New to RAK4631, having startup problem

gjk_baker · February 27, 2023, 12:20am

New to RAK hardware.
Having problem getting started

Bought 2 sets of RAK4631 and RAK19007
I believe that I followed all of the instructions to install in Platform.oi.
Did the RAK_PATCH
Computer recognizes them COM24 and COM26.
Neither shows as a Drive when I double click the button.
VSCode error.

Failed to upgrade target. Error is: No data received on serial port. Not able to proceed.
Timed out waiting for acknowledgement from device.
.
.
.
NordicSemiException(“No data received on serial port. Not able to proceed.”)
nordicsemi.exceptions.NordicSemiException: No data received on serial port. Not able to proceed.

What am I missing??

Additional questions

Does RAK have a RS232 module, I see the RS485?
I am assuming, that the external antennas will allow a much longer range than the standard chip or trace?

thx

beegee · February 27, 2023, 2:28am

Welcome to the forum @gjk_baker

If the modules are not showing as USB drives when you double click the reset button, you most likely bought the RAK4631-R which has a different bootloader and firmware than the the RAK4631.

Differences between RAK4631-R and RAK4631:

You can check whether you have the RAK4631-R by connecting a terminal application to the USB port and send the AT command AT+VER=> to the device.
If the response is

AT+VER=RUI_4.0.0_RAK4631

or similar, you have the RAK4631-R module. You can convert it to a Arduino version following this Guide

Or you might have a look into our RUI3 API and BSP in our Documentation Center
You can write application with RUI3 the same way you do with the Arduino version. The advantage is lower power consumption and the complete LoRa/LoRaWAN communication is already handled by RUI3.

If you want to give RUi3 a try, you can check our example code
BSP example codes
[ Some examples I have written are on my Github account

gjk_baker · February 27, 2023, 2:55pm

Just check my Sales Order, UGH! So much time wasted.
Should be AT+VER=?

I had a couple of other questions

Does RAK have a RS232 module, I see the RS485?
I am assuming, that the external antennas will allow a much longer range than the standard chip or trace?  Any guess?

Thanks

gjk_baker · February 28, 2023, 12:08am

Having a problem with Platform.IO

Copied the JSON from your website and pasted into Settings>Extensions>>Arduino
No Boards

Do I need to uninstall something?

thx

beegee · February 28, 2023, 2:54am

Yes, it should be AT+VER=? Sorry for the typo
Antenna is always difficult and needs to be designed and positioned with the enclosure used. The LoRa antenna coming with the RAK4631 is for evaluation and doesn’t have the best performance. But e.g. the mounting plate with integrated antenna for our Unify Enclosure have really good performance.

image556×506 40.5 KB
We do not have direct PlatformIO support for the WisBlock. The URL you copied is for ArduinoIDE, not for PlatformIO.
I have written a patch to add the RAK4631, RAK11200 and RAK11310 to the original PlatformIO Boards
Installation of Board Support Package in PlatformIO

gjk_baker · February 28, 2023, 9:54pm

Bernd

Still no luck with VSCode
Will not upload to WIS BLOCK.
Still seams like there is a conflict between Arduino and RUI3?

—>
When to look at your enclosures, very interesting however the 3D link does not have them. index - powered by h5ai v0.30.0 (https://larsjung.de/h5ai/) Maybe you could add the correct link

—>

Does RAK have a RS232 module, I see the RS485?

beegee · March 1, 2023, 1:25am

Hi Glenn,

That is kind of strange, because I am using PIO all the time.

Are you getting a warning like this when you open a project:

If yes, go to Extensions, look for the Arduino plugin, click on the settings and Disable (Workspace)

beegee · March 1, 2023, 1:26am

For the 3D of the enclosures, I have to ask our mechanical team. They should be available already.

gjk_baker · March 1, 2023, 12:19pm

Disabled Arduino as suggested, same error.
You have my email, maybe we should take this offline

thx

gjk_baker · March 3, 2023, 12:13pm

Bernd

While, I wait for a responds. I will load the package in for Arduino IDE. Hopefully that works and I can start.

beegee · March 3, 2023, 12:24pm

We had an upload problem with PIO before. Never found out what it was.

Uploading one time with ArduinoIDE helped, then PIO worked again.

gjk_baker · March 6, 2023, 9:03pm

Hello

So, I got the ArduinoIDE running, but no luck on PIO.
Can you please share some of PIO config files, maybe I can see where one is miss set.

thx

beegee · March 7, 2023, 10:55am

You mean platformio.ini files?

Here is one:

[env:rak4631-release]
platform = nordicnrf52
board = wiscore_rak4631
framework = arduino

gjk_baker · March 7, 2023, 1:25pm

My INI matches yours.
So frustrating.

Any more suggestions on where to look?
PIO works fine for other devices that aren’t RUI3

This is what I think is the most important part of the error:
Timed out waiting for acknowledgement from device.
Failed to upgrade target. Error is: Attempting to use a port that is not open

beegee · March 7, 2023, 2:04pm

Hi Glenn,

I guess I misunderstood something or missed reading carefully.

You have a RAK4631 with RUI3 bootloader?

Then you can stop searching. There is NO PlatformIO support for RUI3 (yet).
The patch file is for Arduino bootloader based RAK4631. It does not work for RUI3 devices, Arduino and RUI3 are two complete different BSP’s.

The only way to use Visual Studio Code with RUI3 is to use the Arduino Extension as explained in our Documentation Center

gjk_baker · March 9, 2023, 9:25pm

Still having problems
I updated both of my RAK4631 to Arduino platform. Went successfully.
Remove/uninstalled all RUI3.
Get the serial error. Tried everything possible

Failed to upgrade target. Error is: WriteFile failed (PermissionError(13, ‘The device does not recognize
the command.’, None, 22))
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\Users\gjk_b.platformio\packages\tool-adafruit-nrfutil\site-packages\nordicsemi_main_.py”,
line 296, in serial
dfu.dfu_send_images()
File “C:\Users\gjk_b.platformio\packages\tool-adafruit-nrfutil\site-packages\nordicsemi\dfu\dfu.py”, line 235, in dfu_send_images
self._dfu_send_image(HexType.APPLICATION, self.manifest.application)
File “C:\Users\gjk_b.platformio\packages\tool-adafruit-nrfutil\site-packages\nordicsemi\dfu\dfu.py”, line 206, in _dfu_send_image
self.dfu_transport.send_firmware(firmware)
File “C:\Users\gjk_b.platformio\packages\tool-adafruit-nrfutil\site-packages\nordicsemi\dfu\dfu_transport_serial.py”, line 213, in send_firmware
self.send_packet(pkt)
File “C:\Users\gjk_b.platformio\packages\tool-adafruit-nrfutil\site-packages\nordicsemi\dfu\dfu_transport_serial.py”, line 241, in send_packet
self.serial_port.write(bytearray(pkt.data))
File “C:\Users\gjk_b.platformio\packages\tool-adafruit-nrfutil\site-packages\serial\serialwin32.py”, line 317, in write
raise SerialException(“WriteFile failed ({!r})”.format(ctypes.WinError()))
serial.serialutil.SerialException: WriteFile failed (PermissionError(13, ‘The device does not recognize the command.’, None, 22))

beegee · March 10, 2023, 1:53am

Is this log from PlatformIO or from Arduino IDE?

I never saw a WriteFile failed error when uploading. It is strange.

gjk_baker · March 10, 2023, 11:37am

I get the error on both IDE’s. I get the error on both RAK4631.
When I use the IDE’s with an Adafruit Feather Sense no problem.

beegee · March 13, 2023, 8:26am

The only idea I have left is to complete remove (manually delete) the folders with the RAK BSP’s and try a fresh installation.