DreamPi Software (DC <> Pi)

alright, finally got around to building my dreampi..... and my USB motem requires line voltage, US model A motem and a cheap chinese USB motem, it dials the motem, trys to connect for a few seconds, but fails once it gets to the dial tone generation, saying no dail tone detected using DreamPi 1.0

Web Browser 3.0 legit: 0/8 connects
Quake 3 legit 0/3 connects
sonic adventure legit: 0/8 conects

i canot give you the logs as i dont have an HDMI cable to conect to a TV, but im assuming that dumb luck didnt happen to me today with the modem, will give an update when i get a working line voltage inducer

 

Good luck.

 

yeah that's the expected behaviour when there's no line voltage. If both modem lights switch on then the DreamPi software is working it just can't hear the Dreamcast.

 

will 330 ohm resistors do the job? i cant find 380 anywhere

 

Should be fine

 

Dreamcast now! Who is excited?

 

And even after getting the expropriate parts, it STILL gets stuck on the dial tone, 330 resistors .47 uf capacitor, tried with 2 different batteries after resetting numerous times, every single time it failed on dial tone generation, (@Jon, if you ever start making line voltage inducers rather than selling the whole kit, you have at least one probable buyer), here is a blurry picture of my dreampi and line voltage inducer just in case i did something obviously wrong, though i followed the instructions to the best of my understanding

 

Hmm, I can't quite see where the negative wire is going to, but I guess it just goes to the resistor and then to the other leg of the capacitor? I can't see where the resistor is though...

These are my suggestions:

1. If you have a landline telephone, connect it in place of the dreamcast and then turn on the DreamPi. When both lights come on you should be able to hear the dial tone down the phone.
2. I don't think that it matters, but maybe try reversing the polarity of the battery (e.g. swap positive and negative)
3. Potentially try wiring 2 batteries to form 18v input. This is necessary for PAL, but it might actually just be necessary for some USB modems. Test this with a cheap landline phone before your DC, I don't want you blowing your modem, especially as you have a 330 Ohm resistor and I've only tested 18v at 380 Ohm.

As for manufacturing line voltage cables, I'll have an announcement on this over the next few weeks

 

ok, the problem im guessing is just the phone line cable itself, its well over a decade old, and when i went to 18V because we don't have a landline, nothing changed, ill build another line voltage inducer soon, as for polarity, i rearranged the parts to look exactly like the example photos, and as stated, nothing happened differently

 

It's also possible you have cold solder joints somewhere in the inducer. Since your wire you're soldering to is orange, maybe that isn't the wire that handles the electricity. I think they're supposed to be red. Try another newer phone line

I'm building one of these next week probably, hopefully I don't have the same issues

 

thats the camera being stupid, its actually a red wire

 

I've considered selling just the line voltage adapter...once I sell through my inventory of complete kits (I'm not breaking up a kit to sell just the adapter -- then I'll be stuck with extra Pis I won't be able to unload) I'll think about it again. Problem is, the line voltage adapter is the biggest pain in the butt to build, and I don't want to scale that operation -- selling complete kits throttles sales to a time commitment I can handle a bit better.

 

I thought my phone cable was 4 wire, but it's 2 wire with a green and red wire. Can I still build the voltage inducer with no snags? Or should I just buy a 4 wire cable?

 

I'm fairly sure the outer two wires are only used when using a phone extension so you should be OK... But I'm not 100% on that...

 

Correct, that's for a second line.

 

Dreamcast Now! is out! http://blog.kazade.co.uk/2016/01/dreampi-11-with-dreamcast-now-released.html

 

@kazade this is what you're using yeah? http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dell-Co...373865?hash=item2eea6af5a9:g:tVIAAOSw7hRWO5rR

 

Mine's unbranded but I'm told that one works

 

I put together my voltage inducer and it works great with my USB DGC modem. Outstanding job. My successful connect was coupled with the proper DreamPipe redirect on PlanetWeb 2.0, thanks for doing that

Edit: When using web browser, it says "Unable to contact host. Could not look up it's name". Everything was working before, is it possible I need a new 9v?

Edit: Yes I can connect over the modem, but nothing is being transferred from internet. Tested with PSO and browser. It was working before. Perhaps it is the battery, the one I'm using was already used a bit. I'll try with a new one tomorrow

 

So 1.1 errors on start-up almost every time.
In no-daemon mode, I get ERROR after AT+VTX and it just hangs. Even commenting out AT+VTX, it doesn't show an ERROR, but hangs at OK.
The modem never finishes setting up.

Update:
When this occurs, I initially thought it was hanging because nothing changed on the screen or the modem (second light stays off), however, the code does move on to the update() method and thinks its trying to send the tone (I put a log message in to see it happening.)

The problem still seems to be in the while loop in the send_command function, as I can increase my chances of getting to "CONNECT" by messing with this loop. In this build, once I get to "CONNECT" I seem to be able to dial fine every time.

Right now, I'm staying with my modified 0.98 image, that handles incomplete modem responses, but adds your DNS feature. No Dreamcast Now for me -- I'd rather be able to connect every time.
If you can't fix this, I'll look into back-porting the dcnow to 0.98 for the rest of us.

This occurs on 4 different Pis, and 4 different modems and 3 different (known good) voltage inducers. It does appear to be similar in behavior to the previous timing issue. I skipped 0.99 and only tried 1.0 briefly, so I'm not sure how long its been around, but here's my modified 0.98 that works reliably on all 6 different hardware combinations that have gone through my workshop in the past month.