Connectport X2 commercial, where is the serial access options?

XBee & XBee Gateway XBee Gateway
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Hi all: I would like to share my experience about enabling ConnectionPort X2 commercial devices to get serial access to the gateway radio or, in broad terms, enabling a X2 commercial to work as a X2 industrial.

After using X2 industrial coordinators for long time I bought nine X2 commercial coordinators for a new project.

While in the industrial version I was able to enable serial data communication over TCP (enabling serial access to the gateway radio) this option was not present in the web interface of the commercial version.

After carefully searching, I didn’t was able to find any place where Digi stated that the commercial version didn’t support serial ports. In fact in the comparison chart (http://www.digi.com/pdf/chart_cpx_features.pdf), datasheet (http://www.digi.com/pdf/ds_connectportx2.pdf) both commercial and industrial devices al virtually similar (except for the enclosure, antenna and environmental range).

So I went to the Connectport manual and I read: “Industrial Automation is supported in these Digi devices: ConnectPort X2 (non-Python version), and ConnectPort X4.”… however my X2 commercial coordinators came with the 2.14.0.7 firmware version that was described as “Direct Access EOS” opposite to 2.17.0.6 that was described as “Python EOS”… :slight_smile:

So at this point I was not able to find neither any Digi document stating that X2 commercial didn’t support serial ports nor a web interface menu / cli command for managing serial port. In fact running the CLI commands “show ia” or “set ia” dropped an error.

Initially, commercial X2 coordinators came with Firmware version 2.14.0.7 version 82001596_J1 and POST version 1.1.3 release_82002307_D. So I upgraded one unit to the lastest 4Mbytes POST version available (1.1.3 release_82001229_F) and lastest Direct Access EOS Firmware version available (2.14.0.7 version 82001631_J) for this kind of hardware.

And oooh boy, there were my beloved serial ports, my serial redirection options, the option for enabling/disabling the serial access to the gateway, port management and even SNMP!

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Those performing the previous upgrade will notice that, even performing well, the coordinator shows a CPU load near or equal to 100% once the firmware has been upgraded. Based on the firmware release documentation:

[i]On initial boot of this device, it will generate some encryption key material: an RSA key for SSL/TLS operations, and a DSA key for SSH operations. This process can take as long as 40 minutes to complete.

Until the corresponding key is generated, the device will be unable to initiate or accept that type of encrypted connection. It will also report itself as 100% busy but, since key generation takes place at a low priority, the device will still function normally. On subsequent reboots, the device will use its existing keys and will not need to generate another unless a reset to factory defaults is done, which will cause a new key to be generated on the next reboot.[/i]

So don’t panic here :slight_smile: