Emonpi2 Wifi Lockout?

Hardware emonPi
1

Hello.
Another stupid problem because I am so non-techie.

Trying to set up an emonPi2 bought almost a year ago. After plugging in i thought I had hooked it up to the local wifi network after logging in via it’s own wifi access point. So far so good but then I don’t know what I did but I cannot see it via wifi and it says WiFi not connected.

The screens read:
EmonSD-20Nov23
Serial: (blah blah)

Ethernet
NOT CONNECTED

Wifi:
NOT CONNECTED

GSM:
NOT CONNECTED

Dec15 14:45
Uptime 0.01 days

SSH Enable?
Y press and hold

next button press does nothing
next button press:

Shutdown?
Y pres and hold

next quick button press does nothing
next quick button press gives:

Shutdown?

If I wait (I have not long pressed) it then says “Wait 30s… Before unplug”. So I don’t have the wifi access point option at all now.

Any idea what i do now? All I want to do at the moment is record some flow temperatures!
I am abroad and somewhat remote so can’t do much. Is there a factory reset method to get the SD card to forget what it’s just learned? Or should I pull out the SD card and use my Mac laptop to reset the firmware somehow? If you can give me a link to an idiot’s guide, I’d be grateful.

Yours, idiotically,
Andrea

2

I don’t believe you. There’s a big difference between an idiot and somebody who’s prepared to learn, and as a chemist, my money’s on you’re the latter.

Is it possible to connect the emonPi into your LAN using an Ethernet cable? If you can, you should be able to use emonCMS to reset the WiFi. My notes say:

Reset / reconnect emonPi to a different network: To force an EmonPi back into AP mode, go into ‘WiFi’ from settings and deselect the currently selected WLAN. Click on save and then refresh. You will still have access to the emoncms instance. Navigate to the admin menu and click reboot. The EmonPi will now come up in AP mode (as no network is configured).
Force the Emonpi to AP-mode - #4 by borpin

Alternatively, if you’re happy editing on your Mac, do a controlled shutdown of your Pi (i.e via the pushbutton menu) and put the SD card in your laptop. You should see 3 partitions: 11GB Volume, bootfs & rootfs. In rootfs, navigate to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and open it in a text editor. (You might need super privileges to edit the file.)

Mine looks like this:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=GB
network={
        ssid="MyNetwork"
        psk="MyWirelessPassword"
}

Replace MyNetwork and MyPassword (in double quotes) with your Network’s name & password (off the label on your router?) save the file and put the card back in your Pi, and it should appear on your network. When you can see it on your router’s control panel, it’s a good idea to make its address static, so that it will remain the same always, and not be assigned a new address if your router reboots.

3

After faffing around for ages trying to get the various partitions to mount, it occurred to me that I could use the ethernet cable for the CT sensor inputs to make the connections…
And I’ve got in an reconnected it to wifi after resetting the password!

Thank you so much, Robert. As the dancer Darcey Bussell once said “It is the repeated failures that constitute learning.”.

No doubt, I’ll be back.

Andrea

4

Do you have a password safe? If not, I strongly advise getting and using one. My technique is I generate the random password and save it in the safe first, then I copy and paste it into whatever I’m setting up. Apart from the security aspects - it’s easy to avoid using the same password all over the place, you only have to remember one password - the one for the safe itself.

1 Like
5

Reminds me of a Will Rogers quote…
Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.

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