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Just some things I found confusing as I tried to get my new OpenSprinkler Beaglebone up and running…
First, the README.txt suggests that you copy the SD card image to at least a 2GB card, boot it and you are done. What’s not documented is that once you’ve booted the card, scripts are run that automatically copy the image from the SD card to the on-board flash memory. This happens because the zero-length file flash-eMMC.txt exists in the boot partition on the SD card. That’s ok because I’d rather boot from flash anyway but it would be nice to know this is happening in case I had data or another boot image on the flash that I didn’t want to lose while trying out the pre-configured SD image.
Another problem with this behavior is, if you used a 2GB card to create the pre-configured boot SD, the script prepares for copying the image to flash by first copying /boot and / to /tmp/boot and /tmp/rootfs, respectively. This will fill up the filesystem on a 2GB card long before it completes the copy to flash so if the auto-copy to flash behavior was intentional you needed to specify a minimum 4GB SD card in the README.txt.
Last, it would be nice if all the default user accounts and passwords needed are documented in the README.txt. I discovered the default login account/password (ubuntu/temppwd) eventually while watching one of the introductory videos. It wasn’t obvious anywhere what the userid and password were for the Mobile Web App. Eventually, I figured out it was the same as the default login but what was confusing was that I’d changed the default password immediately after logging in and when I tried ubuntu/
on first logging into the mobile app it failed. Other than this, thanks for all the work that went into the pre-configured image. It made getting my sprinkler system up and running much easier.
Thanks. Those are great comments, will definitely take them into account when I update the files next time.
Some notes regarding your comments:
1. About flash eMMC: to be honest, I was quite confused in the beginning myself how it works. I had thought that it’s like RPi: you pop in the SD card and that’s it. Later I discovered that you need to press the boot button when starting, and wait for about 10 minutes for it to flash into the internal eMMC. So I updated the instructions but perhaps there were some earlier instructions, particularly what I said in the video were outdated.2. Hmm, I have always used 2GB uSD card for testing and it seems to work fine. Will check again.
3. The password is not documented in the README.txt, instead, it’s documented in the homepage after the Bone boots from the pre-configured image. I’ve planned it this way so users will only see the relevant instructions step by step. For example, README.txt only describes how to install the pre-configured SD card; after the installation, the homepage describes how to run the interval program, and use the mobile web app, and there are further links to the user manual of the interval program etc. There are lots of information and I hope not to overwhelm the user right in the beginning by putting them all in the README.txt. So I can definitely put the password in the README.txt, but I just want to explain the stories behind 🙂
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