Problem with the serial connection to wl-500gp v2

Discussion about my Wifi Radio project at http://mightyohm.com/wifiradio/ or my WL-520gU talk at NOTACON.
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dija
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 10:47 am

Problem with the serial connection to wl-500gp v2

Post by dija »

Hello everyone,
I got me a Asus wl-500gp v2 and want build a radio from it following this great tutorial.

Unfortunately, right away I have some Problems. For the serial connection I use the ftdi ttl-232r-3v3 cable and it works if I short circuit it's rx and tx pin. But when I connect the cable to the 500gp v2 nothing happens. I'm using coolterm and also tried zterm both with 115200 8N1.

I triple and quadrupel checked if the ports are connected according to the tutorial decription. So that's not the Problem.

Has anyone an idea what I can try else?

Thanks
Dirk
OpenMP3
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2012 12:22 am

Re: Problem with the serial connection to wl-500gp v2

Post by OpenMP3 »

Hi Dija,

this WiFi Radio is a quite interesting (and funny) idea.
I'm also interested on building such internet music play using WL-500gp v2, using the dd-wrt.

Following your post, do you have any site or blog, explaining how you have done it?
For the moment I can not help on your Serial Connection problem, as I've not started yet.
jeroen94704
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:27 am
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Re: Problem with the serial connection to wl-500gp v2

Post by jeroen94704 »

Ghostpilot
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 4:05 am

Re: Problem with the serial connection to wl-500gp v2

Post by Ghostpilot »

I second what Dija writes above.
I got an Asus WL-500gP V2. I got myself an ftdi ttl-232-3v3 cable and got to work according to the steps in tutorial series.
Sadly it seems the ftdi cable prevent the router from booting while its connected. If I then unplug the router remove the ftdi cable and plug the router back in again it boots and lights are flashing.
With the ftdi cable in place nothing happens. At best I get a couple of lines of garbage on the terminal at the moment I plug the ftdi cable in on the header (while the router is off, no power cord in).

I double checked the WL-500gP V2 pinout against this thread..
I also tried to reverse the tx/rx cables from the ftdi cable as suggested in this thread, but still nothing.

The router does boot when the cable is not connected. Any ideas what might be going on here?

EDIT:
I also saw this thread about bad capacitors in the routers PSU (which is just a so called wall wart). I took a flat sharp screwdriver and hacked and pried my way into the sealed plastic case and found that the capacitor they talked about in the thread above was indeed buldging and was even cracked at the top.
I have just found a suitable replacement cap in my parts box and will replace the bad one and see if that helps. Regadless if it did help or not I'll report back so you'll know.
Last edited by Ghostpilot on Tue Jan 29, 2013 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ghostpilot
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 4:05 am

Re: Problem with the serial connection to wl-500gp v2

Post by Ghostpilot »

It was a total success. I replaced a faulty capacitor in the PSU (wall wart) according to this post. I too couldn't find the exact match on the value of the capacitor so I used an 1500uF 16V I got from an old dead PC motherboard. Now I am currently watching the boot messages of the router in a Putty-window through the ftdi usb-serial cable.

If you too have problems with getting the serial connection to work, it could very well be that the PSU capacitor is bad and the router simply isn't getting enough power and not your serial header soldering. That solder job is very simple after all, so it shouldn't ruin the router even if you aren't very good at soldering.
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