SpreadPi and Wireless

[jbaiter]

This issue was originally filed by @duerig in the Spreads issues: DIYBookScanner/spreads#134

We do a good job of bootstrapping SpreadPi onto a wired network. But not on a wireless one. Adding wireless support means the following packages/configuration (via Jonathan Campbell):

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wpasupplicant
firmware-ralink (this installs the firmware for my particular wirless usb device - other wireless will need different)

I then added the following to /etc/network/interfaces with the following for wpa-psk:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
   wireless-mode managed
   wpa-ssid myssid
   wpa-psk mykey

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But the problem is the ssid/key for a wifi network. Without network access, the user cannot set these parameters. And ideally, we want to allow users to use SpreadPi more or less as an appliance even if they don't have detailed knowledge of Unix.

So, a few possibilities:

(1) Detect when there is no network connection (or when using a wifi adapter rather than a typical ethernet) and notify the user via the camera screen.

(2) Have the user enter this information in a (laborious) way via the camera controls and screen.

(3) Have the user plug in a USB keyboard and use that combined with the camera screen to enter ssid/password.

(4) Parameterize the image in some way such that the user could run a program on their (WIndows or Mac) PC that would modify the .img file to have the appropriate ssid/password.

(5) After creating the image, instruct the users to run a program which modified the card after the image has been written to it to add the config information.

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I don't plan to act on any of this immediately. Just brainstorming ideas on how to make this scenario work for those who aren't necessarily comfortable with Linux and just want a Spread appliance.

[jbaiter]

I think that (5) is the way to go.
The first partition of the fully flashed SD-Card (/boot) has a regular FAT32 file system that can be read from every OS without hassle.
We ship a small flashing utility with the image (Python + Tk or Qt) that handles the writing of the SD-Card and additionally writes a spreadpi.txt file onto the /boot partition that contains information like wireless configuration, a static ip address for the wired ethernet, etc.
We then add an init-script to the distribution that checks for this file and modifies the appropriate configuration files.

[meelash]

Personally, from a ux perspective 2 seems the most straightforward, as long as it's a one time thing and the network is remembered.

But what about having spreadpi create its own ad hoc wireless network. Then user just connects to that from their pic, etc. is this possible with rasbpi hardware?