Lab 05. Serial Port Madness

Owned by Thomas Watteyne
Last updated: Nov 15, 2022 by Thomas Watteyne
2 min read

Find serial ports

Throughout these labs, you are connecting your SmartMesh IP devices to your computer. Your computer uses the FTDI drivers to communicate with the SmartMesh devices your connected over USB to you computer (most likely installed by default; if not, see Lab 00. Things to Install)

  • Connect a USB cable between your computer and your manager. Open your Device Manager (if you're on Windows) and write down the serial ports that have appeared.

  • Connect a second USB cable to your mote.

  • You should be able to write down the serial port numbers in the table below



manager

mote



manager

mote

first serial port





second serial port





third serial port





fourth serial port





 

Answer 1

 

Crash Course: Why 4 serial ports, and which one do I use?

You will be connecting to the third and fourth serial port:

  • the third is the “Command Line Interface” (CLI) of your device, you will connect to it using a serial terminal and type command “by hand”

  • the fourth is the “Application Programming Interface” (API) of your device, you will connect to it in future lab using Python programs

Software Version on your Manager

  • Open a serial terminal, connected to the CLI port of your SmartMesh IP manager (the third one). Use a Serial Terminal such as TeraTerm or Putty. Make sure you use serial type communication, and, once connected, make sure you see carets “>” when typing Enter

  • type in the following commands:

    login user show ver

     

  • What is the version of the firmware running on your SmartMesh IP manager?

Answer 2:

Software Version on your Mote

  • Open a second serial terminal, connected to the CLI port of your SmartMesh IP mote. Switch on the mote, the welcome banner appears on PuTTY.

  • What is the version of the firmware running on your SmartMesh IP mote?