PfSense on a Celestix S-X MSA 4000
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Have just got my hands on a MSA3000 and I'm also interested in getting the LCD/jog wheel running with pfSense. Sadly my unit arrived without HDD so I don't have a working Windows system to drive the LCD otherwise I could have hooked up a logic analyser to see what messages the driver receives from the PC.
nanobot do you still have access to the executables and kernel modules? I wonder if we might be able to decompile the scorpioLCD and led kernel modules and get a bit of information as to how the PC talks to the LCD driver…?
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It's very unlikely that the Celestix engineers designed a completely new custom protocol and display for their box. It's probably using common protocols and likely off the shelf components. It may have some custom firmware to drive the control wheel and leds.
At least some of the hardware appears to be using standard USB-serial converters so the first thing I would try would be to recompile the USB-Serial driver to recognise the USB IDs of the hardware in the box and see if you can talk to it from a terminal or read anything it's sending.Steve
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I agree it's probably nothing too complicated or proprietary. It enumerates as a USB HID device, the jog wheel sends out key codes when it's rotated or clicked - that's the easy bit! This is what Ubuntu makes of the device:
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0cb6:0002 Celestix Networks, Pte., Ltd Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x0cb6 Celestix Networks, Pte., Ltd idProduct 0x0002 bcdDevice 1.00 iManufacturer 1 CELESTIX NETWORKS iProduct 2 KEYBOARD + LCD iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 34 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 50mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 1 Boot Interface Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 1 Keyboard iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.00 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 62 Report Descriptor: (length is 62) Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Generic Desktop Controls Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x06 ] 6 Keyboard Item(Main ): Collection, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Application Item(Global): Report ID, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x07 ] 7 Keyboard Item(Local ): Usage Minimum, data= [ 0xe0 ] 224 Control Left Item(Local ): Usage Maximum, data= [ 0xe7 ] 231 GUI Right Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0 Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x08 ] 8 Item(Main ): Input, data= [ 0x02 ] 2 Data Variable Absolute No_Wrap Linear Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x08 ] 8 Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0 Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x68 ] 104 Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x07 ] 7 Keyboard Item(Local ): Usage Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0 No Event Item(Local ): Usage Maximum, data= [ 0x68 ] 104 F13 Item(Main ): Input, data= [ 0x00 ] 0 Data Array Absolute No_Wrap Linear Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield Item(Main ): End Collection, data=none Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x14 ] 20 Alphanumeric Display Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Alphanumeric Display Item(Main ): Collection, data= [ 0x01 ] 1 Application Item(Global): Report ID, data= [ 0x02 ] 2 Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x2c ] 44 Display Data Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x80 ] 128 Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x7f ] 127 Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x08 ] 8 Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x58 ] 88 Item(Main ): Output, data= [ 0x02 ] 2 Data Variable Absolute No_Wrap Linear Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield Item(Main ): End Collection, data=none Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered)There seem to be very few LCDs using a Cypress driver, I saw that the IOWarrior did and that's supported within LCDProc, I tried recompiling it to match the USB VID:PID of the Celestix device but it did not work. I guess that would have been too easy!
So I'm at a little bit of a loss at the moment, I haven't done any USB driver development before. I can't imagine the driver is that complex, but at the same time I don't know how to send character / raw data to a USB HID device. I've started looking at pyusb but it's very low level stuff…
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What I would do I were trying to design this…..
Use a standard keyboard controller IC for the jog wheel and LEDs (num,caps and scroll lock).
Use a standard USB-serial converter and connect that to a serial LCD.You have two USB devices there yes? One is detected as a keyboard already. There are programs in existence that use keyboard LEDs as indicators, it must be possible to try setting them manually. That should be an easy enough test.
The other USB device seen as ugen1.2 in the first posts here is probably the serial converter. I would try to recompile the cypress driver to recognise the USB vendor and product IDs used by it. If that works then try various LCDproc settings to talk to the LCD across it.Steve
Edit: I can't find a FreeBSD equivalent but in Ubuntu you can try using the setleds command.
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Actually it's just a single USB device (combined keyboard and LCD). The problem is there doesn't seem to be any standard way to interface with displays over HID, so without a working system to sniff it is next to impossible to reverse engineer the protocol they have used on the cypress microprocessor.
Probably the easiest solution, certainly time wise, would be to replace the microprocessor with something LCDproc does support, such as an FTDI FT232 chip. This would probably mean losing the jog wheel, though there should be a pin spare for the activity LED at least…
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On another subject I've been tinkering with different CPUs as the P4 3GHz mine came with by standard isn't the most energy efficient chip, and I know that some of the higher spec MSA boxes come with core 2 duo chips (E6420 I believe). I've tested the following:
Core2duo E6420 SLA4T (2.13GHz, 1066 FSB, 4M) - boots but unstable
Core2duo E6320 SLA4U (1.86MHz, 1066 FSB, 4M) - boots but unstable
Core2duo E4400 SLA98 (2.00GHz, 800 FSB, 2M) - boots, stable, BIOS reports incorrect speed?The E4400 gets reported at the BIOS as 50x10 = 500MHz! This is also reported in the OS I'm using to test (Ubuntu) but performance suggests it's actually running at the 2GHz. Doesn't look like it will be possible to run powerd in this sort of state however. You can set the FSB in the BIOS but this seems to get divided down by 4 for some reason with the E4400.
Not quite sure why the E6x20 1066 FSB chips aren't stable. It does take a lot to make them crash, I've been running memtest, mprime torture tests but the 'stress' command seems to reliably kill them given a few cycles. When they crash the system just halts, no input or output but the display remains frozen, very odd. The E4400 has been running with both mprime and the odd stress command for several hours now stable and has topped out at a core temp of 66c. All were tested with known good 2x 1Gb and 2x512Mb PC5300.
The stress command I have been using is
stress --cpu 8 --io 4 --vm 2 --vm-bytes 128M --timeout 10sAll these oddities suggest to me a BIOS issue, though I cannot find an update for it (perhaps unsurprisingly, it being a custom motherboard). If time permits I may try to extract the existing BIOS and see if there is anything that can be unlocked settings wise.
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I found the datasheets for the display they indicates that the module is using a "NT3881 or equivalent" display driver chip. on the LCDproc hardware page it indicates that that controller is compatible and supported under the hd44780.
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Varitronix%20PDFs/MDLS40263-01%20Specification.pdf
http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/hardware.php3
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Varitronix%20PDFs/MDL(S)40263.pdf
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Varitronix%20PDFs/Varitronix%20LCD%20Initialization%20Instructions.pdf -
Controlling the LCD itself is probably not a problem, there are drivers already in LCDproc for various hd44780 modes. The problem is controlling whatever it is connected to. It appears as a single USB device that does the leds and control wheel as well as the LCD.
Steve
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Following…
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Here's the pinout of the LCD module:
+--------------------+ PIN FUNCTION | 02 04 06 08 10 | +---+ +--------+ | | 01 USB 5v | 01 03 05 07 09 | 02 USB D- +--------| |--------+ 03 USB D+ 04 USB GND Connector on PCB 05 LED Green (Power) 06 LED Red (Fault) 07 LED Ambert (Disk) ++ 08 System Power (short to GND to boot machine) +--------------------+ 09 3v | 01 03 05 07 09 | 10 State detect ("System On" -> "System Ready") | | | 02 04 06 08 10 | USB is only enabled when "Ready" state is achieved +--------------------+ When module is outside of system, short pin 10 to any LED to force "Ready" state and USB communication Connector on cable -
If you want to replace the Cavium Nitrox miniPCI card you could go by using a
Soekris vpn1411 miniPCI card that is supported by pfSense. -
I have a couple of Celestix boxes with intact stock software. Will be posting USB captures soon, stay tuned…
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I have a couple of Celestix boxes with intact stock software. Will be posting USB captures soon, stay tuned…
How's this going? I received my MSA 4000 today, put pfSense on it, would like to get the front panel running and help where possible. ;- )
Also noticed a red LED flashes above the exclamation symbol, does this happen on yours too? -
I have one of these boxes as well as 2 x RSA Securid boxes (Celestix Scorpio) with the same LCD/jog wheel combo. It would be nice to have it all working nicely with lcdproc/pfsense. Nice work so far. : )
Following.
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Of any help: https://www.astaro.org/19475-post1.html ?
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Looks like a binary Linux driver they're using. Not much use in pfSense/FreeBSD.
Steve
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Ok. I feel like I've seen a (possibly Windows) driver for this before in searching around the web when I first got the box.
I think that I still have an in-tact system drive from the original appliance ,and I was able to find the driver details for the display/wheel in Windows, then research it online to find more information. I didn't know what to do with it once I found it, so I think I've long since deleted whatever it was I found. But if I found it once, I might possibly be able to find it again.
I'll have to dig up the drive that has the original Win2K3 install on it and see if I can find the driver info. If I can find the .inf file would that be of any help?
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The device is listed in Win2K3 as a Jungo lcd. The driver is windrvr6.sys. Googlefu: http://www.jungo.com/st/products/windriver/
Not sure if that helps or not. Let me know if I can provide anything else.
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Oops/
Celestix S-X MSA 4000 Windows LCD driver info:
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Manufacturer: Varitronix
Model: MDLS-40263-LV-B-LED
Product: LCD Character Display Modules
Character Count x Line: 40 x 2 -
I been doing some research on the same hardware that seems to be used by celestix all across it's product line.
For now I've been able to fetch some characteristics about the device:
- It's a composite USB HID device (Keyboard + Alphanumeric LCD pages)
- It will output 8 fields (1 bit each) when a keyboard event occurs.
- The input for the LCD is a 88 byte array probably some 8 byte control preamble followed to up to 80 characters (40x2 chars)
HID table for those interested:
USAGE_PAGE (Generic Desktop Controls) USAGE (Keyboard) COLLECTION (Application) REPORT_ID(1) USAGE_PAGE (Keyboard) USAGE_MINIMUM(Control Left) USAGE_MAXIMUM(GUI Right) LOGICAL_MINIMUM(0) LOGICAL_MAXIMUM(1) REPORT_SIZE(1) REPORT_COUNT(8) INPUT(Data, Var, Absolute, No Wrap, Linear, Preferred_State, No_Null_Position,Non_Volatile, Bitfield) REPORT_SIZE(8) REPORT_COUNT(1) LOGICAL_MINIMUM(0) LOGICAL_MAXIMUM(104) USAGE_PAGE (Keyboard) USAGE_MINIMUM(0) USAGE_MAXIMUM(104) INPUT(Data, Array, Absolute, No Wrap, Linear, Preferred_State, No_Null_Position,Non_Volatile, Bitfield) END COLLECTION USAGE_PAGE (Alphanumeric Display) USAGE (Alphanumeric Display) COLLECTION (Application) REPORT_ID(2) USAGE(Display Data) LOGICAL_MINIMUM(128) LOGICAL_MAXIMUM(127) REPORT_SIZE(8) REPORT_COUNT(88) OUTPUT(Data, Var, Absolute, No Wrap, Linear, Preferred_State, No_Null_Position,Non_Volatile, Bitfield) END COLLECTIONIf any of you have access to binaries (either windows or linux) please let me know because they can be very helpful in decoding the command schema for the LCD operation.
