koshersalt
Community Member
At the 1:39 mark, I wonder if this "proprietary" wireless dongle is the the reason for connection issues...
So I opened up my Apex...
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At the 1:39 mark, I wonder if this "proprietary" wireless dongle is the the reason for connection issues...
jsker
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What chip is in there, the raspberry?
At the 1:39 mark, I wonder if this "proprietary" wireless dongle is the the reason for connection issues...
Reefcowboy
Well-Known Member
Lol, loving this
koshersalt
Community Member
Says STM32F437 on it.
koshersalt
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jsker
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Thank you
redddogg69
Community Member
But what does that mean?
redddogg69
Community Member
Is that Good, Bad? I'm not quite that tech savvy, to make heads or tails of it.
redddogg69
Community Member
Thanks Daeron, I have a buddy who is into the raspberry pi thing. I'll see if i can get him to look at this and make some sense out of it tomorrow. I own the Vertex Cerebra and a thread over on RC led me to looking at this controller as a comparison.
redddogg69
Community Member
I was able to have breakfast with my tech buddy this morning and show him this post and the pics of the Apex, while he isn't an aquarium guy (I'm working on that lol). He was able to make some comments on the pics and what little info i was able to give him, and a few points others made here. Here is what he had to say.
"I believe the OP noting the 1:39 was referring to the “off the shelf solution” for the “Wireless”!
Looking closely you can see a Wi-Fi Dongle in the pictures.
From what I can see the board itself is most likely an off the shelf solution with ARM Cortex 4 core.
Again without having the device in hand I can only guess that this was a work around to not develop USB communication for the whole device. F437 has USB, Ethernet MAC, Temperature… this way the sandwiched board in the picture has USB and can use an off the shelf USB dongle without the need to develop USB for the whole device. It also seems like it is further retrofitted with a few more connectors; BNC, RJ11… not sure what their purpose is without looking at the device.
F437 is not a bad chip, It can be a low cost solution for low requirement devices since it doesn’t embed a TFT controller interface.
As far as why the dongle is there!!? I have no idea! As a design stand point it makes no sense to hide the Dongle in the enclosure. Placing the dongle outside the enclosure will allow better signal reception as well as the ability to replace a faulty dongle.
Hiding the Dongle seems intentional I cannot think of any plausible reason to do so."
"I believe the OP noting the 1:39 was referring to the “off the shelf solution” for the “Wireless”!
Looking closely you can see a Wi-Fi Dongle in the pictures.
From what I can see the board itself is most likely an off the shelf solution with ARM Cortex 4 core.
Again without having the device in hand I can only guess that this was a work around to not develop USB communication for the whole device. F437 has USB, Ethernet MAC, Temperature… this way the sandwiched board in the picture has USB and can use an off the shelf USB dongle without the need to develop USB for the whole device. It also seems like it is further retrofitted with a few more connectors; BNC, RJ11… not sure what their purpose is without looking at the device.
F437 is not a bad chip, It can be a low cost solution for low requirement devices since it doesn’t embed a TFT controller interface.
As far as why the dongle is there!!? I have no idea! As a design stand point it makes no sense to hide the Dongle in the enclosure. Placing the dongle outside the enclosure will allow better signal reception as well as the ability to replace a faulty dongle.
Hiding the Dongle seems intentional I cannot think of any plausible reason to do so."
slief
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As somebody that builds servers, workstations and embedded systems for a living, I can think of lots of reasons why the dongle is hidden within the enclosure and not accessible..
First, if you add a seperate USB connection for the dongle to the bottom of the unit, inevitably somebody will plug the USB WiFi dongle into the aquabus connection which also has a female USB-A style plug but is proprietary. That would potentially damage the dongle. A worse scenario would be that inevitably, somebody will plug the aquabus cable in the USB dongle connection which can result in something getting damaged on the aquabus. Then there is the fact that somebody will remove it and loose it or not plug it back in all the way causing corruption during an update or unneeded troubleshooting for Neptune support. Then there is the fact that the bottom of the Apex already has a pretty dense set of connections. Add in the dedicated USB connector for the dongle and it becomes more crowded.
The USB wifi is an integral part of the Apex. It doesn't need to be removed and or handled for any reason. For that reason and the ones mentioned above, I see absolutely no need to have the WiFi dongle accessible from the outside. This is an embedded computer designed to manage a tank. This isn't a lap top or computer for general use. As such, having a dongle like that embedded into the controllers enclosure makes complete sense.
ngvu1
Valuable Member
I think they use an off the shelf USB dongle for their wifi solution. You can pull that usb dongle and plug it to a computer and pull its vendor and product ID to see what is being used 
p7willm
Active Member
Neptune spent a lot of time and money developing their operating system. They also spend time and money maintaining and supporting it. They get money by selling hardware along with the operating system. Taking their operating system without paying them would be stealing.
If they have lawyers worth anything it is probably illegal. The operating system is probably a copyrighted work.
Having developed it gives Neptune the moral right, IMHO, to control its use.
If they have lawyers worth anything it is probably illegal. The operating system is probably a copyrighted work.
Having developed it gives Neptune the moral right, IMHO, to control its use.
Possibly, there are a lot of grey areas in copyright law at the moment. However, I highly doubt being able to modify code or hardware related to their OS is illegal atm.
I don't think any one suggested stealing it. Just modifying it.
