Hi,
I’ve been playing around with connecting to my OFMs using android tablets, with it and an OFM being connected to the same WiFi. With that setup it is possible to connect to the OFM using the web browser, giving a very nice experience!
I tried connecting my tablet directly to the OFM using USB-C ↔ ethernet cable. But with this setup I could not find the microscope using any web browser address combination, and thus not being able to connect to the OFM using cable. I also tried changing security settings, un-checking a lot of boxes.
Has anyone found a way to connect to an OFM using android tablet and USB-C ↔ ethernet cable?
Is there a way to get Openflexure connect on android (without using a virtual machine)? Maybe it can find the microscope over cable connection.
One thing to try is to plug a screen into the Pi. The OpenFlexure Alpha5 server has not got a desktop operating system, but if you plug in a screen it will tell you its IP address. When there is no network it says something like 0.0.0. When it is on a network it will tell you the IP address that it has negotiated. I have had to use this on Windows because, like you, the microscope would not show up by name in the browser, and I had not got Connect installed.
I suppose that the other question is wheter the USB ethernet cable works to connect to other networks from the tablet. There might be some Android setting. It is also worth having wifi (and mobile data?) switched off. Some operating system implementations are very unwilling to connect to a network that does not have an actual internet connection
Can’t speak on the cable (never knew there was an ethernet → usb-c one), but if you can run a terminal on the Pi, then the “ip -4 a” command will show the current local address. Would probably have to hook up a monitor / keyboard / mouse to the Pi to do that though? On the tablet, you can try an app “Ping & Net”, found it recommended on some thread. I tried hosting a usb hotspot and it seems to find the tether ip in one of the “select host” dropdowns.
Another thing to check out, is hosting a hotspot on the RPi itself, as an alternative to the cable. You can essentially create a network for the tablet to connect to right to the RPi, rather than using the cable to do so
with microscope and only monitor it reads 127.0.1.1
when connecting to the tablet, using USB-C ↔ ethernet cable, it reads 169.254.72.145. This address does not work and seem to be some fallback thing when I read about it. Networking is a jungle for me, I think my best bet is trying to explain myself to samsung support and see if they can help. I will give an update on the issue.
Yeah, I try the OFM IP as address but without success. Over wifi hotspot it connects with no problem, but I want it to work over cable.
I have tried making the RPi into it’s own access point, but my experience is that I never get the crisp response time. Do you achieve that? I also experienced that turning the microscope into an access point disables regular Wi-Fi functions. Does that happen to yours too?
When I tried the tethering, the IP of the PC was “192.168.42.XXX” which is typically what the tethering on Android uses. I used that Ping & Net app on my phone then confirmed with ipconfig /all on my PC that it “found” the same network adapter. @Pelle have you tried that specific route?
Edit: I’ll try to connect up the phone to the RPi and enable tethering later in the day to see if I’m able to connect via USB-C → USB-A
Hi again,
a little late but I was finally in contact with Samsung support. Lucky me I got paired with a network expert. He helped me set up static-IP instead of using DHCP as ethernet connection approach. While cabled (only USB-C to tablet, let the ethernet-end hang loose) you can chose between “DHCP” or “Static IP” as ethernet connection approach. When choosing “Static IP” you are asked to fill in “IP-address”, “Net mask”, “DNS-address” and “Gateway”.
I was suggested to try these numbers:
IP-address
169.254.72.200
Net mask
255.255.0.0
DNS-address
8.8.8.8
Gateway
169.254.72.1
and then save.
I then connected the USB-C ↔ ethernet cable to the microscope and it all worked! I can now find the microscope using the web browser (while cabled). I have confirmed this on three other microscope - tablet pairs, using the same settings and it all worked.
I have little to no network knowledge, so don’t ask me why it works or how he came up with the numbers. This solution might be specific to Samsung tablets (even model A11), but hopefully it can be of help to anyone stuck in the same situation.