Connecting the Analog Discovery Pro (ADP3450/ADP3250) to the Internet

Overview

The Analog Discovery Pro can be connected to the internet, which gives users the ability to configure Linux mode with many available software packages and makes the device available for remote use. This guide walks you through the steps required to establish the connection and ends with using the connection to update the preinstalled apt package manager.


Inventory

  • Analog Discovery Pro in Linux mode
    • If you haven't used Linux mode before, check out the Getting Started in Linux Mode guide for information on how to switch from the default Standard mode into Linux mode, boot into Linux, and connect to it with a serial terminal.
  • A computer with WaveForms installed, version 3.16.3 or later
  • USB cable
  • Ethernet cable or a USB WiFi Dongle (see the Specifications for a list of compatible dongles)

A Note Before Beginning

Connecting the Analog Discovery Pro to the network and the broader internet will allow other users on the local network to connect to the device via WaveForms. This will prevent any one else trying to connect via WaveForms from doing so. Respect your fellow engineers and their equipment.


Setting up the Connection

The first step is to connect a serial terminal to your device, which will be used later when logging into Linux mode. Make sure that the Analog Discovery Pro is connected to the host computer and powered on.

Find out which serial port the device is connected to and make note of it. For example, if you are running Windows, this will be a COM port listed in the Device Manager.

Note that the serial connection should be established before booting into Linux mode, to ensure that no boot messages are missed.

Open a terminal emulator, such as TeraTerm, and connect to the noted serial port using 115200 Baud, 8 data, 1 stop, and no parity bits.

Note that if the Analog Discovery Pro is connected to immediately after booting, it may take approximately 20 seconds for the login prompt to be presented. If the screen is blank upon successful connection, press Enter on the keyboard and the login prompt should now be displayed.

Open WaveForms. The application will be used to configure the network settings of the device.

If the Device Manager hasn't opened, then select Settings → Device Manager. Make sure your device appears and is selected in the list of devices, boot into Linux Mode if you have not done so already, then click the Network button to open the Network Settings window.


Make sure to check the Apply these settings on Linux boot box.

It is important to note that you can later change these settings from within Linux itself, however, the settings seen here in the Network settings screen will be applied each time the device is rebooted.

To most easily connect to the internet, you should be connected to an access point that provides DHCP, typically a router. Check each of the “obtain automatically” boxes in order to take advantage of this.

Click Apply and Reboot in order to save the changed settings to the device and to reboot it.


You can observe the boot process with the previously-connected serial terminal. When it completes, a login prompt will be seen.

Once the device boots, log in using your username and password. The table below lists the defaults if you are using it for the first time:

Default username: digilent
Default password: digilent

Note that upon login, a “urandom warning” may be printed to the terminal, and can safely be ignored.


Check out the dropdowns below for instructions on setting up an internet connection through the corresponding interfaces:

Ethernet

Plug one end of the ethernet cable into the back of the Analog Discovery Pro and the other end into the router.

Run the ip addr show dev eth0 command, which will print the network information of the ethernet interface. If successfully connected to the local network it should be assigned an IP address, Gateway, etc.

WiFi

Enter superuser mode by running the command sudo su, entering the user's password when asked. On success, the active user should change to 'root'.

Plug the USB WiFi dongle into the bottom left USB port.

In the terminal, run ip l to get a list of network interfaces. In this case, the WiFi interface is `wlx00c0caad6c4b`, the final network interface in the screenshot to the right. Notice that the MAC address is included in the name. Yours will differ.

Create the WIF, WSSID, and WPWD environment variables to be used in the following commands. The WIF is the WiFi interface you found in the last step, while the WSSID and WPWD are the name and password of your WiFi network. This can be done as follows:

WIF=your-interface
WSSID=your-ssid-here
WPWD=your-password-here

Note: If the SSID or WPWD has '!' as a special character, history substitution must first be disabled by running set +H, and can be re-enabled by running set -H after completing this setup.

For a connection that will persist after a system reboot, run the following:

wpa_passphrase "$WSSID" "$WPWD" > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-${WIF}.conf
systemctl enable wpa_supplicant@${WIF}.service
systemctl start wpa_supplicant@${WIF}.service

Note that it may take some time for a WiFi connection to be established when rebooting the device, potentially several minutes.

For a connection that will only exist until a reboot, run the following:

wpa_supplicant -B -i $WIF -c <(wpa_passphrase "$WSSID" "$WPWD")

Note that it may take some time for a WiFi connection to be established when rebooting the device, potentially several minutes.


Final Steps

Finally, verify the connection to the internet by running sudo apt install && sudo apt update -y. These commands update the currently-installed software packages to the latest available versions and only succeeds if the Analog Discovery Pro has successfully connected to the internet.


Other Resources

For an example of using the networking capabilities of the Analog Discovery Pro, check out Sending Data to ThingSpeak.com with Analog Discovery Pro (ADP3450/ADP3250) in Linux Mode.

Check out the Analog Discovery Pro (ADP3450/ADP3250) Resource Center for more guides on using your device.

For technical support, please visit the Test and Measurement section of the Digilent Forums.