Hi @Alan-Smith, i had the same problem. If would be open for a Software Serial also, if one knows an approach i would give it a try also.
Meantime i used a USB-to-TTL-converter with CP2102 chip - that works out of the box with the Omega and costs less than 5 dollar (providing no link because there are lots and i dont want to make advertising).
Cheers Ben
Hej @Kit-Bishop, thanks for your reply.
YOu are right that was kind of a logical conundrum combined with bad english and misunderstadings 
I cleared the situation now out for me and i am one step ahead.
As usual another blocker:
When connecting the LowBattery (LBO) output of the Adafruid PowerBoost to any GPIO on my Omega the LB Led on the module (also if it was off before) starts shining and the GPIO is logical HIGH, even when the LED was off before.
When i remove the cable from GPIO to LBO the LED is off again.
Tonight i will test the LBO with an Arduino (others in the internet report that the LBO is worked very well for them) but maybe in the meantime one has an idea why the LBO is high always when the cable is connected.
Cheers Ben
Maybe coming up with a dumb question but "How to power on the Omega after powering it off from within the os with halt command?"
My problem now is that i power the Omega off with my script mentioned above but i dont know how to power it on again when power source recovered. The problem is that the from the Omegas perspective the power source never disconnected so i would need to "send some power on signal with HIGH..."
Cheers Ben
@Kit-Bishop @Lazar-Demin Thanks for your help. The setup is working very well.
I created a small python script that i start on boot and which monitors low battery and input power status powers the onion off before an empty battery would kill the onion hard:
https://gist.github.com/benjaminrau/1f6585591dad469aee4e0520677e91ac
I made use of the gpio wrapper one of the onioneers contributed:
https://community.onion.io/topic/40/simple-python-wrapper-and-demo
Cheers Ben
@Lazar-Demin On which pins could i connect the 5V and Ground for input power when i dont want to use microusb cable. I tried the 5V pin on the expansion board but it doesnt work. Maybe i have to connect ground to one specific pin?
Hi there.
@Lazar-Demin Thanks for your reply also. I know about the Onion Battery pack, i backed it Unfortunately it is pretty delayed and my 3 month road trip starts in 3 weeks, which my Onion is going to track and create a timelapse from it... sorry that was OT.
The Adafruit Power Board has the USB Vin extracted on the board so you can use it as GPIO i think and when its low i know that the power supply has gone and can shutdown the onion safely.
Also there is a Low Power Pin that can be used for the same reason but you can run the Onion as long as possible on battery.
I will give it a try and switch to the Onion Battery Pack later... hopefully it has such Low Battery and "is power source connected" pins also.
Cheers Ben
Hi guys.
Been out for some days - thanks for the great contribution to this post.
One problem with battery packs seems to be that there is a short period where output is low when input connected /disconnected. I think this is because most battery packs switch from battery directly to Vin when there is input power.
This causes the Onion to crash but i need un-interrupted power also when input (car power jack) is connected / disconnected.
Also very important: I need to be able to monitor if power is delivered from battery or not because i need to shutdown the Onion before the battery pack is empty.
I found this: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1944
My technical english is not the best so may one be able to tell me if:
Cheers Ben
@Alan-Smith I think thats the way how you shot images with webcams - thats why i decided to use gphoto2 library to shot photos from a camera.
Well, that wont be an alternative for you if you need to take videos also. Anyway it may be worth to have a look on the library because some webcams are supported also:
http://www.gphoto.org/doc/remote/
https://community.onion.io/topic/612/remote-control-camera-with-gphoto2
Cheers Ben
Hi there.
Can somebody help me to build a battery fallback for my Onion.
The szenario:
I use my onion in the car, it captures photos while driving and creates together with some gps data a map.
So Onion is connected via usb adapter to the 12v jack of the car.
When i stop the car... the power is off. And mama told me that this isnt the way to shutdown a computer
So i thought about smth like connecting a 5v (usb) battery to some pins (i dont know which) and cut the connection to it with an relay that is controlled by input voltage on regular micro usb jack.
I would be really happy to get some help with this because this is definitely nothing i have knowledge about.
Cheers Ben
Like i expected.. with external antenna, placed far away (> 60cm) from onion the gps signal is good. Below 60cm the gps signal becomes weak or completely unable to find a fix.
What is causing this on the onion? Honestly, but that would be a desaster that the onion causes such big interferences!
Cheers Ben
@Alex Info about Adafruit dependency is described here: https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Arduino-Dock/Initial-Setup
@Boken-Lin @Lazar-Demin After testing 2 different type of gps modules (two ublox of same type and one adafruit) i am afraid that the Onion might be the reason for no gps signal.
But from the beginning:
I bought two Ublox Neo-6M. I connected it with an USB to TTL adapter. Tested on my local pc without a problem. Very fast gps fix.
Then i connected with my Onion. No gps.
What i tried: Just connecting VCC and GND, no RX/TX, connecting VCC and GND from another power supply and connecting RX/TX only. Bought another gps module from Adafruit.
When does the gps module work (reproducable for both types of modules):
Simply when the Onion is turned off.... when its powered on i dont get a fix. After i turn the Onion of i have a fix after about 30 seconds. When the Onion is not turned on at all i get a fix within 5 seconds...
There must be smth wrong with the Onion that makes pretty much interference.. i have no other idea. Anyway i have to add that i am not knowledged with electricity and interferences or magnetism.
I will try one other thing: Tmrw the external antenna for the adafruit gps module is shipped... lets see what happens when the antenna is placed far away from then onion.
Thankful for any help.
Cheers Ben
@Leonard-Stroman Unfortunately many of us do. But i am sure that they will ship them if they are in a quality that we are happy with. I could imagine making hardware is sometimes a hard business and needs heavy testing.
Anyway... you can use any gps module that is connected via UART / TTL and echo´s NMEA data with Arduino expansion or USB to TTL adapter. It works very well.
Cheers Ben
@Boken-Lin Is there any reason that comes to your mind that using Pin 14 as In on a Button makes the Omega unbootable.
LED on expansion board just goes on for 10ms or so... than off again.
When using Pin 13 everything is fine without changing my circuit.
Cheers Ben
@pma61 Thanks for your effords. Installing from your apk files results in:
/bin/ash: gphoto2 not found
@Peter-Harrald Btw https://github.com/jamesp/node-nmea is a pretty nice library for parsing nmea data.
https://github.com/omcaree/node-serialgps would be even better, if you dont want to read the data from the serial yourself. Unfortunately the dependency "serialport" needs compilation, which is not possible without npm.
And here how i read gps data (because "cat" is not working for me):
https://gist.github.com/benjaminrau/a0ea133786e950deb7ee
I have a question regarding how to read gps data or better "use cat properly":
cat /dev/ttyUSB0 doesnt return anything
stty -f /dev/ttyUSB says "speed 9600"
BUT:
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600
returns well-formed data continously...
What can be the reason. I dont find it out.
Example with Node Js - sorry for spaming around:
https://gist.github.com/benjaminrau/a0ea133786e950deb7ee
Unfortunately i feel more like an integrator rather than a developer
But when interpreting:
$GPGGA,,,,,,0,00,99.99,,,,,,*48
I think your gps doesnt have a fix yet, and without gps it wont send data.
The fix has to be 1 (one), instead it is 0 in your example.
Mine (not the one from Onion team) took quite long the first time to get a fix.
I can compare the raw output of mine this night. In the meantime you could try to get a fix
Right now i think the output follows the standards.
Cheers Ben
@Lazar-Demin Unfortunately i ordered the inventor kit and am waiting for the GPS expansion for about 3 months now. In 4 weeks i start a three months road trip which i bought the onion for 
For now i use my Arduino as USB-to-TTL converter, now i am dealing with npm ipv6 resolution problems which makes me unable to install SerialPort npm module to read the attached ttyACM0.
"cat" is not useful here because i dont know how to do that asynchronous.
Cheers Ben