Hello folks. Who would like to help me set up an Epressif thread border router? I’ll send money to your favorite charity to get your help.
Here is my situation. I need a thread border router. Probably really I need several of them to cover every corner of my house. Yes I could spend lots of money getting something from Amazon or Google. But why not buy some $11.50 Espressif boards, configure them, and carry out the thread hosting completely locally? And then I could avoid needlessly sharing my data with Amazon or Google.
I ran the Windows installer and first I tried the Online Installer. Nope, the installation ended with a “premature end of file” or something like that. So then I tried the Offline Installer. I carefully followed the steps to build the project and flash the firmware onto the device, and then connected the device to my local wifi. But then things ground to a halt. The step-by-step guide said I needed to build yet another project and none of that worked.
So here is my offer to you. I’ll be glad to pay whatever money you ask, to your favorite charity, if you will join me in a shared desktop session to get this Espressif thread border router configured and working. This would walk me through the Windows-based installer. I would then hopefully take good enough notes that I could know how to configure a second and third Espressif thread border router at a later time.
I have 2 of them with the Ethernet daughterboard. But it is too long ago I set them up. Had a lot of compiling to do. From what I remember, you have to flash 1 project using the first USB connector, and another project using the other connector.
Thank you for posting. The procedure I tried to follow (seen here) says:
2.1.2. Build the RCP Image
Build the esp-idf/examples/openthread/ot_rcp example. The firmware doesn’t need to be explicitly flashed to a device. It will be included in the Border Router firmware and flashed to the ESP32-H2 chip upon first boot.
Maybe I misunderstood that part, but my impression was that somehow the only flashing that I needed to do was to flash firmware to the S3 (which I did) and then somehow the S3, when running for the first time, would carry out a flash of firmware to the H2.
Yes there seemed to be much that was conspicuously missing from the “step-by-step instructions” and from the hardware documentation. There were quite a few things that I had wanted to know that I guess everybody except me already knows. For example:
There are two USB ports on the board. When the device is in use as a thread border router, how am I supposed to provide power to the board? Does it matter which of the two USB ports I use to provide power to the board? I studied the schematic and as best I can tell, you can use either USB port and no matter which one you use, it powers the entirety of the board.
There is one LED on the board (that I have seen light up so far). Are there other LEDs on the board? If so, where are they? (The schematic lists two “option” LEDs, a green one D10 and a blue one D11, both connected to the H2. It looks like maybe they are installed on my board. I have never seen either one light up.
I wonder what it means if they light up? They simply connect to two particular IO ports of the H2, so I guess they do whatever the H2 firmware tells them to do. I wonder what the H2 firmware tells them to do?)
The one LED that I have seen light up so far is red in color. Does it sometimes light up in other colors? If so, what do the colors mean? (As best I can tell from the schematic, it lights up only in red.)
When that LED lights up, what does it mean? (As best I can tell from the schematic, it merely indicates that the board has electrical power.)
There are four pushbuttons on the board – boot1 and reset1 at the top (the H2 portion) and boot2 and reset2 at the bottom (the S3 portion). Nowhere in the “step-by-step instructions” do they ever say to press any of these four buttons. But maybe I need to press them at various points? If so, when? My best guess from the schematic is that pressing reset1 resets the H2 and pressing reset2 resets the S3. From the schematic, it looks like boot1 goes to one of the IO ports of the H2 and boot2 goes to one of the IO ports of the S3, so I guess they do whatever the firmware tells them to do. I wonder what the firmware tells them to do?
