To answer my own question, the button on the Pro Dock does work as a reset button.
I then followed the instructions here:
https://docs.onion.io/omega2-docs/Firmware-Flashing-from-USB-storage.html
to use a serial connection to the malfunctioning Omega Pro to flash new firmware from a USB drive.
That worked to resurrect the Pro back to a workable state.
Well, I tried to use the button as a reset button and a reboot did seem to occur.
But I do not get to a stable boot state. The yellow LED flashes for a bit, the blue LED comes on briefly and then the multi-color LED flashes a lot and then the reboot seems to happen all over again.
Seems like this board may be bricked.
Any hints for recovery?
There is a programmable button on the Omega2 Pro PCB.
Does this work as a reset button as well? There is Onion documentation for other expansion boards that identify a button in a similar location.
I have two Pro's that will no longer boot up successfully and am looking for a recovery mechanism.
Thanks for any suggestions.
I discovered this resource:
https://github.com/OnionIoT/i2c-exp-node-addons/tree/master/nodeRedNodes
This seems to have been provided by the onion team but has not been made available via npm.
Has anyone used these: packaging up the html and js files so that they can be installed into node-RED? Apparently you need to create a package.json file for each node and I am a little unclear on what must go in there.
I may try this myself but perhaps someone has done something like this already.
A bit more community searching led me to the command line:
echo 1 >/sys/class/gpio/unexport
that will free a GPIO pin apparently -- in this case pin 1.
Then the python program that was failing works again.
Can we do something like that from python itself?
We are having trouble with python and GPIO status access. A little test program works after the omega Pro boots but after a couple of minutes the same python program fails with a IOError: [Errno 16] Resource busy error.
We did see some community posts from around 2017 referring to this same condition and it seems no final resolution was offered. We are using Omega2 Pros with 0.3.2 b222 firmware.
We are running node-RED on the Pros, but even if I kill the node-Red process, the resource busy error keeps recurring. A reboot will make the error disappear but only for a few minutes.
Is there a simple bit of python logic that will free the GPIO?
We are currently using GPIO pins 1 and 2 for our tests. Eventually we want to invoke python scripts from node-RED flows that deal with sensing and setting GPIO pin conditions.
@James-Solderitsch John Walicki has added some notes to his node-RED github page about installing node-RED on an Omega2+. He also advocates for the need to have a swap partition AND an extended file system to have room to install and run node-RED on an Omega2+.
@James-Solderitsch After I followed the instructions at the link I posted above to provide both a swap partition AND a file-space partition, I was able to complete the install of the IBM Watson-IoT nodes as documented on John Walicki's github page.
So it looks like have a swap partition is mandatory for the Omega2+. Perhaps not needed for the Omega Pro..
@James-Solderitsch I did find this:
Seems to provide for both a partition for swap AND a partition for extending /overlay.
Will try this later today and see how far I get.
@Douglas-Kryder It might. How do I enable? I have an SD card with 8GBs that I am using to extend the /overlay space. Can I also place a swap file on the SD card?
I am using firmware 0.3.2 b222 when I try this.
I recall that I might have succeeded with this installation when I was at build b218 but that may have been for an Omega 2 Pro that I was experimenting with at the time.
I have posted an issue about this on John Walicki's github page where he has posted the Omega node-RED flows but have not seen a reply yet.
I have node-RED installed on an Omega2+ with and SD card to provide more project space with a /overlay extension.
I run the command from John Walicki's github page:
node --max_old_space_size=512 $(which npm) -g install node-red-contrib-ibm-watson-iot
and after some time I get a process out of memory error:
root@Omega-FDDF:~# node --max_old_space_size=512 $(which npm) -g install node-red-contrib-ibm-watson-iot
[ ......] \ extract:mqtt: sill pacote mqtt@https://registry.npmjs.org/mqtt/-/mqtt-2.18.8.tgz extracted in 450147ms
<--- Last few GCs --->
[2107:0x12cb000] 406292 ms: Scavenge 19.4 (23.2) -> 18.5 (23.2) MB, 10.0 / 0.1 ms allocation failure
[2107:0x12cb000] 413421 ms: Scavenge 19.4 (23.2) -> 18.5 (23.2) MB, 2402.5 / 25.9 ms allocation failure
[2107:0x12cb000] 470638 ms: Scavenge 19.4 (23.2) -> 18.5 (23.2) MB, 1737.2 / 20.2 ms allocation failure
[2107:0x12cb000] 504688 ms: Scavenge 19.5 (23.2) -> 18.6 (23.2) MB, 1563.9 / 6.5 ms allocation failure
<--- JS stacktrace --->
==== JS stack trace =========================================
Security context: 0x53c1330d <JSObject>
1: bind(this=0x356c6561 <JSFunction onceWrapper (sfi = 0x53c41b1d)>)
2: _onceWrap(aka _onceWrap) [events.js:332] [bytecode=0x36ec7ce1 offset=42](this=0x53c04125 <undefined>,target=0x5d7ff891 <WriteStream map = 0x51e93359>,type=0x53c693a1 <String[4]: open>,listener=0x5d7fffa1 <JSFunction (sfi = 0x4c169eed)>)
3: once [events.js:341] [bytecode=0x36ec7b75 offset=46](this=0x5d7ff891 <WriteStr...
FATAL ERROR: Committing semi space failed. Allocation failed - process out of memory
Segmentation fault
I tried other values for max_old_space_size but I get the same error but at a different point in the installation sequence.
Suggestions appreciated.
Found the answer in another thread started at the end of January 2019 from @Francisco-Suarez
Replace the current obsolete root CA file.
@James-Solderitsch Found it in /etc/awsiot where it needs to be named RootCA.pem. Then mosquitto needs to be restarted: /etc/init.d/mosquitto restart.
Where should the root CA be stored on the omega's file system?
Following the advice here:
mqtt
I have the certificate, policy and end point defined I believe correctly.
I did the setup step and copied the certificate and private key files to the Omega2+.
I run:
mosquitto_pub -t $aws/things/Omega-1F93/shadow/update -m '{"state": {"desired": {"temperature": 1 }}}' -q 1
But the shadow properties do not get updated.
There is no error. If I add the -d option to the mosquitto_pub command I see:
Client mosqpub|4788-Omega-1F93 sending CONNECT
Client mosqpub|4788-Omega-1F93 received CONNACK (0)
Client mosqpub|4788-Omega-1F93 sending PUBLISH (d0, q1, r0, m1, '$aws/things/Omega-1F93/shadow/update', ... (43 bytes))
Client mosqpub|4788-Omega-1F93 received PUBACK (Mid: 1)
Client mosqpub|4788-Omega-1F93 sending DISCONNECT
Do I need to start over because I have updated the firmware on the Omega 2+.?
I am using certificate and policy files from Feb. 2018 when this guide worked for me.
Suggestions appreciated.
Following the advice here:
mqtt
I have the certificate, policy and end point defined I believe correctly.
I did the setup step and copied the certificate and private key files to the Omega2+.
I run:
mosquitto_pub -t $aws/things/Omega-27BF/shadow/update -m '{"state": {"desired": {"temperature": 1 }}}' -q 1
But the shadow properties do not get updated.
There is no error. If I add the -s option to the mosquitto_pub command I see:
Client mosqpub|30677-Omega-1F9 sending CONNECT
Client mosqpub|30677-Omega-1F9 received CONNACK (0)
Client mosqpub|30677-Omega-1F9 sending PUBLISH (d0, q1, r0, m1, '$aws/things/Omega-1F93/shadow/update', ... (43 bytes))
Client mosqpub|30677-Omega-1F9 received PUBACK (Mid: 1)
Client mosqpub|30677-Omega-1F9 sending DISCONNECT
Do I need to start over because I have updated the firmware on the Omega 2+.?
I am using certificate and policy files from Feb. 2018 when this guide worked for me.
Suggestions appreciated.
Reporting on my own request.
I was able to figure out how to get the SD card to be allocated to the overlay file system and from the ssh session I could install node-RED, node-npm and the IBM flows from John Walicki at IBM.
Seems to work OK so far.
I had an expansion dock and an OLED screen and these respond as expected from the node-RED logic.
I have updated my Omega2+ to Firmware 0.3.2 b218.
I see the new Onion OS.
If I do add SD storage to the 2+ to have a memory footprint in the overlayfs to be comparable to what I have in the Omega Pro, will I be able to run node-RED there as well? I see that the App Manager says that node-RED os only available to the Omega Pro, but I wonder if an ssh terminal session would allow node-RED to be installed manually?
I seem to be able to work with node-RED as expected now.
Anyway to restart it after installing node-red modules using the ssh terminal? On the raspberry pi you have node-red-start and node-red-stop.
Are such commands available on the omega 2 pro?
Also, I have an Omega 2+ If I add SD card storage and upgrade the firmware, then I can run node-RED there too? Is there any configuration to do to have the Omega 2+ use the SD Card storage like the Pro uses the emmc storage when installing software?