Serial connection in place of wifi, challenges

[oisisi]

I have a Wemos d1 mini module that is struggling with wifi connectivity. There is a Raspberry Pi next to it which is doing fine. I thought I could simply hook up the Wemos to one of the Pi's USB ports and parse the serial output. I direct GPIO/UART connection does not work in my environment. I would like to use the USB connection for power and communication. This leads to two challenges:

- It seems that each plugin logs data differently. Is there a more standard way? I looked at rules to translate sensor input put it seems there is no way to write to serial. (I already use rules to create nice JSON MQTT payloads.)

- It seems the Raspberries I tried it with (with the latest buster, a tad older stretch) can't communicate with the CH340 chip. It is recognized but minicom shows no chatter. Do we still need to compile drivers or am I missing something?

Any constructive input is welcome.

[TD-er]

The logs were never meant to output data, but more for diagnostic needs.
But I guess what you're looking for is a new kind of controller that can output data to serial in some formatted way.

Something like this:
tasknr, pluginID, nr_values, val1, val2, val3, val4

And then either in CSV notation (e.g. ; as separator), or some other format.

[oisisi]

Yes, CSV or JSON would work. I'm ready to write something that can parse the output of my three sensors so standardized output has less priority for me. I haven't checked yet if CMDs for my RGB LED are read from the serial input but that is also something I can work around.

The bigger challenge is that serial communication via USB doesn't seem to be working with the Wemos's chip.

[TD-er]

[...]
The bigger challenge is that serial communication via USB doesn't seem to be working with the Wemos's chip.

If you try to power the ESP from an USB port on a Raspberry Pi, then I would not be surprised about it.
Try to use a powered USB hub.
The ESP may take quite a big power surge when connecting to WiFi. Wouldn't be surprised if that would set the Pi into some error state.

[ThomasB]

I have a Wemos d1 mini module that is struggling with wifi connectivity.

Any chance your Wemos WiFi shows a reasonable RSSI value, but it's experiencing browser access problems (slow page loading and/or timeouts)? Or too many disconnect/reconnects?

If the answer is yes, then see the tail end of this discussion:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7474#p42805

- Thomas

[oisisi]

Any chance your Wemos WiFi shows a reasonable RSSI value, but it's experiencing browser access problems (slow page loading and/or timeouts)? Or too many disconnect/reconnects?

Thanks for the hint but I don't think this applies. The module was working fine for several months. I now changed my wifi setup and it seems that now the signal is not strong enough. A serial connection would also help with troubleshooting

[oisisi]

The ESP may take quite a big power surge when connecting to WiFi. Wouldn't be surprised if that would set the Pi into some error state.

Thanks for the remark. I measured it, the Pi supplies enough power for the module. I have the suspicion that it is the USB/serial interface which is causing issues.

Regrettably, I can not use a recent default image since I am using an IR sensor the plugin for which is not in the default images with the temperature and light sensors and the RGB LED I am also using. I compiled my own image in the past but my build environment abandoned me together with the hard drive it resided on. It will be a while until I can build a new one. Then I plan to use a Wemos d1 pro which should have better connectivity with its ceramic antenna.

[oisisi]

I figured it out. It was rather simple. I used minicom for serial communication and one flag made the difference. I wrongly used '-d /dev/ttyUSB0' rather than '-D /dev/ttyUSB0'. Next: writing a parser and disabling wifi.

[Gevorgun]

Don't have a cable to connect your computer to the network permanently? That would solve many of your problems.

[oisisi]

Don't have a cable to connect your computer to the network permanently? That would solve many of your problems.

You replied to message that is two years old. I solved my serial issues and upgraded my wifi and no longer have the issues.

[TD-er]

That's a spammer.
Typical clues:
- Reply to an old topic, with a hardly on-topic reply
- Post count is very low

With the info I can see as admin:
- Email is listed on stopforumspam.com
- IP is listed on stopforumspam.com

Incentive:
- Post a reply which is not deleted by some admin
- After a while alter text in the post to link to some site to let Google think it is a reliable site


Typically I delete about 20 of those accounts per week.

[oisisi]

That's a spammer.

That one never came back but a new one popped up and did exactly what you predicted. I reported it.

[TD-er]

Yep, those spammers are quite predictable and extremely annoying.