Intel® Edison Connecting Ethernet over USB

Intel® Edison - Ethernet over USB

Overview

• This document will guide you through obtaining an IP address for the Intel® Edison board so you can program your board offline using the Intel® IoT Developer Kit IDEs.
• When you are in a busy or restricted network environment, you can connect to the Intel Edison board using the device mode micro-USB cable and a virtual Ethernet connection known as "Ethernet over USB". Ethernet over USB uses the RNDIS protocol.

Requirements

• Using this method will disable your computer's Wi-Fi* connection as long as Ethernet over USB is being used. This means that you will be working offline.
• To use Ethernet over USB, your Intel Edison board must have the micro switch toggled down towards the micro-USB ports and the top micro-USB cable plugged in.

Choose your Operating System:

Windows*

OS X*

Linux*

Instructions for Windows*

If you have the Intel Edison drivers installed, update your computer’s Network Adapter configuration with a static IP address to use Ethernet over USB.

If you have not already installed the drivers, visit the Intel Edison Download and Support Page.

1. View your Network Connections.
   
   In Windows 7 and below, go to Control Panel. Under Network and Internet, click View network status and tasks. Click Change Adapter Settings in the sidebar. In Windows 8, right-click the Windows Start menu button and select Network Connections.
2. Plug in the device mode micro-USB cable from your Intel Edison board to your computer (Figure 1).
    

   Figure 1. Plug in your board

3. Look for a network adapter with the label RNDIS. Right-click, then select Properties to configure its IP address.
4. From the list, select IPV4.
5. Change the IP information as follows:
   1. IP: 192.168.2.2
      
      If you get a system notification that 192.168.2.2 is taken, try any IP address from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.14. Do not use 192.168.2.15.
   2. Mask: 255.255.255.0
6. You can now ping your Intel Edison board on address 192.168.2.15 from your computer's command line. You can now also use PuTTY to SSH into the board at the same IP address.
   
   Note: The Intel® XDK IoT Edition IDE should automatically detect your board. Select 192.168.2.15 to upload your programs.

Instructions for OS X*

First, install the HoRNDIS (pronounced "horrendous") kernel extension to use Ethernet over USB via the RNDIS protocol on your Mac*. Then configure the network settings.

Install HoRNDIS

1. Get the latest version of HoRNDIS. Visit http://joshuawise.com/horndis#available_versions and click the HoRNDIS-rel[version].pkg (bytes) link for the latest version.
2. Double-click the downloaded HoRNDIS-rel[version].pkg to start the installation wizard.
3. Follow the installation wizard prompts. Click Next where needed.
4. Once you have finished with the installation wizard, you must restart your system for the changes to take effect.

Configure network settings

1. Open your Network preference settings (System Preferences → Network).
2. Plug in the device mode micro-USB cable from your Intel Edison board to your computer.
   1. You should see a "Multifunction Composite Gadget" show up in the Network settings side panel with a yellow dot status.
   2. Click the "Multifunction Composite Gadget" device with a yellow status dot.
3. For "Configure IPv4", choose "Using DHCP with manual address"
4. Change the IP information as follows:
   1. IP Address: 192.168.2.2
      
      If you get a system notification that 192.168.2.2 is taken, try any IP address from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.14. Do not use 192.168.2.15.
5. Subnet Mask: Keep at 255.255.255.0
6. You should then see the yellow status dot turn to green.
7. You can now ping your board on address 192.168.2.15 from a Terminal. You can now also use Terminal to SSH into the board at the same IP address.
8. The Intel XDK IoT Edition IDE should automatically detect your board. Select 192.168.2.15 to upload your programs.
   1. If you are on Mavericks, you may see numbered "Multifunction Composite Gadget" entries show up each time you plug in the same Intel Edison board. It is safe to delete old ones when done.

Instructions for Linux*

Use Terminal and the ifconfig command to forward connections to the IP address 192.168.2.2 through the USB cable.

1. Open a new Terminal window.
2. Plug in the device mode micro-USB cable from your Intel Edison board to your computer.
3. Use the ifconfig command to forward connections to the IP address 192.168.2.2 through the USB cable.
    

   $  sudo ifconfig usb0 192.168.2.2

You may be prompted for your user password.

You can now ping your board on address 192.168.2.15 from a Terminal. You can now also use Terminal to SSH into the board at the same IP address.

The Intel XDK IoT Edition IDE should automatically detect your Intel Edison board. Select 192.168.2.15 to upload your programs.

Troubleshooting

If you have any issues or questions, please go to Intel Edison Forum to post your questions and look for solutions.