Raspberry Pi WiFi Setup

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pyronaught
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Raspberry Pi WiFi Setup

Post by pyronaught » Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:42 am

I'm trying to setup OctoPrint on a Pi 2 and can't seem to get the Wi-Fi working. I'm using a Wi-Pi USB stick but don't have a monitor hooked into the board so the only thing I have to go on are the lights for now. It looks like when it works properly the red light should be constantly on, the green light should be sort of blinking and a blue light in the Wi-Pi should be blinking. But I don't know for sure because I can't find that documented anywhere. When I boot up the board, the red light is constant, the green light blinks on and off for a while and the Wi-Pi has one brief blue flash and never blinks again, then the green light is mostly off with an occasional brief flash after that. I've got the network file configured correctly for my WEP settings on the router, which is really the only thing I can find related to Wi-Fi that needs to be configured. I suppose I'll just have to plug a monitor in because blinky lights just don't give any useful information. Anyone ever had this problem?
Last edited by pyronaught on Tue Apr 05, 2016 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jimc
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by jimc » Sat Apr 02, 2016 1:16 pm

never had a wifi issue with the pi :lol: :lol: :lol:

getting wifi working can be a real bear. the network file thing works for some and not for others. me being the latter. i have to delete the file then go into the supplicant and network interfaces file and rewrite the info there so it works. do you have a network scanner so you can see if its on the network and what the ip address is?

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pyronaught
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by pyronaught » Sat Apr 02, 2016 2:57 pm

I use Angry IP Scanner to check if it is on the network, and also the routers admin panel would show it too. I tried using an externally powered USB hub just to check if it was a power supply issue, but same problem there. My wall wart is 2.5 amps so I don't think power is an issue.

When you say you reenter the network settings manually, are you doing that on the Pi somehow? Some text editors have an annoying feature called "smart quotes" that will convert the quotes around your SSID and password to some other character, which is one thing that can cause the network file edits to fail. I've already checked for that though.

Kinda sucks having to scrounge up an extra keyboard, mouse and monitor just to find out what is going on.
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by jimc » Sat Apr 02, 2016 3:17 pm

yeah you have to hook it up to a monitor and boot to the command line. I don't have the info at the moment but there are 2 files you need to modify. one is "network interfaces" and the other is the "wpa supplicant". if you do a google search for setting up the wifi on a pi you will find it. there is a tutorial on adafruit somewhere which will tell you the file names and what to do. once you have the pi all set up and working then you don't have to hook to a monitor anymore. just be sure once your all setup use win32 disk imager or something similar to make a disk image of your sd card for backup

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pyronaught
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by pyronaught » Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:28 pm

I'm using this tutorial as the setup guide: http://www.instructables.com/id/Newbies ... /?ALLSTEPS

The SD image for the latest version of Octoprint doesn't have those two files you mention on it. There is only one file having to do with network setup, which is "octopi-network.txt". Does the Pi have its own on-board memory that is holding some other files? My interpretation of it was that the Pi boots off the SD card and uses it like an SSD hard drive.

I see you can buy some color touch screens on ebay for only $12 that plug into the DIP header. It's amazing how low cost this stuff is now.
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by jimc » Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:37 pm

you cant just put the sd card into a reader and see all the files. those network files are part of Linux which is installed on the card. you just cant see any of it through a card reader. all that txt file does is take the uncommented info you are putting there and transfer it into the wpa supplicant file and network interfaces file. you need to hook the pi to a monitor and boot to the command line. you aren't going to set the pi up without doing that.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-ra ... cidentalis

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pyronaught
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by pyronaught » Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:57 pm

I think my WiPi stick is just broken. When I hook up a monitor I can see the boot sequence goes into an infinite loop trying to do something with the WiPi stick that generates timeout errors. If I remove the WiPi stick, then it boots to the main menu with no errors.

What brand of WiFi stick are you using?
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by jimc » Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:05 pm

Edimax on the 2's and its built in on the 3. It will generally timeout if its not configured right but after the timeout it should go past that and finish the boot ending at the command line.

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pyronaught
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by pyronaught » Sat Apr 02, 2016 6:08 pm

This wasn't a connection timeout type thing, it looked like some kind of hardware problem having to do with interrupt handlers. After coming back with an error, it would sit for a few seconds and then try again over and over with the same error every time. I ordered two different brand adapters just to eliminate that source of problems and will have to try again tomorrow when they get here.

Thanks for the help!

I'm putting this other useful link here as another good resource on WiFi problems:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... hp?t=44044
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

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pyronaught
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Re: Octoprint LED Boot Sequence

Post by pyronaught » Sun Apr 03, 2016 7:25 pm

I've got a functioning WiFi stick now at least, but still struggling to get it to connect to the network. Out of three WiFi sticks, only the Edimax one didn't have that infinite error loop on startup. Panda and WiPi both had that same problem, so it seems like a hardware incompatibility issue and not a broken device issue. My router uses the old WEP security protocol, whereas it seems all the examples are for WPA. Does the Edimax WiFi dongle normally blink with a blue light when connected? Most of the time mine is not blinking, but the one time it did start blinking I still could not see the Pi on my routers connected device list.

I read where cutting the power to the Pi is not a good way to shut it down. Given that when using it as a printer controller and there is no monitor to type commands on, how do you shut this thing down? I was just going to wire it up so its power is cut when the power to the M2 is cut, but sounds like that is a bad idea. Plugging a monitor in and typing the shutdown command every time isn't very practical.
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

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