ETH01-Evo ethernet

[canberradj]

Hi brains trust,

I wonder whether anyone can point me in the right direction? I have a bunch of ETH01-Evo PoE boards, which have a DM9051 ethernet port. These are supported SPI ethernet interfaces according to ESP32 reference documentation (PHY_DM9051), but I'm having no luck getting the interface initialised.

Cutting out all the cruft, I have this as code to try to get the interface:

import network
from machine import Pin, SPI

spi = SPI(1, sck=Pin(7), mosi=Pin(10), miso=Pin(3))
lan = network.LAN(spi=spi, phy_type=network.PHY_DM9051, phy_addr=0, cs=Pin(9), int=Pin(8))

But as far as I get is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 5, in <module>
OSError: esp_eth_driver_install failed with invalid argument

I've looked high and low for a library reference that tells me what arguments are expected, and come up with nothing besides what's here: https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp32/quickref.html#esp32-network-lan

Can anyone offer advice on how they got ethernet working on an ETH01-Evo board? Or otherwise tell me how I can look up the Micropython function definitions to understand what I'm getting wrong? For info I've got Micropython v1.25 installed on this board.

Thanks,
Dave.,

[robert-hh]

Did you try other values for phy_addr?

[robert-hh]

There is Reset for the DM9051 at EPS32 GPIO6. Try to supply the reset pin as well. It cannot hurt to configure CS (OUT, value=1), INT(IN) and Reset (OUT, value=1) beforehand.

[robert-hh]

Looking at a schematic, there is a signal called ETH_PWR which is applied to Pin 9 of the DM9051. That must be high for normal operation. That signal applies as well to the LEDs at the RJ45 connector. I cannot tell from the schematics, if that is high - 3.3V.

[canberradj]

I can't thank you enough @robert-hh. I'd tried reset=Pin(6) as an argument, and also tried different values of phy_addr, but not together. Lo and behold, the combination works! So far tested with just webrepl, but will pull into my project shortly.

For the benefit of others who might be beating their heads against the same issue, here's the bare bones code I've got working on my eth01-evo, firmware ESP32_GENERIC_C3-20250415-v1.25.0:

import network, machine
from machine import Pin, SPI

spi = SPI(1, sck=Pin(7), mosi=Pin(10), miso=Pin(3))
lan = network.LAN(spi=spi, phy_type=network.PHY_DM9051, phy_addr=1, cs=Pin(9), int=Pin(8), reset=Pin(6))
lan.active(True)
print(lan.ipconfig('addr4'))

[canberradj]

Ohhh, this is really trying my patience again. Same code (as above answer) on same device is now throwing:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 5, in <module>
OSError: esp_eth_driver_install failed

This worked 24hrs ago on this very hardware. Had an IP address, was able to ping it on the network, and even connect to webrepl.

[robert-hh]

I have seen this error when doing a LAN restart after soft reset. Does that error happen too after hard reset or power cycle?

[canberradj]

I was just about to say, once I removed power that was being provided by the USB-serial adapter and powered my ETH01-Evo via PoE, everything worked perfectly. So you're on the money again Robert - a full power cycle was the answer.

[robert-hh]

Since that is a software issue, hard reset should work as well. But lacking a reset button at that board, that would require pulling the EN pin low. Instead, a call to esp_eth_driver_install() being called through a nic.deinit() method or at soft_reset would do the same, but that's missing in the code base.