uConsole

Yep, I ordered it back in January 2024, it finally arrived...just before December 2024.  Apparently the 10-month delay wasn't a joke, it really does take that long.  Was it worth the wait? Yeah, I reckon so.

The 32Gb SDCard that came with the device, I just stuck it into the device - it was Debian 11 Bullseye for Raspberry Pi 4.  It worked okay, for a day or so.

I installed [node-red], it worked well, I downloaded [world-map] and got some markers appearing, it seemed to perform well.  I then started to think how I want to set this device up to use it.  I wanted [Arduino] too.

That 4G adaptor - how do you get it to work? (using the Debian Bullseye install)

Well, after putting in a SIM card, the instructions in this article worked a treat:

https://github-wiki-see.page/m/clockworkpi/uConsole/wiki/How-to-use-the-4G-extension

To summarise:

$ uconsole--4g-cm4 enable

This outputs that it is detecting the adaptor and then it says something like "success".

Then what?

Well, you have to wait about 20-30 seconds and then it should be detected as a USB device.

$ mmcli -L

This will return nothing until it's detected.  Then you need to restart the service:

$ sudo systemctl restart ModemManager

Then do this again:

$ mmcli -L

It then outputs something like:

/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0 [QUALCOMM INCORPORATED] SIMCOM_SIM7600G-H

Then it should be all ready to go.

I'm saving this here, just as an FYI for myself, if I need to pass a PIN code to the SIM card:

$ sudo mmcli -i 0 --pin=1234

How do you use it?

Well, I didn't quite get that far.

I had a couple of old GiffGaff SIM cards, so I put one in and then attempted to sign up for a new account, got in a right mess, apparently you cannot have 2 SIMs on a single account, sigh.

It then wouldn't allow me to use the Activation codes, stating they were already in use? I guess they were a little old, couple of years.  End the end I had to sign up with a new email address and request a new SIM.  Which is going to arrive whilst I'm away, again.  So it'll be next week before I can use the new SIM.  I've just paid for a £6 2Gb a month SIM, as I don't expect to use it that much, more of a backup.

I'll be coming back to this later when I get the SIM to see what I can do with it (update: or maybe not!)

Until I somehow managed to break the menu system, I downloaded & installed some apps from the App Manager and they didn't appear in the menu - whilst that didn't really matter, I thought I'd use an app like "alacarte" to modify the menu, there was another app & I think that was the one that screwed it up.  anyway, the menu then ended up just being "System Tools", "Run" and "Logout".

So, I ended up trashing the install - I guess it's time to go figure out how to get the image files and set this thing up from scratch.

It turns out that there are specific builds that are pre-made as they do things specifically for the hardware and the screen orientation etc...

A quick trip over to HERE: http://dl.clockworkpi.com/

I attempted a download & install of the version on the right, the latest - however the 256Gb and a 32Gb SDCard that I used, just didn't seem to boot.  Now, that could have been the SDCards being faulty? hence I have 2 x 64Gb Sandisks arriving tomorrow.

I have a few more 32Gb SDCards, so I'll keep trying.

I did find this:

https://github.com/crossplatformdev/uConsole-Image-Builder/releases/tag/20240929

Which appears to give me an UBuntu 22.04 - so I'm going to download the lowpower version and try that out. fingers crossed.

Well, that worked a treat!  Doing the usual steps on the 32Gb SDCrd it booted nicely, showed the UBuntu logo, then went into install mode, went through the process, rebooted & there we have the familiar Jammy Jellyfish.

I did do a sudo apt update / upgrade that then did add a few extra things to setup the desktop to be nicer. I then did an install of arduino - because I want to be able to code the arduinos & M5Stack Cardputer from the uConsole.

I then did a reboot and I noticed that the "Mobile Networking" appeared in the settings - this enables me to use the 4G Adaptor!  I just need that SIM card & I'll be able to test that out, but it does look like it's simple enough to just use as a "data network" that can be turned on/off.  nice.

I actually did the above twice, the first time, somehow I managed to screw it up again & the settings disappeared! After a lot of faffing about, I just ended up doing a re-flash onto the SDCard and started again.

This time though, before going too far I decided to clone the sdcard.

$ diskutil list

This tells me where the plugged in SDCard lives / is known as by the laptop, so I can use that reference next.  Then it's a case of running the following:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=uconsole_ubuntu_22_baseline.img bs=1M

That took a little time (I could have also gzipped it to squish it down), but then swapped out the SDCard for another one and then restored it with:

$ sudo dd if=uconsole_ubuntu_22_baseline.img of=/dev/sda bs=1M

Now, because I chose the block size of 1M, this does take about 30mins, however, it makes a "good copy".  I'll now back this backup up onto my NAS device, so I don't have to do the re-install again, but can just restore to  new SDCard.  I'll do this later anyway, when the 64Gb SDCards arrive.

Then I'll get back to setting up the device a bit more.  I want to connect the RTL SDR USB device to it too, also a USB GPS that I just purchased too - I might need a USB Hub adaptor now!  Hopefully it'll pump out enough power?

If I have that working I'll be able to use the GPS, use the SDR with dump1090 etc.. and potentially pull all the things I've been doing over the past 1-2years onto this single device.

In which case, I'll need to get the BLE enabled too (just a toggle switch in software, not sure why I made it sound more complex!), and then connect it up to be LoRa enbled as well.  hmmm... now it starts to get very "prepper / cyberpunk" ready.

[tangent]Well, the aliens are meant to be showing up very soon & if I were them (and we pi$$ed them off), I'd knock out the electricity, comms & water systems in peak winter time & render humans totally useless, at least I'll be able to run "offgrid" for quite sometime, well, until my stashed food rations run out!

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