Testing with Renard

[mindtrik]

Nope...won't matter

[Materdaddy]

Uh...Yea I think I will  I dont even know what SSHing is.   I sure do appreciate you and Capt's help.

By the way is there a list of the supported dongles for the PI?  If so I will order a new one from Amazon if there is one that is suggested.

Download PuTTY from a trusted source.
Connect to your Pi.  The settings you'll need to worry about are the IP address, announced at boot, port 22 (should be the default if it's set to SSH (not telnet)), username of "pi" with password of "raspberry".
The first time you connect, it'll ask you about accepting the fingerprint of your Pi, click "accept" or "save" or "ok" or whatever it's labeled.
Once logged in, you'll be presented with a terminal where you can type commands.
Type the one I mentioned ("sudo lsusb -vv > /home/pi/media/logs/lsusb.log") and you should see no output (it logs the command to a file).
Then disconnect and do the rest of the things I mentioned (plug, unplug a couple times, and grab the logs).

Ok....Dont know if this is it BUT... if a dongle says its USB 2.0 and you powered hub is a 4 port USB 3.0 hub does that mean the 485 dongle wont work with it? 

Could this be the culprit?

No, USB 3.0 is backward compatible with 2.0 devices.

[FIRECOP252]

Ok thanks Matt, I will give it a try when I get home. 

1 other question  I am going to order another USB to 485 converter...will this one work?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NG9TSG4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2AW0W4FKP16S5

I thought since it didnt have 2 parts I might try it?  The other type the board and cable have issues screwing together and I have had it come unplugged before.

[Skunberg]

Kinda off topic but another option would be the rj45 output e1.31 from the pi to a bridge that converts to renard. Gets rid of the dongle.

[CaptainMurdoch]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NG9TSG4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2AW0W4FKP16S5

I'm getting the feeling that's the wrong link, but if not, then the answer is no, the Pi doesn't generate enough heat to require that A/V cabinet thermostat and fan control.

I'd say try to find something with a FTDI chip in it, that's what a lot of us use and it should work with Renard as well as DMX and Pixelnet if you ever decide to play with those.

[Materdaddy]

Ok thanks Matt, I will give it a try when I get home. 

1 other question  I am going to order another USB to 485 converter...will this one work?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NG9TSG4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2AW0W4FKP16S5

I thought since it didnt have 2 parts I might try it?  The other type the board and cable have issues screwing together and I have had it come unplugged before.

Haha, the AC controller will NOT work for RS485 from a Pi.

This is the type I bought in the past before moving to Bridge E1.31 type equipment: http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-to-RS422-RS-422-RS485-Converter-Adapter-Serial-/370494865045?pt=US_Parallel_Serial_PS_2_Cables_Adapters&hash=item564336fe95

[FIRECOP252]

WOW......guess I should have looked at my post a little better and not had so many tabs open      Sorry I meant to show this one and see.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GI9IQ9E/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1FX0486IHNK8A

Matt,  That is the one I have now and for some reason am having issues with it.   I thought this one because it didnt have 2 peices with it.

I actually have a E131 bridge kit I bought that I have not put together yet because I sold my pixels and my E682 this year.  Dont understand it enough to mess with it this year.

[FIRECOP252]

I know I keep adding on to this BUT.....how hard would it be to use a script.  I am going to have video in my show with a projector and was going to use a timer to turn it on and off.   Was talking to JChuchla and he told me that my projector has a RS232 port and if i could find a script the pi would turn the PJ on for me?   

Is this feasible?

[FIRECOP252]

OK so latest snafooo....i had the other usb to serial dongle and built a serial to 485 cord to use with it.  wanted to test it out so I hooked it up and did not get anything.   I double check everything and I go into my outputs and am going to reset up my channel output so I delete the one there and go to reenter the output BUT now I can not get anything on the channel output in the other section but ws2801 to choose.  I rebooted 2 times and still only lets me choose ws2801.   

I was deleting and resetting up because i built the new dongle and still have never seen anything come up other than ttyusb0 so I was going to reenter everything with this new dongle to see if things started working.

So I am lost now...Is it my dongle or the player program using Renard or a combination of several things....not really sure at this point 

[Materdaddy]

If nothing is showing up in that list, the Pi isn't recognizing your dongle.  Even without the additional logs I asked about, I think it's safe to assume that whatever dongle you're trying to use isn't supported in linux.

[CaptainMurdoch]

If nothing is showing up in that list, the Pi isn't recognizing your dongle.  Even without the additional logs I asked about, I think it's safe to assume that whatever dongle you're trying to use isn't supported in linux.

In v1.0, that screen will list all output types and will popup a warning if the user tries to add a Channel Output for a type where the required hardware is not present.  This should be a little more informative for users.

[CaptainMurdoch]

I know I keep adding on to this BUT.....how hard would it be to use a script.  I am going to have video in my show with a projector and was going to use a timer to turn it on and off.   Was talking to JChuchla and he told me that my projector has a RS232 port and if i could find a script the pi would turn the PJ on for me?   

Is this feasible?

If you can get an RS232 dongle working, and you know the right commands to send over the serial port to turn your projector on and off, then you could use an Event Script in FPP to send these commands to control the projector's power.  I believe Pat is looking at doing this with his BenQ projector and I think others have mentioned it as well.

[FIRECOP252]

ok....so can anyone say what type of dongle will work with the linux?  I am curious how does these converter dongle's work.   I mean I have 2 USB-485 converters and neither of them work.  What am I missing with this...isnt the converter just change which "lines" the information goes down?   What would make a dongle not work right cable is built correctly?

Guess I am just a bit confused.   I ordered 2 more dongles from Amazon.   One like this
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GI9IQ9E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and one like this...I remember Capt say get something with FTDI chipset
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BR0AY80/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

what is you all"s thoughts?

[FIRECOP252]

If you can get an RS232 dongle working, and you know the right commands to send over the serial port to turn your projector on and off, then you could use an Event Script in FPP to send these commands to control the projector's power.  I believe Pat is looking at doing this with his BenQ projector and I think others have mentioned it as well.

LOL...hopefully I can get this stuff working soon enough.   Will the same script work for everyone or will the script need to be for that certain projector?  I know nothing about scripts but didnt know if someone else wrote one would I be able to use it if they were gracious enough to share?

[CaptainMurdoch]

Guess I am just a bit confused.   I ordered 2 more dongles from Amazon.   One like this
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GI9IQ9E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and one like this...I remember Capt say get something with FTDI chipset
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BR0AY80/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The first one appears to have a FTDI chip in it as well from the documentation I could find on it, so both of them may work for you on the Pi.  The surge protection is a nice to have as well.

The USB to RS485 converter contains at least one chip, possibly more to talk to the USB bus and convert that command-based data to the RS485 serial data.  The OS has to have something which knows how to talk to that chip over the USB bus to allow the OS to emulate a serial port and send the data over the USB protocol to talk to the chip which converts to a real serial interface.  There are a lot of chipsets out there and each has their own commands and not all are supported under Linux because the manufacturers won't open up the specs or because no one has written a driver for them yet.  A lot of Windows-compatible hardware actually offloads work onto the driver rather than doing work in the hardware in order to make the hardware cheaper.  You'll often find that Linux support for these type of devices isn't up to par with the windows level of support because writing a driver for such a device is a lot of work because you have to reproduce everything that the manufacturer put in their driver which is a black box.  It isn't a simple interface to the hardware.  There are also some chips where the driver is not as feature-rich as others.  The FTDI chip has good support in Linux, that is why I recommended it.  There is another USB to RS485 adapter that I have that is supported but not as well, it only supports standard speeds, so I can't use it for DMX or Pixelnet, only for the standard 1200,2400,9600,19200,57600,etc. speeds.

Hopefully you will be good when you get those adapters in and you can pick which one you want to return possibly.  If not, we'll need to see the logs again that Mat was asking about to see if they indicate anything.