wireless cape bricks the beaglebone

Hi Robert,

I don't know the answer, but I know how to begin troubleshooting such types of issues.

It will be worth removing any cape (in case it is interfering with the boot mode pins) and trying to start up the BBB without it.

If that doesn't work, you could try other things like checking the supply and new image, but really you'll likely need a USB UART adapter connected to the serial console pins on the BBB. so that you can see what Linux is printing out upon startup, in case it is getting stuck somewhere. Ultimately you may need to burn a fresh image and try that, if it is getting stuck due to (say) corruption. But you won't know that for sure, until the serial output is monitored.

Brink from my perspective means the board will no longer function thus it is like a brink laying on the table.  Is this the situation you are in now, or does the BB Black boot without the Wireless Cape installed?

Which Wireless Cape do you have?

The notes you have are more than likely from an older OS version for the BB Black, so if you are using the latest Debian 9.5 build, then I believe you do not have to perform these these steps; it should work out of the box.

Thanks so much for the replies. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

I am trying to get the Element 14 wireless cape working on the Beagle bone black with the latest debian.

These are new items purchased in the last 30 days.

After making the changes to the /boot/uEnv.txt as instructed in the readme file I was not able to access the board via Putty again.

Power lights blinking but no access. That OS will need to be replaced. 

So I got an SD card and modified that. With the cape plugged in I was not able to access to the board via putty and HDMI is disabled

but removing the cape allowed me access to the card again, Thanks for that advice.

So far this has been a total let down. I am used to buying something plugging it in and it working if you follow the directions. Guess thats not the case.

"but really you'll likely need a USB UART adapter connected to the serial console pins on the BBB. so that you can see what Linux is printing out upon startup"

I don't have one and it seems that is the only solution since the directions on the element 14 website do not work.

When  you look online you get a bunch of conflicting information so that's not helping.

I will document this after its working as I try combinations of guesses and who knows what, to get this thing working.

So far no luck.

Why is something sold so hard to install

Yeah, the BB Black is really just a dev board so it's basically "Plug and Pray".   However, many times the documentation for a device is for a specific image version so an attempt to use something else usually involves some discovery from the user.

Have you tried it without making the edits in the uEnv.txt?  That is, just leave it at the defaults from where the image was burnt on the uSD card.

Have you tried the BeagleBone forums?

Yes I have tried doing this without the uEnv.txt edits. The wifi cape lights do not even turn on and

worst part is when I get the turned on, I can not log into the beagleboard

Hi Robert,

Are you powering via USB?

If you are, then this discussion mentions that it may not provide enough power:

Wireless cape issues

It is almost inevitable to have issues in future too, depending on what you do, so a multimeter, and a USB UART is near mandatory when working with SBCs. Otherwise, it is guesswork.

Try changing the dtb line from:

dtb=am335x-boneblack-overlay.dtb

TO

dtb=am335x-boneblack-wl1835mod.dtb

Reference:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless-connectivity/other-wireless/f/667/t/738811

I came across a lot of frustration from this discussion, from 2016, 2017, attached to the wireless cape readme file:

BBONE-GATEWAY-CAPE_README_11292016_v0 1.pdf

  (the discussion shows up below the pdf rendering)

M_Hudson points out the the cape enable line in uEnv.txt says to use "BB-BONE-WL183"

While the technical details for the wireless cape say on this page:

Wireless Connectivity Cape for BeagleBone Black

that it uses "WL1837MOD"

Is there a  dtb=am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb that would work???  Of course, you'd need that dtb file, and I don't see that the instructions say where the file would come from. I see on my BBB-Wireless (not the cape, but the BBB with wireless on the main board), that I have the file mentioned above by Jon Morss,  am335x-boneblack-wl1835mod.dtb  but no wl183 or wl1837.  This is with the debian 9.5 verson (October 2018) .  Maybe an older version of debian had the correct dtb?

Hi thanks for the reply Allen.

The am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb file is there in the directory /boot/dtbs/4.14.71-ti-r80

All you have to do is use it, and I have tired it with the uboot_overlay_addr0=/lib/firmware/BB-GATEWAY-1837-00A0.dtbo

and without.

Both fail to allow me to Putty back into the Beagle.

When I use am335x-boneblack-wl1837mod.dtb the wifi unit light up (which seems operational ?) and I can no longer putty to the Beagle.

Its a brick.

Can not see video output either.  It becomes useless. I have reloaded the OS about 4 times so far today onto the SD card because the

wrong combination just stops access to the board altogether.

I need help..

TL;DR but, following the links from here:

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-79264/l/wireless-connectivity-cape-for-beaglebone-black#documents

leads to here:

WL18xx First Time Getting Started Guide (Beaglebone) - Texas Instruments Wiki

which leads to here:

WL1835 Cape on BeagleBone with MainLine Kernel Debian Filesystem - Texas Instruments Wiki

which gives instructions on how to build this for the BBB on Debian 8.1 (July 2015 version).  I'm not sure this helps, it's yet another rabbit hole to get lost in.