Usage test¶

Standalone test¶

The standalone setup:

The microbox does not need an internet access to work. The information backbone will be unavailable, but we'll still operate in degraded mode.
This test was the first we made and shown no problem, but in order for it to be successful, we needed to tweak a bit th raspi configuration, that way we can plug a screen using HDMI connexion, plus keyboard an mouse.
The main changes we needed to do was to enable the HDMI video output using hot-plugged screens, otherwise the screen does not light up at all. Second was that fact that the Raspbian image was only 2GB big once extracted
on the 32GB SD card. (the rest was left with no partition), so we needed to expand the filesystem to fill up the entire memory.

One thing we remarked during those tests is that usually, a raspi enable its GPIO to provide a TTL link. This TTL link give access to a shell on the raspi. We tried to use this shell to reconfigure correctly the raspi
(as neither the HDMI screen, nor the touch-screen nor SSH access was working), but we were unable to get any TTL link from those pins. We haven't dig further the issue, but it sure is one if one day it's the only option
to get access to the system.

Wired internet access¶

Once we did had a working microbox in standalone mode, we tried to plug in an internet access. This was done using a landline internet access connected to the WAN interface of a router (not the one of the microbox), and we plugged a cable between the LAN interface of this router to the WAN interface of the microbox.
As expected, the microbox did provide internet access to its LAN.
Here is a ping to google servers that is answered through the microbox:

Satellite internet access¶

We then used the satellite antenna from the Télécom Bretagne LAB, connected to a tooway modem, which was in turn connected to the WAN interface of the microbox.
We did had to wait a bit until the internet connexion was operational, maybe because of a problem in the coaxial cable that is between the satellite antenna and the modem.
Once we were connected, the microbox reacted accordingly, and the microbox's network was connected to the internet.