Setup iConnect

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Put Meteohub Image onto USB stick

The USB stick you use with iConnect must be a SLC type with a minimum size of 4 GB. Having that, you have to download the latest iConnect USB stick image from here. Uncompress it with "winrar" (on Windows) or "unrar" (on Linux).

To transfer the uncompressed disk image (named like "mhiconnect-stick-vxyz.img") as pure binary low-level data to the USB stick you have to be aware that this data has not to be placed into a file system you have already brought onto the USB stick, but that this data includes a complete dump of a storage media with a filesystem included in it. Therefore, just copying the resulting ".img" file onto the stick, as you normally do with files, will not work. You need a special tool for that.

Linux

On Linux you use the "dd" command. Please insert the USB stick into your Linux box and check via "dmesg" what device the stick has been mapped to. In the following example it has been mapped to "/dev/sdj"

# dmesg
...
[708634.148013] usb 2-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[708634.566078] usb 2-8: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6387
[708634.566082] usb 2-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[708634.566084] usb 2-8: Product: Mass Storage Device
[708634.566086] usb 2-8: Manufacturer: JetFlash
[708634.566088] usb 2-8: SerialNumber: Q05E7OLZ
[708634.566409] scsi24 : usb-storage 2-8:1.0
[708635.613921] scsi 24:0:0:0: Direct-Access     JetFlash TS4GJF130        8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[708635.614072] sd 24:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg9 type 0
[708635.617302] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] 7987200 512-byte logical blocks: (4.08 GB/3.80 GiB)
[708635.617910] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] Write Protect is off
[708635.617913] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[708635.617915] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[708635.621534] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[708635.621538]  sdj: sdj1 sdj2 sdj3
[708635.624279] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[708635.624281] sd 24:0:0:0: [sdj] Attached SCSI removable disk

We are just looking for "sdj" and are not interested in the partitions recognized on the stick (sdj1, sdj2, sdj3). The print out above tells that "/dev/sdj" is the target device. To make sure that the device ist not mounted by some background processes you should manually unmount all partitions by "umount". In the given example this will be

umount /dev/sdj1; umount /dev/sdj2; umount /dev/sdj3

When this throws errors about not mounted file systems that is fine. Don't worry. Now it is time to bring the Meteohub image onto the stick. In the example above this will be done by

dd if=mhiconnect-stick-xyz.img of=/dev/sdj bs=1M

Please be careful with that command. When you choose the wrong "of=" target (i.e. your system drive) this will be overwritten without further notice and you will have to restore your Linux box! As dd has to transport 4GB of data to the stick this will take a few minutes. When finished dd will report number of written blocks. If it reports that not all blocks could be written, something is wrong with your USB stick (may be less than 4GB in size?).
When "dd" has completed without error, this step is finished and you can pull the USB stick from your Linux box.

Windows

On Windows you need to download and run a special tool to do the required low-level writing to the USB stick. The tool of choice is "ImageWriter" from SuSE (you find additional information about this tool here). Please download ImageWriter.exe to your Windows PC. It does not need to be installed it is just a small executable to run. Please insert the USB stick into your PC wait a few seconds and then start downloaded "ImageWriter.exe". Wait until a dialog like this pops up:

Imagewriter1.png

Please select the inserted USB stick from the target drop-down list. Then open the file browser by clicking "Select" button. "*.img" files are not displayed by default so first thing to do is to enter "*.img" as file name. Having done that you will see the file "mhiconnect-stick-xyz.img" on the list. Select and open this file. Dialog should now look like this:

Imagewriter4.png

Press "copy" and the image data will be written to USB stick. When operation has finished without error, you are done with this step. Please pull the USB stick from your Windows PC.

Patch the iConnect

Iconnect-reset.png

Patching the iConnect is done in a few very simple tasks.

  1. Completely disconnect the iConnect (power, USB devices) and connect the created Meteohub USB stick to one of the four USB ports and connect the ethernet cable of your LAN/router.
  2. Locate the reset pin hole at the rear of the iConnect. Take a paper clip and bend it open, as it will be used to press reset button behind pin hole at the rear. Insert paper clip end into the reset pin hole and press slightly. You should feel a soft "click" indicating that you hit and pressed the reset button behind the hole.
  3. Keep the reset button pressed while connecting the power cord to the iConnect again. Keep the reset button pressed until blue flashing power LED changes to red. This will take about 15 seconds. Red power LED indicates iConnect has been successfully booted into "update mode".
  4. Now you can release the reset button. You will see the power LED start flashing blue after a while. Then blue LED of the USB port where the USB stick is connected will also start flashing.
  5. Update process has finisched when LEDs above all USB ports turn to blue. This should just take a few minutes. After that, system will hold for a few seconds and will reboot. All LEDs will go off when reboot starts.
  6. On reboot power LED starts flashing blue again, will then go off for a while and will come back as solid blue when system has been booted successfully.

Your Meteohub is now ready to go.


Start Meteohub

  1. You can now reach the Meteohub system by your desktop's/laptop's browser at the emergency IP 192.168.1.77 ("http://192.168.1.77") and if you have a DHCP server in your LAN you also can find your Meteohub at the address given by the DHCP server. [b]User name is "meteohub", password is "meteohub"[/b]. To reach the emergency IP with your browser you probably have to do reconfigure the IP address of your desktop/laptop to reside in the same subnet as Meteohub. Having reached the Meteohub web interface you can set the IP persistently.
  2. Furthermore, the Windows tool "ipscan" (download here might be helpful to examine the IP that the router has given Meteohub via DHCP, if Meteohub is configured to make use of a dynamic IP via DHCP.
  3. About a minute after reboot Meteohub signals its IP by blinking LEDs.


Read the Blinks

When boot is going to finish the power LED turns into steady blue. After a while (a minute or so) the power LED goes off and starts a LED blink sequence, that signals the IP of the Meteohub. When signaling is finished, power LED changes to steady blue again.

The IP consists of four numbers in the range of 0 to 255 separated by dots. Meteohub signals each of the four numbers by sending for each digit a seqence of short red blinks, where the number of blinks in the sequence represents the digit (1 = one blink, ..., 0 = ten blinks). Dots between numbers are represented by a blue blink. The example below explains how blinking for IP 192.168.0.23 would look like. Meaning of symbols is

  • "_" stands for power LED off
  • "R" stands for power LED red
  • "B" stands for power LED blue


Sequence for 192.168.0.23 will look like this:

192.    ___R___R_R_R_R_R_R_R_R_R___R_R___B
168.    ___R___R_R_R_R_R_R___R_R_R_R_R_R_R_R___B
0.      ___R_R_R_R_R_R_R_R_R_R___B
23      ___R_R___R_R_R


Revert to a regular iConnect

When you decompress this mage and put it via ImageWriter onto an USB stick and follow procedure as lined out in paragraph "Patch the iConnect", you will revert your Meteohub iConnect system into a regular iConnect again.