Configuring Wifi?

[CourtneyBlush]

How do you do this?

 

Cheers

 

Courtney

[mgpasman]

Find PinballSP on facebook, he is the manufacturer of the ST32 boards with optional wifi.

[Rappelbox]

If you have a black board, then it is possible to program it with a special firmware for the stm32 -> esp8266

If it's a green board: much more complicated...

Instructions are on github

At least for black board.

[Mace]

I have the black version of Luis display and although it works brilliantly the WiFi has been a real issue to program. The GitHub instructions say to flash the board with the special bootloader which I can do, then (after switching off the boot switch) my display is recognised as a ST32 device but Windows 7 fails to find a driver. The USB driver program on GitHub does not load any functional driver so after a quick www search I found the correct 32/64 bit ST32 drivers. My board is now recognised as Com 4 and I can run the comms exe software to load the additional three code blocks into the board. Sadly that software simply sits and reports that it is waiting to find the WiFi adaptor, although the blue light on the board does flash merrily......

 

i gave up up after an hour of thus and reflashed the 'normal' firmware!

[lucky1]

:-)

[lucky1]

If you have successfully flashed the wifi chip using the special boot loader firmware it should be available

as a access point named esp_xxxx. If you get a AP named AI Thinker you are still running the old wifi firmware.

I all went well you should be able to connect to it and should receive a ip address.

Then open a browser window using http://192.168.4.1

If that is working flash the latest pin2dmd firmware to the device to get full functionality

[shadowshd]

Hi,

I have a DMDST32 too with Wifi option and tried to update the Wifi firmware.

Like Mace I had to install ST32 Virtual Port drivers too (my cab runs with Windows 10 x64 1607).

If I use ESP8266Flasher.exe provided in the master archive, I have this error (Read ESP8266 register timeout) after a few minutes :

I have tried with the latest ESP8266Flasher.exe available on Github (32 bits version), flash runs without any errors but I end up with a AI-THINKER wireless network instead of an ESP_xxxx one.

Maybe we're missing something ?

Thanks

[lucky1]

Please make a screenshot of the config tab.

The version on pin2dmd github is the 64bit version. Maybe the 32bit works better. I will update that soon.

[shadowshd]

Here it is Lucky1 :

Thanks

[lucky1]

You need to check the checkboxes left to the filename to upload them to the device

[shadowshd]

Thanks Lucky1, it works much better with checkboxes checked 

I can now access the ESP web host

Thanks again for your support !

[lucky1]

I upgraded the wifi upgrade procedure on github and added a scond method using a USB Serial dongle

[shadowshd]

Great Lucky1, it will make user's life easier (specially with users like me who don't RTFM )

Cheers

[mgpasman]

I seem to run into a similar problem. I managed to install the .dfu firmware, but I cannot use the ESP8266flasher, because it does not see an extra com-port (and neither do I!). I have installed the VCP drivers (http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/development-tools/software-development-tools/stm32-software-development-tools/stm32-utilities/stsw-stm32102.html). Should I do anything special to enable it? How should the boot switch be?

[lucky1]

follow the instruction here

https://github.com/lucky01/PIN2DMD/tree/master/firmware/wifi

[mgpasman]

I found out what my biggest mistake was. On my first try, I used the Upload function in DfuSe. It actually downloaded the current ROM, and overwrote the DFU on my harddrive. Then, when I realised I should use Upgrade Action, I pointed to the same ROM, causing it to flash with pin2dmd ROM over and over again. No wonder it kept on showing the pin2dmd logo, and would not boot in virtual com port-mode.

After I fixed that, I had to download ST32 virtual com port drivers. I kept running into problems with the 1.4.0 version provided by ST. I found the 1.3.1 version (both 32 and 64 bit) somewhere else, and that worked fine. After that, I could finally follow the procedure Lucky01 referred to.

[mgpasman]

I have to say, the wifi mode looks very promising! It is already possible to select mode and palette, if only it becomes possible to configure the colors (and save to pin2dmd.dat), it would never be necessary to open up my pin to remove the SD - which is a pain in the ass, I bought two panels for Black Rose and Airborne, in both pins the displays are pretty much inaccessable once fitted...

Lucky1, could you enlighten us what future plans you might have for the wifi menu?

[lucky1]

It should already be possible to set a palette using a dmc file through ip using the pin2dmd.exe with ip connection.

We don´t have any plans. We only think about the next step and this is a combined firmware of go-dmd and pin2dmd.
We also have to integrate wifi time sync for go-dmd. 

[mgpasman]

1 hour ago, lucky1 said:

It should already be possible to set a palette using a dmc file through ip using the pin2dmd.exe with ip connection.

I could not find that on http://pin2dmd.com/tool/ ;).

Does it actually store it on SD, so the next time I power it on, it remembers the colors?

Addition: I just found SetDMD.exe, unfortunately it does not let me select 4 colors (just 1, and 3 shades). Now if only there would be a simple way to create a 4 color palette using color pickers

[lucky1]

Quote

1.4 Commandline parameters

The pin2dmd command line mode is mainly intended for use with virtual pinball machines. You can get a list of available commands by starting pin2dmd.exe with /? as command line option.

PIN2DMD Utility
Usage:
        no parameter - GUI mode
        /b <palettes.dat> - upload binary palette
        /t <palette.txt> - upload text palette
        /a <palette.txt> - upload text palette (alternative format)
        /s <smartdmd.txt> - upload SmartDMD PaletteID
        /i <imagefile.ppm> - display image 128x32 binary ppm format
        /p <palettenumber> -  switch palette
        /l <10-255> - set brightness
        /r - reset device
        /c - clear all settings
        /u - <src> (<dest>) - upload file optional with <dest> as filename
        /d <file.dmc> - upload palette from .dmc file (4 colors)
        /k - delete activation key
        /ip <ipaddress> use wifi to connect

 

The last option is to connect using wifi

[mgpasman]

You have hidden this feature very well ;). But with this tool it must be possible to do what I want, I will dive into that.

Nevertheless it would be very cool if the wifi interface would just feature a color picker (and maybe a few of the standard color schemes to choose from (Luis has a nice set to get us started).

[mgpasman]

I have been able to connect to the display via wifi using pin2dmd.exe /ip 192.168.1.22

This presents me with a GUI, in which I can select device mode, color mode (VGA or monochrome), save the config as pin2dmd.dat and reboot the display. This is already great, but now, I want to send a palette file to the SD that is mounted in the display.

Unfortunately, I am not able to do so. This is what I tried: pin2dmd.exe /ip 192.168.1.22 /u palettes_option_b.dat

After a few seconds, it presents me with the GUI (connected), but the file was never uploaded to the SD in the display. I don't think it is supposed to show the GUI in this case, is it?

(I know the palette file should be called pin2dmd.pal, but in theory it should be possible to upload any file, right?)

[lucky1]

Multiple commands via command line are not supported. So only GUI is working so far with IP.

You can use a DMC there

[mgpasman]

9 hours ago, lucky1 said:

Multiple commands via command line are not supported. So only GUI is working so far with IP.

You can use a DMC there

But I already have so many predefined palettes in pin2dmd-format. I guess there is no easy way to convert those to DMC?

And when I send a palette in DMC format, and Save Config, does it actually store it on SD, so the next time I power it on, it remembers the colors?

[lucky1]

5 minutes ago, mgpasman said:

And when I send a palette in DMC format, and Save Config, does it actually store it on SD, so the next time I power it on, it remembers the colors?

Yes