Ethernet-over-USB #1437
Ethernet-over-USB #1437
Conversation
mutatrum
force-pushed
the
usb-ethernet
branch
from
65c24c7 to
f175f82
Compare
mutatrum
force-pushed
the
usb-ethernet
branch
from
fbafdb2 to
0c4f460
Compare
|
Looks nice. I just added little UI fixes: mutatrum#8 Another thing: We should hide the Wi-Fi RSSI option from dashboard statistics if |
|
Merged, thanks again!
Not sure how difficult that is. There's other ones as well, f.e. fan2rpm, and Temp2 is missing. Probably needs it's own PR. |
|
This PR is going to cause problems for some. I've tried to get this to work with more than one Bitaxe device connected to the PC (Windows 10) via a USB cable for each and failed to get it to work with ICS or via a bridge within Windows 10, Ethernet 2 and the Network Bridge have a status of "Network cable unplugged" when bridging the two Bitaxe network devices (Ethernet 2 & Ethernet 3) to create a virtual network, it fails, so not able to use ICS that way either. ICS will work with one device but not two or more. Using a USB hub here will most likely not work either when using Windows 10/11 as each device will be seen as a network device of it's own. If this feature is added it's going to be a support headache as is right now. |
* Update system rows * Clean if-else for topbar icons --------- Co-authored-by: duckaxe <>
Windows 10 is not an ideal host pc. I've tested it with 2 on Linux and it works, they are indeed seen as separate internet devices, but that's also what they are. According to the documentation, it should also be possible to have multiple on Windows 10. What I can try is to see if I can add support for RNDIS, next to NCM. RNDIS is the Microsoft version of NCM, so that might play nicer with Windows anyways. TinyUSB supports both. As for the host machine, as mentioned in the PR, we need to add instructions on how to use a Raspberry Pi as host, in such a way it works on the complete LAN. That's a far more sustainable solution than to hook them onto your desktop or laptop. Furthermore, it's not a feature for regular Joe. If you really want to go Wi-Fi free, or want to put the devices in a location that has bad coverage, this can be a solution. Maybe it should treated more as the oc flag, behind some sort of toggle. Your point is valid: people seeing the dropdown and just enabling this can cause issues. |
|
Does this also support a USB-C to Ethernet Adapter rather than hooking it up to a Host PC? |
No, for several reasons:
|
4 participants
This PR adds support for Ethernet-over-USB with USB NCM, which is an existing USB standard. It doesn't need drivers, custom software or custom hardware. It works on all Bitaxe devices with a USB port.
It adds a
Network Modedropdown on the Network Configuration page, to enable it:The network mode is exclusive, so either Wi-Fi or Ethernet-over-USB. In the latter, the Wi-Fi module is still initialized for the setup Access Point.
After enabling this, and rebooting the device, the host computer will detect a new network device:
By default, internet it not shared to this new connection - for obvious security reasons - and to get the bitaxe connected, this needs to be configured. On Ubuntu, it's a simple configuration on the IPv4 tab of the network settings:
For IPv6 the same option is available.
For Windows and MacOS I assume there are similar options available. It is persisted for the device, so unplugging and plugging it back into another port works. Rebooting the host and it reconnects. The number of devices is limited to the amount of USB ports and space in the IP range.
After this, the device is connected over ethernet:
With this setting, the device is only accessible on the host machine, as the host machine gives it a new IP address on a different range. It is possible to configure the host with a DNS bridge, at that moment the device will get an IP address from the LAN range and it will be accessible for other machines on the LAN as well.
As this PR uses TinyUSB for the USB driver, if USB Ethernet is enabled, the hardware USB-PHY, repsonsible for console logging and the JTAG, is disabled. This is how the hardware works. TinyUSB also exposes serial logging, so after a brief disconnect, the logging over USB will resume. However, the JTAG is only available in the hardware USB-PHY, which cannot be re-enabled if TinyUSB is initialised. To be able to flash new firmware over USB, the device has to be put into bootloader mode by rebooting with the BOOT button pressed.
A follow-up PR could be to either write a guide or a firmware image for a Raspberry Pi to be configured as a DNS bridge.