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Specifications and Installation

The Synapse Wireless E12 gateway is a free-standing ARM Cortex-A8 based Linux computer running Ubuntu 14.04,
and incorporating a 915MHz or 2.4 GHz Synapse RF module that connects the device to SNAP-powered mesh
networks. The gateway is available with serial connectivity through a microUSB connection, and Ethernet
connectivity through the RJ-45 connector.

This arrangement provides for a wide range of possibilities for monitoring sensor networks, controlling remote
devices, and driving the internet of things.

Specifications

E12

OS

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Linux kernel

CPU

TI AM335x 1GHz

Flash

4GB NAND FLASH memory

RAM

512M DDR3

Ports

10/100 Ethernet

uSD card

USB 2.0 Type-A

USB Micro-B (serial)

Operating Temperature

-40C - 70C*

Board Size

15.5cm x 9cm x 2cm

Unit weight

582 grams (without antennas)

Input Voltage

Nominal: 12-24V DC

Absolute: 7-36V DC

Storage Expansion

µSD – internal

LEDs / Buttons

4 Green LEDs

2 Red/Green LEDs

1 Button

NOTE:

This equipment is certified by Underwriters Laboratories for operation in a maximum ambient

temperature of 60°C. The product safety standard to which this unit is evaluated and certified, IEC 60950-1, and
UL 60950-1 for the US and Canada, specifies a maximum temperature limit of 70°C on metal surfaces that may
be touched. During operation, there is a slight temperature rise on the surfaces of the E12. Therefore, when
installed into an ambient environment at 70°C, the surface temperatures on the E12 may exceed the limit of
70°C.

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Summary of Contents for SNAPconnect E12

Page 1: ...se Wireless All Rights Reserved All Synapse products are patent pending Synapse the Synapse logo SNAP and Portal are all registered trademarks of Synapse Wireless Inc Doc 116 081614 030 B001 6723 Odyssey Drive Huntsville AL 35806 877 982 7888 Synapse Wireless com ...

Page 2: ...ense governing any code samples presented in this Manual Redistribution of code and use in source and binary forms with or without modification are permitted provided that it retains the copyright notice operates only on SNAP networks and the paragraphs below in the documentation and or other materials are provided with the distribution Copyright 2008 2016 Synapse Wireless Inc All rights Reserved ...

Page 3: ...Functionality to an Unresponsive SNAP Module 14 Upgrading the SNAP Module Firmware 15 Accessing the MicroSD Slot 17 Common Linux Operations 18 Editing Linux Files 18 Making Your Software Run at Startup 18 Running a Script to Completion 18 Starting a Service 19 Setting Your E12 s Clock 20 Resetting a Lost User Password 20 Mounting an External Drive 21 Extending the E12 with USB Accessories 22 USB P...

Page 4: ...ubleshooting Common Problems 27 The Ethernet port does not work or eth0 does not appear in ifconfig 27 SNAPconnect is not working 27 I cannot SSH into my E12 27 Regulatory Information and Certifications 28 ...

Page 5: ...wered by Ubuntu Easy to Customize The SNAPconnect E12 Gateway is an embedded Ubuntu Linux computer with the flexibility to add custom or 3rd party software as needed for local databases IoT platform clients or other elements It bridges SNAP edge networks over Ethernet or optional USB connectivity devices such as cell modems Bluetooth or Wi Fi adapters Start Quickly with Included Tools The E12 is r...

Page 6: ...6 081614 030 B001 The Device The images below show an E12 gateway with all features marked All E12s include a SNAP powered module and will come with an antenna for the module s connection labeled with the Synapse S on the E12 s case ...

Page 7: ...fied LPS power supplies rated for relative environmental conditions suitable to your use location with an output of 7 36VDC 1500mA Max NOTE Some power supply vendors mark the positive lead with a white stripe NOTE The E12 cannot be powered over the USB SERIAL port NOTE If the E12 is installed into an end product wiring should be done in accordance with the relevant product safety standard of the e...

Page 8: ...de 116 081614 030 B001 NOTE During the upcoming step 4 if you find that your host PC cannot connect to the E12 over the USB connection you may need to install the FTDI USB to UART VCP drivers available from http www ftdichip com ...

Page 9: ...nager b Look for USB Serial Port COMxx where the xx will indicate the serial port assigned e g COM3 or COM88 c Connect using your preferred terminal application Example screenshots of connecting via PuTTY and TeraTerm are provided below To find the serial port on a Linux PC a Before plugging in the E12 s USB cable check for ttyUSB connections in the dev directory 5 ...

Page 10: ... following serial port settings l 115200 baud l 8 bits l No parity l 1 stop bit l No flow control 6 Use your terminal emulation window to log in to the E12 gateway Username snap Password synapse NOTE You must change your password the first time you log in This prevents you from installing an E12 gateway with the default password set which is pretty much the definition of a bad security idea Ubuntu...

Page 11: ...ollowing example sets the date to April 20 2016 at 12 30 59 p m sudo date set 2016 04 30 12 30 59 Sat Apr 30 12 30 59 CDT 2016 You can set the hardware clock from the system clock using the hwclock command sudo hwclock wu 10 Update SNAPconnect The SNAPconnect software enables the connection from your E12 device to the rest of your SNAP powered network To update SNAPconnect type the command sudo H ...

Page 12: ...by SNAP powered nodes to cloud services or an E12 hosted web server Download the code there or fork it for your own projects Better yet contribute to the code base for other users Mounting the E12 The E12 has mounting holes on the outside flanges of the unit any of which can be used for mounting the E12 to a solid surface ...

Page 13: ...udo access and can perform all device administrative tasks You can create user accounts on the device and grant them sudo access as well For added security you can create sudo enabled user accounts and then delete the snap user account to further reduce a potential hacker s knowledge of how to access the gateway If you would rather work with the root account anyway you can enable it by assigning a...

Page 14: ...lations include the following packages which are installed in usr local bin except where noted otherwise E12 leds E12 buttons packages a simple LED and button control scripts package led 1 led 2 led 3 led 4 led a Controls lighting for leds button Reads button states E12 gpio scripts package Initializes GPIO lines etc rc2 d S30gpios Startup script to initialize GPIO lines package E12 snap utils pac...

Page 15: ... controlled via the Linux instance running on the E12 The other LED LED B is controlled via the SNAPpy script running on the internal SM220 module Finally there are two LEDs on the E12 ethernet port A green LED that indicates the E12 is connected to the network and a yellow LED that illuminates when the E12 is configured for 100Mbps communications The SNAP Module Controlled LED The unit s SNAP mod...

Page 16: ...ule The other three LEDs are controlled from the E12 s AM335x processor The E12 Button The button on the bottom of the E12 is fully user accessible You can monitor the button state at GPIO 112 The E12 buttons package provides a Bash script that prints the button status to STDIO and returns the button status as 1 for up or 0 for pressed You can monitor the AM335x processor GPIO directly rather than...

Page 17: ...O 48 Tied to the Reset pin on the RF220SU you can use this pin to reboot the module Waking the SNAP Module At times it may be helpful to have the SNAP module in your E12 sleep and then be woken by the E12 s processor If you have installed the recommended E12 snap utils package you can easily do this by defining GPIO_F1 on the SNAP module as a wake pin like this from synapse pinWakeup import from s...

Page 18: ...st on the E12 as well If you find that your SNAP module is unresponsive or unreachable over the air or serially the first suspect is typically the user script on the module Many a programmer has accidentally specified the wrong wake pin or accidentally dropped a node into an endless loop So the first thing to try in module recovery is forcibly removing the SNAPpy script from your SNAP module sudo ...

Page 19: ...s set to communicate serially the way that your SNAP module is considering encryption keys and types serial rates etc The point is defaulting a device doesn t mean you have it where you want it only that you now know where to go look for it Upgrading the SNAP Module Firmware Synapse Wireless is always working to improve the experience with SNAP powered networks and that means new firmware every no...

Page 20: ...ownload the firmware images and put them in the folder usr local lib python2 7 dist packages snap_firmware_2_8_1 Then you can update the E12 by typing For 2 4GHz Gateways sudo flash bridge i usr local lib python2 7 dist packages snap_firmware_ 2_8_1 RF220SU_AES128_SnapV2 8 1 sfi For 915MHz Gateways sudo flash bridge i usr local lib python2 7 dist packages snap_firmware_ 2_8_1 RF320SU_AES128_SnapV2...

Page 21: ...u have previously done this you do not need to repeat it sudo mkdir mnt sdcard 3 Mount the card For these commands replace p1 with the partition number you want to mount a For cards formatted with the ext4 file system sudo mount t ext4 dev mmcblk0p1 mnt sdcard b For cards formatted with the FAT32 file system sudo mount t vfat dev mmcblk0p1 mnt sdcard c For cards formatted with the exFAT file syste...

Page 22: ...t own e g files in etc that are owned by root you should preface your nano command with the sudo command in order to open the editor with escalated privileges The third option for creating or editing files for the E12 is to create the files on another system completely and then move them into place on the E12 You can move them over an SSH connection or by sneaker net using a USB drive This is the ...

Page 23: ...plications you want to have started as a service which can be started stopped and restarted you can create an upstart service at etc init As an example of making a SNAPconnect application run as a service create a file named etc init MyOwnApp conf and put the following text in it SNAPconnect start a SNAPconnect application as a service description Start SNAPconnect start on runlevel 2 stop on runl...

Page 24: ...e hardware clock has never been set set the date manually The following example sets the date to April 20 2016 at 12 30 59 p m sudo date set 2016 04 30 12 30 59 Sat Apr 30 12 30 59 CDT 2016 You can set the hardware clock from the system clock using the hwclock command sudo hwclock wu Resetting a Lost User Password If there s one thing you can count on it s that at some point a user will forget his...

Page 25: ...way but they can all be stored on the same flash drive and the only one which will be removed is the one which was used Mounting an External Drive The USB connection on the E12 is available for mounting external storage whether that s a flash drive for sneaker netting files or a larger drive for data aggregation You can mount and unmount the external drive using these commands changing the number ...

Page 26: ...onnect to an SN171 ProtoBoard or some other hardware that uses a DE9 connector to make an RS232 serial connection This can allow your E12 to act as a bridge between two radio subnets where radios are on some combination of different frequencies different network IDs and or different channels The E12 provides the drivers that support the FTDI USB serial cable and the SN132 inherently To use the SNA...

Page 27: ...o the device instructing it to mode switch to unmount the storage and expose itself as a Wi Fi or cellular device Ubuntu Linux also automatically handles many of these devices But there may be some out there that Ubuntu does not recognize by default If you find that the E12 is not recognizing your device consider installing usb_ modeswitch which contains a library of parameters for converting devi...

Page 28: ...is command An easy way to verify which device is the SD card is to execute the ls command in the dev directory before and after inserting the SD card Writing to the wrong device could potentially overwrite critical information such as your system hard drive l Remove power to the device l Insert the microSD card into the microSD card slot l Hold the button near the USB port apply power and release ...

Page 29: ...M 512M DDR3 Ports 10 100 Ethernet uSD card USB 2 0 Type A USB Micro B serial Operating Temperature 40C 70C Board Size 15 5cm x 9cm x 2cm Unit weight 582 grams without antennas Input Voltage Nominal 12 24V DC Absolute 7 36V DC Storage Expansion µSD internal LEDs Buttons 4 Green LEDs 2 Red Green LEDs 1 Button NOTE This equipment is certified by Underwriters Laboratories for operation in a maximum am...

Page 30: ...26 SNAPconnect E12 User Guide 116 081614 030 B001 E12 Dimensions ...

Page 31: ...ion of the Python Tornado package or may have failed to obtain the MAC address correctly Upgrade to the latest version of SNAPconnect by using the instructions in E12 Specific Software Packages l Your MAC address is not set From the linux command line run sudo fw_setenv ethaddr 00 1c 2c xx xx xx Replace the XX entries with your last three octets of your Ethernet MAC address which should be found o...

Page 32: ...nce to radio communications However there is no guarantee that the interference will not occur in a particular installation If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures Reorient or relocate the receiving...

Page 33: ...ive Huntsville AL 35806 Synapse Wireless Inc declares that the product Product Name E12 0 to which this declaration relates meet the requirements specified by the Federal Communications Commission as detailed in the following specifications l Part 15 Subpart B for Class B equipment l FCC 96 208 as it applies to Class B personal computers and peripherals The products listed above have been tested a...

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