Troubleshooting a JNIOR Serially

Using the JNIOR should be a smooth process, only connecting an Ethernet cord to your network and finding it in the JNIOR support tool. Unfortunately, nothing always goes perfectly, and maybe you aren’t able to access your JNIOR via the Support Tools Beacon or an internet browser. Connecting to a JNIOR serially to the RS-232 port is a great way to troubleshoot when it’s no longer responding correctly. This post will briefly review how the JNIOR can be connected serially to access and hopefully fix this issue.

To access the JNIOR serially, a serial cable should be connected between the RS-232 port on the JNIOR and your computer. If you don’t have a serial port on your computer, you may need a serial to USB cable instead. Once connected, you can open a command line from the Support Tool in the Tools tab at the top left to open a serial connection. When doing this, make sure that the settings for the Serial Connection match what your JNIORs are. If you can’t check, the default settings for the connection are:

• Baud Rate: 115200
• DataBits: 8
• StopBits: 1
• Parity: None

NOTE: As of Support Tool 7.16, the command line has been replaced with a PuTTY terminal. Connection configuration should now be done through the PuTTY Configuration dialog before the terminal is opened. If PuTTY is installed, the PuTTY Configuration dialog will launch from the Tools -> Command Line option.

Once you have set the correct serial settings, you should have access to the JNIOR via the command line! If by chance you are trying to change the JNIOR’s IP because it’s using one that doesn’t work with your local network’s IP, you can change the IP of a JNIOR by using the ‘ipconfig’ command. Enter ‘ipconfig -a’ followed by a space and the IP address you are trying to change the JNIOR to. For example, if you are trying to change the JNIOR’s IP address to 10.0.0.201, you would use this in the command line: ‘ipconfig -a 10.0.0.201’.