Cisco Prototyping Lab Frequently Asked Questions Last Updated: 12 October 2017 Q. Is there a detailed equipment list available for the IoT Fundamentals labs that use the Prototyping Lab Kit? A. Yes, the detailed equipment list is available from both the IoT Fundamentals Course Resources and Cisco Prototyping Lab Resource pages. Q. Can I use a different Microcontroller (MCU) board instead of the SparkFun’s Redboard or Arduino Uno in the Prototyping Lab Kit? A. While technically it might be possible, the course content and labs are based on the SparkFun’s Redboard and the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit V3.3. Arduino Uno is compatible with SparkFun’s RedBoard – with the exception of the USB to Serial chip (FTDI vs Atmega16U2). Q. Can I use additional sensors and actuators beyond what is in the Prototyping Lab Kit? A. Yes. You will need to develop your own lab activities for these components and verify compatibility and usability with the Prototyping Lab components. Q. Can I use a different Single Board Computer (SBC) instead of the Raspberry Pi 3 in the Prototyping Lab Kit? A. While technically it might be possible, the course content and labs are based on the Raspberry Pi board version 3. Also the Prototyping Lab App Image is designed to run on Raspberry Pi boards and might not run on other boards. Q. What is the username and password for console access to the PL-App? Since PL-App is based on the Raspbian Raspberry Pi Linux distribution, the username and password are the same as the defaults for Raspbian: “pi/raspberry”. Remote access via ssh is disabled by default, should you enable it, it is highly recommended to change the default password. Q. The PL-App Launcher is unable to detect PL-App devices (Raspberry Pi) in the network. What should I do next? A. Please review the troubleshooting steps documented in the “Appendix: Troubleshooting PL-App” of the “3.2.2.3. Lab - Setting up PL-app with the Raspberry Pi” lab. Q. What is the difference between PL-App 1.0 and PL-App 2.0? A. PL-App 1.0 with the corresponding PL-App Image in version 0.5.3 provides a Python 2 development environment. PL-App 2.0 with the corresponding PL-App Image in version 2.0.0 provides a Python 3 development environment. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public. Page 1 of 2 Q. How can I check the version of the PL-App Image on the SD card? A. Using a text editor, open the “.chestnut\version” file on the SD card. E.g. on Windows, Start->Run-> notepad X:\.chestnut\version (replace X with the SD card drive letter). You can also check the PL-App Image version by clicking on the icon in the top right corner of the in the PL-App Jupyter web interface. Q. Is there an expiration date for the PL-App 1.0? A. Yes. For the PL-App 1.0, the last day to use it is 31st of March 2018. Users will be notified about the upcoming expiration starting from 1st of January 2018. Users should download a new version of the PL-App Image from the Cisco Prototyping Lab Resources page prior to the expiration date. Q. Why should I use a unique password that I am not using on any other sites as a PL-App device password? A. A security best practice is to use different passwords for different systems, so a compromise of a single password can be used to access only a single system. Users are accessing the PL-App interface on the Raspberry Pi over a standard http connection using their web browser. That opens a risk of network eavesdropping and listening for passwords over un-encrypted channels. © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public. Page 2 of 2