Do I have a defective device?

EDIT:
The amber led, is turning off for 1sec each 20sec!

Just connect to the AP wirelessly (pwd 12345678) and then 192.168.3.1 in a browser

As per docs, do you have bonjour?

Yes I am using a Mac. The problem is that I don't see the Omage-XXXX in my wifi (the Access Point is not fired up?). By the way, my power supply is set to 3.3V at 2A.

What is going on?

@patrick-seb Look at the output on the serial-port to see what's going on.

Ok will eventually do, but can you confirm that normally you only need to give 3.3V / 2A and you should see Omega-XXXX in your wifi manager - because the board is by default an access point (I don't see where bonjour is involved in this, but anyway I am testing on a mac)?

Why not get a wall charger from your phone and plug in the device. SOME USB ports (even on Macs) do not have enough power to power the device.

FYI - I only ever get a consistent connection on a power supply that is 5V == 2.0 A

This is after the AP has appeared and you have connected to it.

Biggest reason the AP doesn't appear is normally inappropriate power supply. The Omega is very fussy. I would try as many different power supplies as you can.

Ok will eventually do, but can you confirm that normally you only need to give 3.3V / 2A and you should see Omega-XXXX in your wifi manager - because the board is by default an access point (I don't see where bonjour is involved in this, but anyway I am testing on a mac)?

Even ~250mA should be enough, but yes, that is how it should work, though if you're using very thin wires they may introduce too much of a voltage-drop for the Omega2 to run and it that case you should try thicker wires or shorter wires, or even both. But still, looking at the output on the serial-port would be useful.

@patrick-seb Bonjour is required for Windows machines to connect easily and by name to the devices. Your original post said nothing about the machine you were using to connect. Macs are still not the majority of machines in the market, thus the question about Bonjour.

Bonjour is irrelevant here. The OP clearly said they aren't even seeing the WiFi AP and bonjour has absolutely nothing to do with WiFi.

Why not get a wall charger from your phone and plug in the device. SOME USB ports (even on Macs) do not have enough power to power the device.

FYI - I only ever get a consistent connection on a power supply that is 5V == 2.0 A

Pushing 5 volts into the 3.3V pins would fry the Omega2. Bad advice.

Why not get a wall charger from your phone and plug in the device. SOME USB ports (even on Macs) do not have enough power to power the device.

I am using a digital control dc power supply (rated at 30V 5A) so I guess it can output a clean 3.3V at 2A no problem.

From what I can observe:
When booting, the amber led is on for 1 minute, after that it turn off for 1 sec every 20 sec...

Time you use that nice digital storage scope you have sitting next to it.

• put it on the console serial port see if it continues to say anything (of course this is inferrior to using a logic-level USB serial adapter to actually recover the messages)

• put it on the power rail and watch how your supply responds to the very pulsed load demand of an MT7688 when it brings up wifi.

Even before that though, get shorter supply leads.

If your Omega is not faulty and your 30V 5A power supply is not adequate god help the rest of us, and Onion have a lot of explaining to do.

When my Omega 2 and 2+'s arrived I thought I would just hook up any 3.3V feed and be on my way. How wrong was I. After some trial and error I got a couple of power feeds that are working fine but the Omega's are not exactly plug and play.

When my Omega 2 and 2+'s arrived I thought I would just hook up any 3.3V feed and be on my way. How wrong was I. After some trial and error I got a couple of power feeds that are working fine but the Omega's are not exactly plug and play.

A lot of people's troubles come from either poor power-supply, or too long/thin wiring. I'm happily using a cheap-and-nasty 0.70€ step-down converter ( www.ebay.com/itm/mini-DC-DC-Converter-Step-Down-Buck-Power-Supply-Module-For-Flight-Control-Car-/262329973956 ) with mine without any issue, whatsoever:

No offence to Patrick but I hope his Omega is faulty and that normally a power supply costing a few hundred Euros is just about adequate.

"Too long or too thin" is a pretty poor position in my book.

"Too long or too thin" is a pretty poor position in my book.

No, it's not. Ask any professional EE and they'll tell you that wiring matters. The length and the thickness of the wiring affects the voltage-drop caused by them -- the longer the wire and the thinner the wire, the bigger the voltage-drop.

Here is my set up with an AMS1117. Around 25 cents when bought in bulk, or 50 cents if you just want one delivered to your door. Swap you?

The length and the thickness of the wiring affects the voltage-drop caused by them -- the longer the wire and the thinner the wire, the bigger the voltage-drop.

That is what i was reading about the length & thickness of the USB cables. This is quite a poker game if there are just cheep lousy cables around.

For the Omega to work, with precisely the wire length and gauge I have, it has to be exactly this magic (9V to 5.41V to 3.3V). Do you play poker?

Shall we play that poker now?

But short leads are definitely a good idea, for reasons of inductance as well as resistive loss.

The challenge of an MT7688 system is not time-average or "getting hot" power - absent problems that is quite low - but rather pulsed loads that double the baseline load.

Also, in my experience the cheapest Chinese wire leads have at best three or four strands of the thinnest possible recycled copper "wire".

I'll take some well designed testing over Vegas odds, any day.

• a mini dock or expansion dock
• a pretty standard 5v. cell phone charger with micro-USB cable - preferably 500mA or more

All this is likely to be little more expensive than some solutions I've seen and usually more compact

The only area where a bit more investment might be required is if you need to run without connection to the mains and run off (e.g.) LiPo batteries - even then there are plenty of cheap, off the shelf devices that will do what is needed.

Finally, probably the main points that people need to bear in mind are:

• Keep leads short and not too thin
• Ensure that suitable decoupling capacitors are used (either built in to any device or separately applied - and close to the powered device)
• Ensure the power source can handle the peak expected current - not just the expected average current - a good design principle is to always allow a margin for safety here
• The actual voltage at the device is close to that specified