Farmbot network troubleshooting

This section will be dedicated to troubleshooting connection issues.

SSH Access?

FarmBot does not expose SSH. The Linux distro that FarmBot uses does not offer any useful utilities for an end user. (IE there is no apt-get, bash, top, init, etc) This is to make FarmBot more robust, secure and to make development easier. Development/debug builds do expose a console on the onboard UART port of the Raspberry Pi. Production builds expose logs on the UART port, but no interactive console.

Does Farmbot support WPA-EAP (Enterprise) networks?

Yes as of version 7.0, FarmBot supports most common implementations of WPA-EAP.

What ports does FarmBot require to operate?

As of writing FarmBot requires the following ports to be open on your network.

  • AMQP: 5672
  • HTTP(S): 80 + 443

See this document for the most up to date information.

On FarmBot Genesis 1.4 check the Blue LED communication light. If the Blue LED is off then you have blocked ports. Please check the documentation to learn more about the LEDs.

As an extension of that list, at least the following domains are required to be accessible in the default configuration:

  • my.farm.bot (Regular operations such as syncing, etc)
    • FarmBot’s message broker, the url of which is subject to change.
  • nerves-hub.org (Over the air updates)
  • pool.ntp.org (time synchronization)

Why does FarmBot disconnect from WiFi?

There are an almost infinite amount of possibilities but here are some of the most common reasons:

The WiFi password provided to FarmBot was incorrect.

This should be pretty apparent when connecting to the Configuration utility.

The credentials provided to FarmBot were incorrect.

This should be pretty apparent when connecting to the Configuration utility.

FarmBot is out of range of the WiFi access point.

This can happen if configured while the gantry is closer to the access point then moved away. (We had this problem when developing FarmBot XL.

There is too much interference between FarmBot and the WiFi access point.

This will present itself as a “out of range” error, but will be more intermittent. FarmBot being outside can subject it to more wireless interference than normal. The Raspberry PI is very subjective to external interference as the antenna built onto the device is too small, and it is underpowered.

Some things that can effect FarmBot (or any WiFi device) are:

Other internal Network errors

Many other things can happen to FarmBot that aren’t directly related to WiFi quality:

  • Timeouts connecting on slow connections
  • DNS resolution failures. (Translating one of the above urls to an IP Address)
  • Router blocking a url/connection.
  • FarmBot services down. (Not very often)
  • If wired via ethernet, was the cable disconnected?
  • A bug in the software. (PS If you think you’ve found a bug, please let us know)

@fuzzynickel Wrote up an amazing post describing what exactly is required for FarmBot to get online at a very high level. (IE not specific to FarmBot exactly, but any networked system structured similarly to FarmBot. Check that post out here.

Known bugs/issues in FarmBot OS relating to Networking

  • FarmBot’s clock will skew over time.
  • Under unknown circumstance the Raspberry PI’s WiFi driver actually crashes. This is rare, but it does happen. Raspberry Pi foundation does not seem interested in investigating/fixing this issue.
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