Hardware recommendation for Ethernet

[plinepa]

I would like to use ESPEASY with an Ethernet connection instead of WLAN.

Which board are recommended for using it in ESPEASY?

I would love to be able to flash a standard build of ESPEASY without having to compile it myself.

Many thanks for your help!

[TD-er]

You can have a look at the boards made by Olimex.
Just make sure to pick a board with a LAN8710/LAN8720(A) chip.
Others may be supported too, but I never have tested them myself.

You need an ESP32 build with "ETH" in the name.

[plinepa]

The following board seems to be perfect for my project:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP ... e-hardware

The latest schematic has an LAN8710A in use.

Does the other stuff ( Relays, MicroSD, CAN, IR etc. ) harm the function for ESPEASY?

[TD-er]

Only CAN bus isn't supported yet in ESPEasy.
It will not affect functionality of ESPEasy, but it is just not supported/used in ESPEasy at this moment.

Just make sure to double check the revisions of the boards.
Some boards they sell do have various revisions, which are also clearly marked in their schematics docs.
Probably due to the component shortage we had during Covid and lingered on after.

The ESP32-EVB boards do seem to still use the LAN8710A even in the rev. K1.

One thing to really keep in mind is that not all boards with LAN have isolation between the LAN port and the GND of the board.
So better to assume it isn't isolated when it isn't explicitly stated (like on their "ISO" board)

What this means is that you may have an electrical connection between the LAN connector and the GND of the board.
So better do not use Ethernet cables with metal shielding on the RJ45 connector.
Especially when you have to connect the board to your PC for things like flashing or debugging.
Using such cables may pull the GND of your board to the same level as on the enclosure of the switch which can be quite different from the ground level of your PC.

So please keep this in mind when using these boards and you'll be fine.

[Ath]

I've been using this LilyGo TTGO T-Internet-COM board successfully. It's not isolated (at least not specified that way), but is very solid in build quality, and offers optional expansion boards, though these aren't explicitly supported by ESPEasy.

[jgrad]

I just started to use this board https://www.kincony.com/kc868-a8-hardwa ... tails.html in combination with ESPEASY - prebuild BIN which I flashed is ESP_Easy_mega_20231130_normal_ESP32_4M316k.factory.bin.

[Ath]

You used the _ETH build, I'd expect? Or you wouldn't be able to connect via ethernet

[iron]

Olimex ESP32-EVB

Has anyone noticed significant "lag" in the system when connected via ETH in the newer builds ?
I had normal response either way (WiFi or ETH) in earlier builds but not any longer (more than a year or so ago), although it works fine over WiFi it has significant lag when on ETH

Toggling GPIOs takes longer to the point it is not usable (via eth) when quick toggling is required

[TD-er]

Hmm I had not noticed, but I was using a different board (my own design) with Ethernet.
Just a thought, can you set on the Hardware tab to pull-up the ETH power pin at boot?
This does enable the power for ETH a bit earlier, so it will allow for slightly more time to let the ETH chip "boot".

[iron]

Just a thought, can you set on the Hardware tab to pull-up the ETH power pin at boot?
This does enable the power for ETH a bit earlier, so it will allow for slightly more time to let the ETH chip "boot".

No difference in the lag with or without the power pin.

Just for clarification. The unit in ETH mode boots (tested only in DHCP mode) fine, and I have a working environment but with a noticeable and varying lag in whatever action.
When I unplug the ethernet cable and the unit switches over to WiFi it becomes very snappy and all actions are back to normal with immediate response.

[TD-er]

Can you see on the switch whether the ETH unit connects at 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps?
Or worse, does it constantly switch between those rates?

I know this may happen if the supplied voltage is too low, but that is slightly unlikely when the unit was working fine on previous builds.

Does the ESP supply the ETH clock, or is there an external crystal?
Right now I have a board running which is using an external crystal, but I can also try on a board without external crystal.

[iron]

Can you see on the switch whether the ETH unit connects at 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps?
Or worse, does it constantly switch between those rates?

I know this may happen if the supplied voltage is too low, but that is slightly unlikely when the unit was working fine on previous builds.

Does the ESP supply the ETH clock, or is there an external crystal?
Right now I have a board running which is using an external crystal, but I can also try on a board without external crystal.

Switch is non managed so I can not really tell besides the speed led on the switch is still at 100Mb

Same power supply when on WiFi as well and there is no issues there.

Behavior varies but is never reasonable, checkout this short vid

https://photos.app.goo.gl/pVuTvobDFUycB2Va9

[TD-er]

Not really sure what I'm looking at.

If you let a ping run from another host to the ESP, is it also fluctuating?
N.B. pings are dealt with at another level, so constant and quick ping response does not mean there's nothing wrong.
But if the pings are already irregular in response time, then I may have some clue where to look.

Edit:
Also is this board using an external crystal, or does the ESP supply the ETH clock?
And which exact build are you using? If it is the "X-mas" build, is it the LittleFS variant (thus ESP-IDF 5.1) ?

[iron]

Not really sure what I'm looking at.

Just a gpiotoggle. The interesting part is the time it takes for the relay to toggle once it is submitted.

I tried to put on on static IP to check whether this is related but has not come back since. Will need to dig up my USB to TTL module, most likely "next year".

[TD-er]

You can disconnect the Ethernet cable, then it should fall back to WiFi.

[TD-er]

I just installed ESP_Easy_mega_20240101_normal_ESP32_4M316k_LittleFS_ETH (based on the current 'mega' branch) on another ETH board which doesn't have an external crystal for Ethernet.

It was running an older build (from March 2023), so I first installed the SPIFFS build and checked all checkboxes on the Factory Reset page, waited 5 minutes and then uploaded the LittleFS version to the board.
After booting the LittleFS build, it did a factory reset and preconfigured Ethernet exactly the same as it was before.
It has been running via Ethernet all the time while doing this.

Page loads (via "inspect" window in the browser, "Network" tab) are as fast as I would expect them to be on Ethernet.
Meaning 60 - 200 msec for just about any page except the system variables page which takes 340 msec.

So right now I really don't see what's wrong here?

[iron]

You can disconnect the Ethernet cable, then it should fall back to WiFi.

It should, but it didn't.

My guess is that there might be some sort of setting issue as this is coming from a long history of updates (since the very first release) and I never performed any "Factory Reset"

[TD-er]

Can you send me the settings file via a DM?

[jgrad]

You used the _ETH build, I'd expect? Or you wouldn't be able to connect via ethernet

Yes, my fault by copy/paste. BIN which is used is ESP_Easy_mega_20231130_normal_ESP32_4M316k_ETH.

[iron]

Code: Select all

00:06:17.556 : (214604) Info   : EVENT: Ethernet#Disconnected
00:06:34.819 : (214260) Info   : WD   : Uptime 7  ConnectFailures 0 FreeMem 214404 WiFiStatus: WL_DISCONNECTED 6 ESPeasy internal wifi status: DISCONNECTED

This is the log file when I disconnect the eth port. Seems like it does not try to associate over WiFi

[iron]

Reset it to default, boot it w/o eth, came up in AP mode but it skips the conf page, I get splashed directly to the "index" page, as if "Don't force /setup in AP-Mode" was ticked. Perhaps this is not included in the defaults ? Remains "null" when system expecting some value ?

[TD-er]

The "X-mas" build has some funky defaults.
This should be fixed in the latest test build.

See: https://td-er.nl/ESPEasy/latest/
Or GH ACtions: https://github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEas ... 7433945595

N.B. to properly test factory reset, you need to erase all flash.
That's not always really practical, especially on some special Ethernet boards, so I won't hold it against you if you didn't try it on your board

[iron]

The "X-mas" build has some funky defaults.
This should be fixed in the latest test build.

See: https://td-er.nl/ESPEasy/latest/
Or GH ACtions: https://github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEas ... 7433945595

N.B. to properly test factory reset, you need to erase all flash.
That's not always really practical, especially on some special Ethernet boards, so I won't hold it against you if you didn't try it on your board

I just used your web flasher and performed an erase first.

Looks good so far