BATC Forum

I am trying to set up a direct ethernet connection between my laptop and PI.
There seem to be hundreds of possible ways of doing this on the internet, up until now I have been
able to pick the right one. has anyone had any success in this area. I am using a Pi3 and laptop with
windows 10 installed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Wayne VK5BI

Can you confirm that by direct connection you mean that you are using a patch lead between the Pi and the laptop with no switch or router connected in between?

Clive G3GJA/ G8EQZ

Thats correct Clive, I want to go portable with it.


Wayne

Hi Wayne

It's been designed as a standalone unit for /p operation and once you've done the initial set up you don't need it connected to a PC or network ever again unless you want to do an upgrade.

Just follow the set up guide and then use the touch screen to operate it.

73 Noel - G8GTZ

Thanks Noel,

I'm not actually using the portsdown, just playing around with a pi driving a U2790B modulator, so there is no touch screen involved.

Regards

Wayne VK5BI

The way I do it is to set my phone up as a Wi-Fi hotspot then the laptop and Pi can talk without the need of any leads.

All best John

Hi Wayne...... I'm doing it with a patch lead...for ultimately the same purpose as yourself.
Once linked with the patch cord, one needs to find the Pi's IP address...... If you have already established an SSH connection over your local net (through your router) then in the Portsdown Console menu, find Sytem Setup and select "Show IP address"........ However, if no previous link has been established, then running the freely downloadable "Advanced IP Scanner" program may reveal the Pi's IP......... It could take a lot of searching though.... both of my Pis are on nets that start with 169.254.x.x. for Eth0 connection (but the last two numbers are very different...
Once you know it's IP you can SSH to it using a terminal prog like MobaXterm (also free)
Good luck .....de Mike in Minehead

Hello Wayne,
There are a few options available to you, since you have mentioned you are direct connecting then I believe your best bet would be to give your laptop a fixed IP address and do the same with the raspberry pi thus having control over both being on the same IP range (i.e. 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2)

There are possibly a few ways of setting the IP in the Pi but here is the first one that came up from a google search
http://elinux.org/Configuring_a_Static_ ... spberry_Pi or you can set the Pi up with two IP addresses, the first assigned by DHCP and the second static as per this page https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 36&t=15133 and here is the exact bit of relevant information

In case it may be useful to someone else, here is an example of my /etc/network/interfaces file:
----------
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth0:1
iface eth0:1 inet static
address 123.123.123.123
netmask 255.255.255.0
----------

I am about to try this with a similar project at Skyvision so I will let you know if it works

Regards,
Bevan
VK5BD

PS For those that want to be able to use there laptop at home and stand alone, it is possible to set your laptop up that it will attempt to get a DHCP IP and if that fails then go to the fixed IP so that you don't have to keep changing the settings for when you want to use the laptop on you home network.

Thanks Bevan, I will keep playing around. let me know how you get on.
I must get up there one day to catch up you with and Roger.

Wayne VK5BI

Hello Wayne,

I had composed a response yesterday but I must have forgotten to submit it.

I have tested giving the Pi a fixed (static) second IP address with out any noticeable issues. I was fortunate enough to have already set up the wifi connection for the Pi so I could simply SSH into the Pi using PUTTY.
Once the SSH connection was made and after entering Username and Password, I exited the Portsdown menu (ESC), this gets you back to the command prompt where I entered

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

This opened the editor, I moved the cursor down to after the code that looks similar to

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

I then added the following text to the code

auto eth0:1
iface eth0:1 inet static
address 192.168.2.2
netmask 255.255.255.0

Pressed CTRL + X, Y to save, Enter to keep same name
Once back at the command prompt I typed

sudo reboot

and then closed my SSH window on my PC

I connected a XP laptop to the Pi via a cross over cable and then set up the network interface for DHCP and fail over to fixed IP but found there was a delay in windows trying to find the DHCP server (Which is not a big issue but I wanted to get it going) so I resorted to setting a fixed IP of 192.168.2.1 / 255.255.255.0 in the laptop. Once again I was able to use PUTTY to connect to the Pi at the new address of 192.168.2.2

I also found that either the Pi or the laptop is able to do network cable sensing and switched the pairing to suit so I did not need a cross over cable in the end.

It looks like I was wrong thinking of having a DHCP and a second IP address, it is not possible (tested in XP), it is possible to have multiple IP addresses assigned to the one Network card, but you have to set them all yourself ie no DHCP issued IP addresses

So for the Fail over to fixed IP address you click on the "Alternate Configuration" tab and enter the fixed IP address you want your PC to have after it has failed to find a DHCP Server on that network connection as can be seen in the web page below.

I found these instructions for windows 10, which is the same as windows XP just have to navigate to it slightly differently, to set up a second IP on your network card.
https://routerunlock.com/set-multiple-i ... -computer/

Regards,
Bevan

PS We have in the past made a FM 23cm contact into two of the repeaters down your way, Summerton and Mount Terrible.