Scanning for Wifi

[Andrew Stringfield]

Hello all,

       I saw a really cool feature that D-link wireless cameras have. First you physically hook up the camera to the LAN and then access the camera via web interface.  While on the web interface you can scan for your wireless network and connect the camera, wirelessly, to your network.  That is what I would like to do with my Django project.  Is this possible?

The host OS is Raspbian on Raspberry Pi B+.

Thank you.

[Bill Freeman]

Yes, though there probably isn't a slick app for the PC to do it.

You would have a web server running on the Pi, maybe Django, that displays the available wireless networks.  You would want a button to re-scan.  This works by trigering a shell command to run iwlist (or whatever the current tool is), which would dump the results of the last scan in a file that the web-server reads when composing the page (probably a RAM disk file on the Pi, rather than consuming Flash write cycles).  The page would have JavaScript to reload occasionally (or, of course, on demand) or use AJAX so that you can see things picked up recently.  Clicking one of the listed items (you would probably also want a text field to enter SSID for hidden interfaces) would open a text field that lets you enter WPA or WEP key, for SSIDs that are secured.  (Probably this is just JavaScript unhiding it - no need to go to a new page.)  When you submit, Django spawns iwconfig or equivalent to connect the interface.  You probably also want a disconnect button, and maybe a reconnect button (using saved key so that you don't have to re-enter it - you could get fancy by remembering keys for SSIDs that you've connected to before).

It's probably safe enough to let anyone see the list, but the connect, disconnect, any reconnect, and maybe even the rescan buttons should require that you have logged in to Django with a password.  The default configuration should be to only be accessible from the wired interface, though I guess there is some value in being able to disconnect from the WiFi connection.

Of course, Pis come with wired ethernet, but I believe that even the B+ still doesn't come with WiFi, so you will need a USB WiFi dongle.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-users...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to django...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/django-users.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-users/f74a348d-8f4d-4f98-8bea-33fe74c1c706%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.