No reply from USR-TCP232

[WimW]

Hi all,

For about 4 years now, I've been using the OTGW to control our heating, using RPi temperature sensors in a few different rooms. It behaves much better than the original thermostat, so I consider it a success. The one thing that has always bothered me, is a frequent loss of connection over Wifi. So I finally installed the USR Ethernet board. However, I'm unable to connect to it from the PC (in order to set it up correctly for use in the OTGW), even though I see the green lights coming on next to the RJ45 connectors and the orange lights lighting up intermittently, so I know on an electronic level, things are OK.

I think I did all the obvious things, such as setting up the PC with a fixed IP address and the correct subnet mask, switching off the Windows firewall, trying a port scan in case the IP address from the manual was not correct, pinging instead of using the browser.

Any suggestions?

Thank you!

[hvxl]

The USR-TCP232 should ping. If it doesn't, there was almost certainly something wrong with your IP configuration. Your PC needs to have an IP address in the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet (it doesn't have to be fixed). As you didn't provide details on what you did, I can't be more specific on what may be wrong.

[WimW]

Thank you! I've just retried with both a Linux and a Win PC, but still no success. I followed the instructions in the Nodo Opentherm USR-TCP232 quick start guide, which says to configure a fixed IP on the PC of 192.168.0.201 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and gateway 192.168.0.1. Then to browse to http://192.168.0.7. However, there is no response to the HTTP request, and not to a ping either. I also tried other IP addresses for the PC (192.168.0.17 and 192.168.0.15) just in case. A port scan does not find any other active hosts on this subnet.

Nevertheless, as mentioned, the connection lights come on on the TCP232, so on a lower level, everything seems to be good.

[WimW]

Well I just found out that it's already configured correctly and it already works in the system. The password seems to have been changed too. I guess I won't need that for now. However, if anyone could tell me what it might be, that would be appreciated.

[hvxl]

I did some experimenting and found the following:

You mentioned you have a linux machine. Then you can sniff network traffic as root:

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tcpdump -n port 1500

Then, in another terminal window and as a regular user, run the following command:

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echo /wEBAg== | base64 -d | nc -u -b -w2 255.255.255.255 1500

The tcpdump command should now show output that looks like:

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tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
16:36:45.090634 IP 192.168.42.13.47803 > 255.255.255.255.1500: UDP, length 4
16:36:45.091328 IP 192.168.0.7.1500 > 255.255.255.255.47803: UDP, length 36

That last line reveals the IP address of the USR-TCP232-T2. In this case 192.168.0.7.

Another option is to remove the PIC from the (powered down) OTGW, and connect an FTDI USB TTL adapter. Set the adapter to the supply voltage of the PIC: 3.3V for v2.5 and later OTGW boards, 5V for older versions. Connect GND of the USB TTL adapter to pin 5, RX to pin 8, and TX to pin 11. Power up the OTGW and connect the USB TTL adapter to a USB port of your PC. Use some terminal emulator program to access the serial port assigned to the adapter. For example, with minicom: minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB2 -b 115200
Type: '+++', the USR should respond with 'a', then type 'a' and get a '+ok' response. If nothing happens when you type '+++', the baud rate is probably wrong. Change the baud rate to 9600 and try again. After the '+ok' response, you can enter a 'AT+WANN' command to get the IP address:

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a+okAT+WANN

+OK=STATIC,192.168.0.7,255.255.255.0,192.168.0.1

You can also reset the device to factory defaults using the 'AT+CLEAR' command (for example, if you want to get access and you don't know the password).

[WimW]

Thank you, that is helpful in case I run into any issues. It has now been running correctly for 2 days without needing any intervention. The parameters already worked, so the fact that I don't have the password is not an issue for now. In these 2 days, I have finally experienced 0 losses of connection, which used to happen many times per day. I'm now working on allowing multiple additional room sensors.