Cat5 port doesn't work

[amcewen]

The first prototype has a Cat5 port on the back of the unit. This is wired to two Cat5 plugs, which are plugged into the Beaglebone and the Mini-ITX board.

In normal operation, the Cat5 port isn't used, and the Mini-ITX board and Beaglebone can communicate via Ethernet without any problems.

The initial design assumption, which turns out to be incorrect, is that we could use a 2-port passive hub (or just wire in the cables similarly) to allow a third computer onto the Ethernet network, connected via the Cat5 port on the back of the case.

That would make it easy to connect a laptop, in order to VNC into the Mini-ITX board and get it connected to the WiFi network for general Internet access.

However, in practice, whenever you connect a third device it causes all of them to drop off the network, and so you can't VNC into the Mini-ITX board, and the Mini-ITX and Beaglebone can't talk to each other either.

[amcewen]

We didn't have time to debug what the problem was, and as there's a workaround (basically you can open the case and plug the configuring laptop directly into the Mini-ITX computer) it's been left as a future enhancement for when the next radio is built.