Raspberry Pi 3 and RAK831

#1

Hi,
I’m using the raspberry pi 3 in combination with the RAK831 : I followed the tutorial ( https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/rak831/ ) => the gateway is working fine … But is it possible to reconfigure the pi so i can use WIFI connection instead of wire ?

Thanks and kind regards

#3

Hi @ON8TLR, great that you are building stuff with balena!

To use the wifi connection, you can choose “wifi” and add your credentials there when you are “adding a device” in the dashboard, see the bottom of this screenshot:

Screenshot_2019-10-21_11-12-53
Screenshot_2019-10-21_11-12-53.png937×901 57.9 KB

Then your new device will use both Ethernet (if plugged in) and Wifi (if it’s near that network that you set).

You can also see our documentation about how networking is done in balenaOS https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/network/2.x/

You can also check our getting started guide, for example, this: https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/getting-started/raspberrypi3/nodejs/#add-your-first-device There’s a bit more information than in the tutorial that you linked to: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/rak831/#add-device Please also note, that the given tutorial is not written by our team, so cannot guarantee to be up to date!

Hope this helps, and let us known if you run into any other problem!

#5

Hi imrehg,

Thanks for the reply => if i’m correct there’s no other way then to re-download and rewrite the image to the SD-card. (with the changes made of course) => found in “wifi setup” (this is found in the boot partition of your image).
Or is there a workaround? Mybe via the “terminal”?
Thanks :wink:

#7

Hey @ON8TLR, there is more information in the link to the docs that was mentioned above: https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/network/2.x/

Easy runtime changes

And yeah, the two most obvious ways I would recommend:

  • if you have the device at hand, get the SD card out, plug it into your development laptop, and add a connection file on the resin-boot partition, system-connections folder (see e.g. https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/network/2.x/#wifi-setup )
  • if you only have remote access, then connect to the host OS in the web terminal or balena ssh (using the CLI), navigate to /mnt/boot/system-connections and add your connection file there (using the vi editor that is in the host OS, or some other way), and then reboot the device (so that the settings take effect). This is a bit more unusual but would work in general.

Future, more advanced stuff

For the future, if you are making other projects, we would also recommend looking at the the wifi-connect project.

This is possible to run on your device next to your application, and can set things up such that your device might be able to bring up an access point, where you can change the wifi settings. But this needs code changes to the project you use, and either you or the maintainer would need to do that.

Mostly mentioning this so you can be aware of this tool, and use it some time if you see it fit.

Hope this helps, and let us know how did it go!

#9

Thanks man it works perfect ! :wink: