Recent network discovery issues with HL2

[George Smart (M1GEO)]

Hi All.

I have had a HL2 from MakerFabs for around a month now and have been very impressed. Recently, I had to power down the device, and after powering it back up, I cannot get the HL2 to respond to the usual 63 byte broadcast packet on port 1024. It doesn't respond to the last IP address it had, either,

Digging into it a bit more, I enabled port mirroring on a switch and watched the HL2 as it powers up/on cable connection and it never asks for a DHCP address that I can see using WireShark on the mirrored port. I used Nmap with a direct cable connection to see if I could find the device within the 65k addresses of the APIPA address space (with nmap -sn 169.254.0.0/16). The only host that responded was localhost, so not found there either.

The network like blinks with traffic, and both LEDs closest to the ethernet socket are flashing (which implies that the ETH PHY clock is OK and that a APIPA or FIXED IP was issued. I have never used a fixed IP, so guessing that it's APIPA).

I dug around in the Verilog (I'm in FPGA design) and found the default hl2b5up_main variant bitstream (which I assume I have) is built with UART enabled, so I followed the UART signals and arrived at signals io_db1_3 (txd) and io_db1_2 (rxd) which in turn arrive at pins 77 and 76 on the FPGA and pins 3 and 2 on connector DB1. I have tried at all the sane baudrates I could think of, and cannot see any data (or random characters) there at powerup.

If needed, I have JTAG cables, etc., that should be able to program the FPGA/PROM, but I think I am getting in too deep here.

Hopefully this is a common issue, and someone will be able to point me in the right direction. No lightening or anything like that. Network otherwise works as expected.

Thanks.

George M1GEO

https://www.george-smart.co.uk

[Ronald Nicholson]

Did you try pinging the default self assigned IP: 169.254.19.221 ? (assuming you didn't change the HL2's MAC address.)

[George Smart (M1GEO)]

Yes. That address is within the 169.254.0.0/16 address space. The HL2 did not respond to a ping.

Also, the HL2 did not respond to a discovery packet broadcast to 169.254.255.255 on port 1024. I expect it should.

I haven't (knowingly, at least) changed the default fixed IP or MAC address - out of curiosity, what is the default MAC?

Thanks,
George.

[Ronald Nicholson]

I think the default MAC in the current factory gateware (70) is:

MAC Address: 00.1c.c0.a2.13.dd 

note that 0x13 , 0xdd is the same as 19 , 221 (in the 169.254.19.221 IP)

[Steve Haynal]

Hi George,

Sorry to hear of your troubles. Here are a few things to try. Sorry if some are obvious or already tried, but just want to be thorough.

** Does forcing the factory image as described in the wiki help? This will bypass any fixed IP or MAC address which might have been set.

** Is the ethernet cable plugged in completely at both ends? I've seen a few cables that don't always easily snap into the HL2 plug.

** Can you try a different ethernet cable?

** Is you power supply a solid 12V? Can you try a different power supply?

** Can you try powering the HL2 up on a friend's local network, just to eliminate variables in you network?

** What is the status of the ACT and LNK LEDs on the ethernet jack? Is the ACT infrequently blinking green and the LNK a solid orange?

** What is the status of the two LEDs farthest from the ethernet jack? Are they solid red?

The default MAC is MAC = {8'h00,8'h1c,8'hc0,8'ha2,8'h13,8'hdd};

The default APIPA IP address start with 169.254 and then uses the last two bytes of the mac address, so usually 169.254.19.221.

The UART on the HL2 is TXD only and only sends band information in the format used by the HR50 PA. Unfortunately there is no debug via it.

73,

Steve

kf7o

[George Smart (M1GEO)]

Awesome, Steve.

Having ruled out all of the other points before posting, I jumped directly to "forcing the factory image". I power cycled the board, and, this time it asked for an IP address from DHCP, the DHCP server gave it an address, and it all worked. Solid IP light. I guess something is up with the application image. All working and detected. Hopefully I an upload the latest firmware while in the "factory image" mode? What version of the bitfile should I upload to the application image?

Thanks again.

George M1GEO.

[Steve Haynal]

Hi George,

It is good news that ethernet is working but you may not be out of the woods. The fixed IP and alternate MAC information is stored in a few extra memory entries provided by U15. This is the same IC that stores and sets the PA bias levels. If this IC goes bad (I've never seen this happen), it might return garbage and cause the HL2 to think it has a fixed IP address. You can enable/disable fixed IP or alternate MAC with SparkSDR->(turn radio on)->(radio settings ... in top right area)->General->Favor DHCP. The gateware does allow to enable/disable each but I don't see how to disable in SparkSDR. You can also enable/disable fixed IP in Quisk->Config->(Radio Name)->Eeprom IP Usage->Ignore. I will also add support for changing these settings to hermeslite.py.

Now that the HL2 is connecting, first make sure DHCP is favored via SparkSDR or that the Eeprom IP Usage is Ignore via Quisk. Then try to update by .rbf file over ethernet to either:

71p3 stable

72p3 testing

Then if you can power cycle as normal and DHCP is used, your U15 is probably fine. Depending on how/what got corrupted, you may need to reset the PA bias. 

73,

Steve

kf7o

[George Smart (M1GEO)]

Awesome, thanks Steve.

I have re-selected "Favour DHCP" inside. The PA bias currents seem to have survived, so I guess the EEPROM is OK, so, that's very odd. The SDR appears on the network as MAC 02:0F:B5:A2:13:DD.

I'm the kind of guy who goes for bleeding edge, so I'll give the "testing" bitfile a go. :)

Thanks again!

George