PfSense on a Celestix S-X MSA 4000

_Adrian_

Following…

pkirkovsky

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.

pkirkovsky

I have a couple of Celestix boxes with intact stock software. Will be posting USB captures soon, stay tuned…

HammyHavoc

@pkirkovsky:

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?

rudelerius

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.

rudelerius

Of any help: https://www.astaro.org/19475-post1.html ?

stephenw10

Looks like a binary Linux driver they're using. Not much use in pfSense/FreeBSD.

Steve

rudelerius

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?

rudelerius

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.

rudelerius

Oops/

Celestix S-X MSA 4000 Windows LCD driver info:

…
Manufacturer: Varitronix
Model: MDLS-40263-LV-B-LED
Product: LCD Character Display Modules
Character Count x Line: 40 x 2

yeyus

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 COLLECTION

If 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.

yeyus

Got it working!

twisted2k3

The alert LED is GPIO. Here's the linux source. Please share back if anyone can get it to work on FreeBSD.

#include <stdio.h>#include <stdlib.h>#include <sys io.h="">/* for outb() and inb() */

#define IOADDR 0x50e

void usage()
{
printf("ngled [0|1|2]\n");
printf(" 0 : off \n");
printf(" 1 : on \n");
printf(" 2 : blink \n");
printf("\nShows status if no command is passed.\n");
exit(1);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
if (iopl(3) < 0) {
printf("iopl fail\n");
return;
}

if (argc < 2)
{
if ( inb(0x51a) == 0x84 ) printf("2\n");
else if ( inb(IOADDR) == 0x7b ) printf("0\n");
else printf("1\n");
return;
} else if ( argc > 2 ) usage();

switch (*argv[1])
{
case '0':
/fprintf(stderr, "OFF!!");/
outb(inb(0x50e)&0x7f,IOADDR);
outb(0x4,0x51a);
break;

case '1':
/fprintf(stderr, "ON!!");/
outb(inb(0x51a)&0x7f,0x51a);
outb(inb(0x50e)|0x80,IOADDR);
break;
case '2':
outb(inb(0x50e)&0x7f,IOADDR);
outb(inb(0x51a)|0x80,0x51a);
break;
default:
usage();
}

return 0;
}</sys></stdlib.h></stdio.h>

pkirkovsky

@HammyHavoc:

@pkirkovsky:

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. ;- )

Sorry this took so long!

Here is a ZIP file containing captures of LCD and jogdial activity:
https://kirkovsky.com/junkbin/celestix.zip

This activity was captured on the stock Windows system that comes with these boxes. Included in the ZIP is USBLyzer (Windows only AFAIK) format, HTML & CSV export from USBLyzer, and standard pcap USB capture format (should be Wireshark compatible). Hope this helps!

@HammyHavoc:

Also noticed a red LED flashes above the exclamation symbol, does this happen on yours too?

Yes, this happens on mine too. It looks like there's some kind of watchdog function that allows the OS to tell the LCD module not to flash that LED, but if no signal is being sent it flashes constantly.

pkirkovsky

@yeyus:

If 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.

I have default/stock system images for both Windows and Linux (recovery partition) of the ScorpioX machines (the Celestix MSA/WSA/etc and certain RSA-branded boxes all share the same base platform).

The Linux recovery partition has some control binaries and kernel modules (a module for the LCD + jogdial and a module for the alert LED). The Windows side has basically the same setup, but the display/jogdial/LED are all rolled into one driver binary.

I don't want to widely distribute these due to copyright concerns. PM me for further details.

brmiller

@yeyus:

Got it working!

Was this Linux or FreeBSD?

EDIT: Must be Linux; hidtest-hidraw appears to be a https://github.com/signal11/hidapi utility. I'm curious what the equivalent FreeBSD approach is - when I looked at LCDProc, the [pfSense] config asked a lot of questions I didn't know!

rudelerius

@twisted2k3:

The alert LED is GPIO. Here's the linux source….

@stephenw10 - your WGXepc program set GPIO values for the arm/disarm LED on the WG FB boxes, didn't it? (I don't know much about this….) Could the program be used in similar way to probe the GPIO for the LCD/Keyboard controls of this device?

pkirkovsky

Here are the kernel modules and utility scripts for the LCD and warning LED from the Linux restore partition on my Celestix device. Running strings suggests that these are under GPL, so I'm putting them here:

https://kirkovsky.com/junkbin/MSA2000i_ScorpioX.zip

NightShaman

Any progress on this? I would love to see it working. Just picked up a wsa-4200, and all that is left is the LCD :)