Hi, I am ordering the Particle Ethernet FeatherWing for testing with the new mesh (and non-mesh) particle boards.
I can’t seem to find any documentation for this - as I understand it, it is basically the same chip as this shield:
however, the NCD board doc states it doesn’t work with particle cloud. Is this right? are particle selling an add-on shield that doesn’t allow connection to their cloud ?
NCD board for Photon/electron - no cloud via the ethernet
Featherwing for the new Mesh boards where it does support cloud
That’s not a Particle device, and it does not work with the Particle cloud.
While all of the mesh devices (Argon, Boron, Xenon) work with the Particle Ethernet FeatherWing, classic devices do not.
While the NCD board and the Particle Ethernet FeatherWing have the same Wiznet Ethernet chip, the system firmware on the Photon and Ethernet do not have support for it. The mesh-devices are all designed for multiple networks (for example, mesh and Wi-Fi or mesh and cellular), so adding a third network (Ethernet) is logically straightforward.
The Photon and Ethernet were only designed to support one network connection for the cloud. Also, there’s no room left in system firmware on the Photon to add anything.
Thanks for this ! great to know.
We were in the process of making boards based on the P1 for earthquake alarms:
However we are keen to use ethernet so will start again, based on the new particle boards. Do you know if the schematics will be made available for the Particle Ethernet featherwing ?
I will likely wait until the new P1 mesh is available, but would love to integrate ethernet.
The Ethernet FeatherWing schematics will be out in the next week or two I believe.
It will be possible to use the A series (Argon SoM) to do Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and Mesh. You’ll need to put the Wiznet, RJ45 connector, etc. on your base board with the M.2 connector on it, but it should work fine.
That’s great ! I will look out for it, and appreciate your thoughts on how to do the A series board. Cheers !
The Eagle schematic and board files for the Particle Ethernet FeatherWing were just made public. Good timing!
incredible ! great thanks !
Any idea when we can expect the new A-series modules?
It will be a little while for the A/B/X series modules. Announcements of availability timeframe won’t be made until the 4th quarter of 2018, and the modules won’t actually be available until some time after that.
Thanks again!
is it possible to use the argon and the ethernet featherwing as a client-bridge? in other words the argon is connected to the internet via wifi and can send that traffic via the featherwing to an attached ethernet client such as a laptop? thanks.
Should work. However you cannot use an SD card at the same time as the ethernet featherwing currently. It has been logged as a bug.
Did you have any luck with this?
No - still open at this stage
Rick, Has anything changed with regards the use of Ethernet via an adaptor (Particle or other) with the Photon and is it still the case that Ethernet based Cloud connection in place of WiFi would not be possible? Thanks
While in theory one could connect a Wiznet to a Photon, in practice it would not be easy or practical.
While the Gen 2 and Gen 3 Device OS system firmware repositories have been merged, the network stack splits at different points on the Photon/P1 compared to Gen 3. The Photon/P1 have the whole IP stack within WICED, the Cypress/Broadcom stack. Gen 3 devices include more of the stack in Device OS itself, using LwIP.
Plus, there is no room left in system firmware on the Photon/P1, so something would need to be removed to make it fit.
Thanks for the explanation. I am doing forward product planning, I can’t consider a move from Photon to Argon with the investment in a new mother board until WPA Enterprise is working for certain on the Argon and I really need Ethernet as an option - so rather stuck!! Fingers crossed that 1.5.0 properly solves the Gen3 Ethernet issue.
