USB Ethernet Adapter for Raspberry Pi

I’ve purchased 4 different USB 2.0 (& 3.0) Ethernet adapters, but none of them seem to be recognized by Resin OS.

I’m expecting to plug one in and have it appear as eth1 on the Host OS, but no dice.

Has anyone set up a second NIC using a USB adapter? If so, did you have to install device drivers? I am hoping to avoid that if possible since I believe the linux kernal should already include default drivers for USB Ethernet adapters.

Oddly, I tested it on a RevPi (https://revolution.kunbus.com/) with ResinOS and it worked like a champ with no configuration.

HI @jgentes,
on our Raspberry Pi 3 with Resin OS 2.12.6+rev1 we have tried the Apple USB-Ethernet adapter (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC704LL/A/apple-usb-ethernet-adapter) and it worked perfectly.

I can also confirm that the apple USB adapter also works plug and play on our BalenaFins. Pretty neat to plug it in, connect to the network, then watch the IP show up async in the Balena dashboard.

Make sure you check the list of adapters thoroughly. I will likely not come up as eth1 but under some other name. Mine comes up as enx9cebe84b585c on ubuntu

Somehow a number of replies more than a year after the original question… Why don’t I add another? :slight_smile: Just to say that I’ve just casually connected the following UGREEN adapter (no, I’m not getting any commission nor cashback, though I probably should look into that…) :slight_smile: to a Raspberry Pi 3 running balenaOS 2.38.0+rev1 and the adapter showed up as “eth1” and I was able to use it without problems:

root@6983a3f:~# dmesg
...
[84602.720179] usb 1-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 5 using dwc_otg
[84602.856024] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0b95, idProduct=1790
[84602.863248] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[84602.870897] usb 1-1.3: Product: AX88179
[84602.874902] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: ASIX Elec. Corp.
[84602.880207] usb 1-1.3: SerialNumber: 000000000001ED
[84603.276475] ax88179_178a 1-1.3:1.0 eth1: register 'ax88179_178a' at usb-3f980000.usb-1.3, ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet, 00:0e:c6:aa:cb:79
[84603.297012] usbcore: registered new interface driver ax88179_178a

root@6983a3f:~# ifconfig
...
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0E:C6:AA:CB:79  
          inet addr:192.168.2.5  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::fa95:da2e:c8ad:1c18/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:172 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:813 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:49301 (48.1 KiB)  TX bytes:122122 (119.2 KiB)
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I have node red with balena running on my raspberry, but I would like to get modbus tc ip via ethernet cable. I am thinking of putting a usb to ethernet adapter in that case, how could I assign it a fixed IP?

@rojasyal what you’ll need to do is add another connection profile, we have documentation on that here: Network Setup on balenaOS - Balena Documentation

The important part will be setting the interface-name part correctly, such that it targets your USB ethernet adapter. You’d be able to get the interface name by opening a terminal to the hostOS from the dashboard and running ifconfig.

Hope this helps!