Posts made by Yvan Gagnon

I'm going to need to give up on this whole port forwarding thing. I've spent a couple of hours fiddling with all the settings, rebooting my router multiple times, etc, and this just plain isn't working. I suspect that the issue is that my IP isn't actually static .. that it's actually DHCP assigned (even though it's remained unchanged for the past 4 months). I really just need something like ngrok that I can run directly on the Onion, but I guess I'm out of luck. Thanks for your help everyone. Have a great weekend.

-- Yvan

I currently have a static IP and a cheap TP-Link router, and have located the section in my router's admin interface where I'll be able to set up the port forwarding. I'm assuming that I'd need to forward port 8080 (for HTTP traffic) .. that I'd use the same port # for both the Service and Internal ports, and that I should specify "HTTP" as the common service port. Does that sound about right? Below is a screenshot of what I'm looking at for reference.

Thanks,
-- Yvan

I'm certainly open to trying that .. but how exactly do I configure this? And is that really the best way to do that? Wouldn't some kind of dynamic DNS type solution be more secure?

-- Yvan

Anyone? No such thing exists?

I've inquired about this here before and apologize for the redundancy, but have there been any developments on this front .. meaning is there any way to install and run ngrok --- or something similar to ngrok -- on an Omega device?

https://ngrok.com/

To be more specific, I'm looking for a way to make Onion accessible over the internet via some kind of either temporary or permanent host name/URL.

I understand that Blynk and IFTTT exist and can be leveraged for this sort of thing, but neither of these are particular useful for my purposes. I'm basically just looking to host a lightweight, PHP-based website on the device, and would like to be able to access it over the internet. How might I go about this?

Thanks,
-- Yvan

So .. yes, then. I would also need to remove the resistor on the Onion Pro, which is unfortunate (I won't be removing it from mine). Still, thanks for your response.

Regards,
-- Yvan

p.s. The article you referenced is specific to the Onion 2 btw .. not the Onion Pro.

Has anyone here actually tested this to confirm?

-- Yvan

>>> I learned that I can improve the strength/range by adding an external Wifi antenna. However .. this would require that I desolder the 0 ohm resistor on the Onion. Otherwise, I would apparently see no improvement whatsoever, and the added antenna would be 100% useless.

I recently learned how to set up my Onion Omega 2+ as a Wifi range extender. I have it working fairly well, and learned that I can improve the strength/range by adding an external Wifi antenna. However .. this would require that I desolder the 0 ohm resistor on the Onion. Otherwise, I would apparently see no improvement whatsoever, and the added antenna would be 100% useless.

My question is -- can I also use the Onion Pro as a Wifi range extender with an external antenna? And if so, would I also have to desolder the 0 ohm resistor on that device?

Thanks,
-- Yvan

Thanks for all the feedback in this thread. Based on all of this info, I've concluded that my project is just not economically feasible given the complexities with providing adequate power to 2 onion devices simultaneously. I was hoping to build some kind of audio/video based home monitoring system (using 2 different onion devices -- one w/ a camera, and the other having a USB speaker attached) .. and so far I've calculated an absurd cost of just under $200.00, -- without any kind of enclosure, or guaranteed reliability. And then I came across this cool little gadget, and gave up entirely:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076H3SRXG/?coliid=I3876MJVEFPGTV&colid=2VJ3IMF7V6OYG&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I'm still quite fascinated by the Onion and am curious about it's possibilities, but I'm certainly not going to re-invent the wheel - and certainly not at 8x the cost !

Thanks again folks!

Cheers,
-- Yvan

To clarify -- I have been connecting the camera to the Onion's USB port. The idea would be to use the hub to provide sufficient power to the 2 Onion devices .. each of which would have a device connected to it's USB port (the other Onion has a USB speaker attached to it). Thanks for sending me the links. I can't view the Ali Express one, though (it's prompting me to log in). Still, I appreciate the advice.

Hmm .. I hadn't even considered trying a powered USB hub. Thank you for this suggestion. This seems like it might be worth trying in my situation, considering that I'd like to use both an Omega2 Pro and and an Omega2+ for my project, and that I've been scratching my head about how to deliver power to both of them simultaneously using a single power source.

Is there a specific powered USB hub that you would recommend? I found a 4-port one on Amazon that seems reasonably priced, but what I don't like about it is that there are on/off buttons for each of the 4 ports.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TPMEOYM/?coliid=I1Q9TWJ4C4COEK&colid=2VJ3IMF7V6OYG&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

It's a nice feature, I agree, but I feel it's only a matter of time before one or more of the ports gets accidentally turned off within the enclosure (from it tipping over accidentally, etc).

Also .. it'd be a huge bonus of the powered USB hub had single power button on it .. which would allow me to turn both Onion devices on or off using a single button.

-- Yvan

I'm usually providing power to the Onion using a powered USB port on my laptop PC with a very short USB cable (less than 1ft). Other times I've powered it using a standard iPhone wall adapter that's plugged into an AC outlet (using the same short USB cable) -- although I haven't really tested that latter approach in a while to check to see if the same problem is happening. Could you please recommend the best way for me to manage power to the Onion in my situation?

I've been noticing that if I boot up my Onion Omega 2 Pro while there's a webcam connected to it's USB port -- that it's not connecting to the wifi hotspot that I've already configured it with. The LED doesn't turn blue, and when I try to load up it's web interface, it's acting as though it's a brand new un-configured device and is prompting me to set up the wifi connection -- almost as though it thinks the attached webcam is some kind of bootable storage device (???).

Has anyone else encountered this? If so, is there any way to change this behavior? It's annoying because I'm trying to build a home monitoring unit, and it would be ideal if all I had to do was turn on the device to get everything up and running. But right now, .. I have to first wait until the device boots up -- and only then can I connect the webcam to the USB port. Obviously, if this is unfixable, then there's no way I'd ever be able to build any kind of enclosure for my setup.

Does anyone here have any suggestions as to how I might remedy this?

Thanks,
-- Yvan

Thanks .. I just submitted a ticket through the help desk.

-- Yvan

Thanks for your reply Cas. This might sound like a dumb question, but how would I go about contacting @Lazar-Demin as you've suggested? I followed the link you provided, but I see no obvious way to contact him privately.

-- Yvan

So, as it turns out .. it appears that this "blynk-library" package no longer exists. So I guess these articles must be completely wrong or outdated then? Does anyone here know what happened herre?

https://onion.io/2bt-blynk-omega/

https://www.instructables.com/id/Blynk-and-Omega2-Love/

It was my understanding that this is the only way to hook the Onion into the cloud nowadays. Is this no longer the case, and is there now no cloud connectivity offering at all whatsoever?

-- Yvan

Thank you by the way. I has already figured out how to uncomment those lines in my distfeeds.conf file and to install nano. But I just now learned that the npm package is named "node-npm" and I'm installing it as we speak.

-- Yvan

Actually -- the correct spelling is "blynk-library", and I wasn't able to locate the package either. So I guess these articles must be completely wrong or outdated then?

https://onion.io/2bt-blynk-omega/

https://www.instructables.com/id/Blynk-and-Omega2-Love/

-- Yvan

UPDATE: Well .. I just succeeded at installing python, so I now know that opkg install does in fact work. I'm beginning to suspect that I might be trying to install packages that aren't available in any of the repos that I'm querying and that I might need to add some URLs to my distfeeds.conf file. Here's what I have in there right now:

#src/gz openwrt_core http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/target
#src/gz openwrt_base http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/packag
#src/gz openwrt_luci http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/packag
#src/gz openwrt_onion http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/packa
#src/gz openwrt_packages http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/pa
#src/gz openwrt_routing http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/pac
#src/gz openwrt_telephony http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/p
src/gz omega2_core http://repo.onioniot.com/omega2/packages/core
src/gz omega2_base http://repo.onioniot.com/omega2/packages/base
src/gz omega2_packages http://repo.onioniot.com/omega2/packages/packages
src/gz omega2_routing http://repo.onioniot.com/omega2/packages/routing
src/gz omega2_onion http://repo.onioniot.com/omega2/packages/onion

Does anyone here know which repos I should add to my distfeeds.conf file so that I can download and install these packages?

blink-library
nano
aplay
npm

-- Yvan