Hi all,
I've bought my carambola module more than one year ago - finally I could have a look at it these days but I wasn't that successful:
First the hardware: As I didn't buy the developer board, my Carambola has 5 pins directly connected: pin 22/23 and 24 are connected to a 3,3V LM2596 switching Regulator.
The serial connection is made through pin 35 and 36 (pin 31 and 32 didn't work), followed by a MAX3232 closely soldered to keep unshielded cable length short and a PL2303 Serial to USB adapter.
The shield which was shipped with the module is also properly soldered. The MAX3232 and the LM2596 are ready to use modules bought on ebay.
Used software is Putty on Win7 64bit, settings are 115200,8N1,no Flow control.
First problem: I can read everything sent from Carambola to Putty without any error, but when I type something, random chars appear. Sometimes it works pretty well for a few minutes, but most of the time I cannot enter any command. For example, I press "aaa" and I receive "sA@". I have replaced both MAX3232 and PL2303 without success. I also tried several PC, it works on an old XP laptop slightly better but this could be also wishful thinking.
I don't have any idea what else I can do. I just wonder why I had to use TX2/RX2 instead of TX/RX.
Second problem: I finally managed to remove the option disable line and activate WiFi. I can logon with browser, putty, winscp over wifi, but connection is not stable. After some seconds of activity all Software disconnects, pings time out. WiFi keeps being connected. After some time (around one minute), pings return and I can reconnect the software. Serial connection works flawlessly during these WiFi timeouts, a parallel output of an ls command was not interrupted or even slowed down.
My last idea was upgrading the firmware: I've downloaded from
http://pkg.8devices.com/?dir=carambola/ ... pgrade.bin 2014-08-13
After several attempts I could transfer the file via WinSCP to Carambolas /tmp folder and I was able to start via serial the sysupgrade -v -n /... command, Carambola worked, rebooted - and no change. Both issues remain.
I am now running out of ideas, any help, suggestion, whatever is deeply appreciated.
Thank you very much!
best regards
frank