Wifi Dongle

robin one issue was that Yosemite does not allow WPA-keys for ad hoc networks)

seems silly hey? tell me about it!

robin Regardless, would you say getting a small router is the safer option here, rather than using an ad hoc network via my laptop alone?

I am no expert, however check out this paper http://cnmat.org/files/attachments/NIME2014-Making-the-Most-of-Wi-Fi.pdf

giuliomoro
Hi
I am going through the same steps as Robin, but seem to have a dead end with the
ifup wlan0; ifdown wlan0; command.
It results in No DHCPOFFERS received, and then when I run
ip a
wlan0 shows up as
5: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 8c:3b:ad:2f:39:26 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
No IP address as it should have if working. Any ideas what is wrong?
bEst,
Andreas

Did you set the username and password for the wifi as described here ? Sometimes you need to do ifup wlan0, ifdown wlan0, ifup wlan0 a couple of times

I tried the ifup wlan; ifdown wlan; several times, and then checked the wpa config file:
network={
ssid="VIBRA_network"
#psk="my_p*****rd"
psk=f4ac1785d3c96383b93b26e76c39862d97fecae0ac36b9468ce8eb903f9c00c3
}
I still don't have an IP, but only:
3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 8c:3b:ad:2f:39:26 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

right. Try to run

iwlist wlan0 scanning

that should return a list of the available networks.

Yes, long list with 32 "Cells". Entries like:

Cell 02 - Address: 00:22:07:4F:AE:16
ESSID:"NextGenTel_AE17"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11bgn
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:144 Mb/s
Extra:rsn_ie=30140100000fac040100000fac040100000fac020c00
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: DD7C0050F204104A0001101044000102103B00010310470010EB49E6C9A8BBE97568B118CC59F10CCC1021000842726F6164636F6D1023000842726F6164636F6D1024000631323334353610420004313233341054000800060050F204000110110006496E74656E6F100800022008103C0001011049000600372A000120
Quality=93/100 Signal level=-65 dBm

Extra:fm=0003

Seems to match the list on available networks on my mac fairly well.
So it seems that it is scanning somehow, but still no IP when I do ip a, only

3: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 8c:3b:ad:2f:39:26 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

is the network you are trying to connect to listed among those?

There is also the possibility that you somehow mistyped the path to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf ?

So, I haven't tried to connect to anything. I thought that the first step was getting an IP in the list of network devices. But, yes - there are a few of the networks listed that I can connect to.
Does it mean I can connect to them?

If the network you want to connect to is listed there, and you have appropriately set the network name and passphrase in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf, and there are no typos involved, then doing ifup wlan0 should try to connect to the network, and, upon success, obtain an IP address.
Another thing to check is that your network router actually has a DHCP server on it to assign IP addresses. This is normally the default on home networks. If your computer can connect to this network and work properly without a special configuration, then it's probably safe to assume the DHCP is working fine.

Hmmm that's weird:

DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.0.102 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPOFFER of 192.168.0.102 from 192.168.0.1
DHCPACK of 192.168.0.102 from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.102 -- renewal in 25 seconds.

would indicate that you are actually successfully connected.

not sure about the

Killed old client process
...
DHCPRELEASE on wlan0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67

part ...
Did you retry ifup wlan0; ifup wlan0 ?

Hi,
so I did only
root@bela:~# ifup wlan0;
and got
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.3.5
Copyright 2004-2016 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/8c:3b:ad:2f:39:26
Sending on LPF/wlan0/8c:3b:ad:2f:39:26
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.0.102 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPOFFER of 192.168.0.102 from 192.168.0.1
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.0.102 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 192.168.0.102 from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.102 -- renewal in 31 seconds.

and now I finally got an IP when I do ip a. So, I guess it finally worked! Thanks for all the help
best,
Andreas

Great!

andreasb So I put in some quotation marks (") since I had a space in the network name, and the printout from the ifup/down

hmm, that was not the case here

andreasb ssid="VIBRA_network"

giuliomoro
I have a strange problem since i tried to install the wifi dongle as explained above.
I got it to install the files, it took some time and finished telling there were time skew errors.
Then i rebooted bela, since then it is not recognized by the Windows PC anymore when i plug the
USB connector. No sound of new connected device, no bela partition in the explorer, bela IDE doesn't
load in browser and ssh doesn't work either. i'm out of ideas.

How did you shut down the board after installing the driver? If the shutdown was not graceful am afraid you may have a corrupted file /lib/modules/4.4.113-ti-xenomai-r148/modules.dep.bin (and possibly more), similarly to what happened here. If you don't have a UART device at hand (or a spare Bela, that is, then you may have to re-flash your card.

The "date skew" error is normally not a problem, though you can avoid it by loading up the IDE before you start the process.

giuliomoro
Thanks for the fast diagnose!
You nailed it probably, after installation i closed the terminal and power cycled (hard) for the reboot.

No second Bela at hand and i got mine without the SD card early December.

I was planning to get a second Bela anyway, so i'll take it a bit earlier than planned
Can you confirm that if i order a Bela now from the shop, that it will come with a never software version that has the netgear drivers pre-installed?

I'll give the SD card method a try first.

bj_gzp
The SD restore procedure worked like a charm with v.0.3.6b!
Thanks