F8-PB and Mac

[drlucas]

I have a new 8 port pocket scroller and loaded up v3.3 image on the SD card and connected the device to my MacBook. The system boots up and on the led screen I can see that I'm running that version but I can't ping 192.168.6.2 and the led screen says no network detected. I put a wifi adapter in the USB port and powered it on and it says network detected at 192.168.8.1. Since I have never configured any SSID or password to my wifi network it really isn't connected.

So my question is - why can't I get access to the device from my Mac like I can with other BBBs? Do I need to power the device with an external power source and then connect to my MAC?  I haven't looked through the forums much yet to see how to work with this device - I just made some assumptions - so if there is another discussion on this please gently direct me to it!

thanks!
Ryan

[Poporacer]

There is a manual that might help. It is at https://falconchristmas.github.io/FPP_Manual.pdf
I am not sure why you couldn't connect using 192.168.6.2 Did you try http://fpp.local/ or http://fpp ? When you installed the Wi-Fi adapter, the PB will create it's own network and is called Tethering. To access the PB via tethering, you need to look at your wireless connections and there should be a wireless network called FPP, connect to that network and the password is Christmas. Once connected to the FPP network, then you can access the PB at the 192.168.8.1 then you can make your configurations. Your computer and PB will not have access to the internet when connected this way.

[drlucas]

Thanks- tethering works for me (when I used the correct wifi adapter) - but the Mac and USB doesn't work for me. I'll do an upgrade to beta 10 of Catalina on the Mac and see if that works any better - at least I can now configure this device over wifi and start testing - so not too big of a deal if I can't get it working with the USB.

[JonB256]

Probably not too helpful, but the USB connection from Windows (192.168.7.2) does still work on the Pocket Beagle.

But - it can be very picky about the USB cable you use. If you have others, try them. Some cables only supply power, not data.

I just tried it on a PB running v2.7 that had not been connected before. The first boot gave me all good indications but would not display FPP page at 192.168.7.2.  Used the button to shutdown, then restart, and it connected like normal.

I reflashed that uSD card with v3.3 and it started up correctly, first time.

(I have no Mac computers so can't test that)

[drlucas]

I've seen that before with the cable....my windows laptop recently has been refreshed at work from a Lenovo to a new surface pro and don't have local admin access anymore so I'm really limited to my Mac book pro circa 2016...

I'll go check out my box of usb cables and see if I can find one that works. I have a few BBBs and the USB cables work with them...but I've just actually added an external power source, so I'll try the cable now that I'm booting up with a clean 12V supply and see if that makes any difference.