which I plugged everything in:
1) turned on the mdot box
2) scrolled down to ‘configuration’ using SW2
3) entered ‘configuration’ using SW1
4) connected the ribbon cable
5) plugged the usb side of the Micro UDK into my laptop
6) connected to the serial port with speed of 115200
7) sent “?” over the serial connection and expected to get a response, but I don’t get any response

Is there something I’m doing wrong?

The mDot Box is running firmware version 2.1.2

[Ryan Klaassen]

There should be two serial ports enumerated, if only one is coming up which one is it?

[Alex Sneed Miller]

This time when I plugged in the USB cable to my laptop the mDot Box the screen on the mDot Box went blank and the device appeared to reboot. When it came up it enumerated two ports. I tried to connect to each one, but was not able to get anything to appear back on my terminal (no echo, and nothing when I typed “?”).

The two ports that enumerated were usbmodem145121 and usbmodem145113

[Ryan Klaassen]

Was the dot box in configuration mode when trying these two ports? Try typing AT.

[Alex Sneed Miller]

Yes, after the box rebooted I had to scroll down to “Configuration” again. Then it showed me the rotating screens with the 3 steps. Typing “AT” did not seem to do anything.

LED 1 on the box is solid red, LED 2 on the box is blinking blue.

The Micro UDK has a red light on for the ‘STAT’ LED and the PWR LED is blue. The ‘COM’ LED has not turned on.

[Alex Sneed Miller]

I think I figured it out, at one point the screen went blank and I thought it was broken, but I guess that’s what is supposed to happen. The instructions on the manual are correct, I just wasn’t expecting the screen to be off and then come back on later.

Here are the steps that worked:

1) Connect ribbon cable so that the red wire is on the side farthest from the antenna on the mDot Box and connect the red wire to the side of the UDK closest to the STAT, COM, and PWR LEDs.
2) Turn on the mDot Box. LED 1 is solid green, but the LCD screen does not turn on. [DON’T GIVE UP YET!! – this was the key step]
3) Plug in the UDK. PWR is solid blue, STAT starts off blinking red and then becomes solid red pretty quickly. On the mDot Box the screen turns on and LED 1 is solid red and LED 2 is blinking blue.
4) Scroll down to ‘Configuration’
5) Connect with a Serial Terminal app with 115200 bps. And send the character “?” to the mDot Box. It should reply with all of the commands.

For my laptop, I had to connect to the first port, the second port did not respond to anything.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Alex Sneed Miller.

[Author]

Posts