Raspberrypi: How do I connect to the little machine?

[Datura]

Hi,

I received a raspberrypi with my solar system that should connect and gather stats from the system. My problem is that I cannot get into it to connect it to the wifi. I have tried connecting to the ICC hotspot but I cannot get into it using VCN viewer which is what the supplier said I should do. I run IP Scans and it sees the raspberrypi but pinging it times out. Going a little bit nuts here. Google didn't help much so I thought I would try here.

Cheers,
D

 

[boanergesza1]

Hi,

I received a raspberrypi with my solar system that should connect and gather stats from the system. My problem is that I cannot get into it to connect it to the wifi. I have tried connecting to the ICC hotspot but I cannot get into it using VCN viewer which is what the supplier said I should do. I run IP Scans and it sees the raspberrypi but pinging it times out. Going a little bit nuts here. Google didn't help much so I thought I would try here.

Cheers,
D

Have you tried to ssh into it?

 

[Wasabee!]

Do an nmap or similar to see what ports are open.

 

[PhireSide]

Have you tried to ssh into it?

Was going to suggest this but AFAIK SSH is disabled by default. I'm assuming the vendor loaded their software on it before you received it. Is there a chance of plugging it into a monitor to see what's going on?

 

[HeftyCrab]

Hi,

I received a raspberrypi with my solar system that should connect and gather stats from the system. My problem is that I cannot get into it to connect it to the wifi. I have tried connecting to the ICC hotspot but I cannot get into it using VCN viewer which is what the supplier said I should do. I run IP Scans and it sees the raspberrypi but pinging it times out. Going a little bit nuts here. Google didn't help much so I thought I would try here.

Cheers,
D

Can you tell us what model Rpi it is? Do you perhaps have an ethernet port on it that you can connect too?

Was going to suggest this but AFAIK SSH is disabled by default. I'm assuming the vendor loaded their software on it before you received it. Is there a chance of plugging it into a monitor to see what's going on?

You can enable it by placing a file called SSH on the boot partition.

Check section 3 in this link:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/

Also, I would first check whats running on there before adding it to my network. Its basically a foreign PC youre allowing into your network.

 

[Datura]

Can you tell us what model Rpi it is? Do you perhaps have an ethernet port on it that you can connect too?




You can enable it by placing a file called SSH on the boot partition.

Check section 3 in this link:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/

Also, I would first check whats running on there before adding it to my network. Its basically a foreign PC youre allowing into your network.

I do have an ethernet port. Raspberrypi 3 model 8 v1.2 (all I can see).

Will look at the link when I get a chance. Here is the email I received:

You can plug in a screen (use your TV if you don’t have an HDMI screen), and a keyboard and mouse, and then you can click the wifi icon (top right next to the time), select your wifi network and then type the password. A third method (if you don’t have a screen), would be to join the ICC-hotspot, but then once joined, open VNC Viewer (download here and install: https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/), and type the following address to connect to the pi: 10.3.141.1 It will ask you for credentials again, which will be pi and raspberry, and then you will remote control the pi. From there you can click on the wifi icon again, type the password and once joined, use something like Advanced IP scanner (https://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/download/Advanced_IP_Scanner_2.5.3646.exe) to search your network to find the IP, unless you specified the static IP on your DHCP server, then you should already know what it is.



Once it’s on your network and connected to the inverter, it will start uploading data about your system every x-amount of seconds, and can be configured between 10-100 seconds. Every 10 seconds use roughly 3gb of data per month, whereas every 100 seconds uses as little as 15-20mb per month. The system can also manager your inverter, allowing you to remotely program it if need be, and is a great tool to ensure that everything is working the way it should. Once running you will see why we say that it’s something you can’t do without .

Tried all of the above except the HDMI screen. We don't have a keyboard.

Have you tried to ssh into it?

Yep, I tried using putty to the IP and to raspberry.local I can't remember the error but it didn't work.

Do an nmap or similar to see what ports are open.

Will do.

Thanks for the replies guys. First time playing with one of these little beasts. Can't wait to see what it is capable of...

 

[Datura]

No route to the host is known

I am stuck. When I log onto the hotspot on the raspberrypi I get a 169 ip assigned to my machine. Scratching around for a glove for the card so I can drop an SSH file...

 

[vic777]

Its by far the easiest to set up the SD card for headless WIFI and SSH setup

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/10251/prepare-sd-card-for-wifi-on-headless-pi

Once this is done, do a arp scan to get the IP address and SSH to the PI using the default credentials. If you just need SSH access you are set. But if you are running X on Rasbian as well and you want to access applications with a GUI, you can also look at X11 forwarding if you don't have a spare monitor lying around.

 

[Datura]

OMG. I overwrote the previous image grrrr. Trial and error stuff. Luckily they have the image on their website for download. Back to square one. Probably a blessing in disguise.

 

[Datura]

All sorted. Thanks for the help. I flashed the card again with a new version of the img and all is good to go. My inverters are now speaking to the dashboard on the Raspberrypi which will soon be uploading the stats from my system to Centurionsolar (as soon as I can get my WiFi boosted to reach the inverters where the Raspberrypi has a new home).

 

[Datura]

Oh and I eventually flashed the card with the img file using my camera because I couldn't pick up the card using anything else. Pretty cool...