I recently upgraded to FlightAware 7.1 and lost the Wi-Fi that I had struggled to configure in 6.x. I wanted to post this to try and help folks that may be struggling with an older Raspberry Pi feeder like my B+ with an Asus USB-N10 Wi-Fi adapter with an r8712u chipset.
I unsuccessfully tried many times to configure the wifi using the wireless-XXXX configuration in /boot/piaware-config.txt, so I thought I would try and configure my old adapter with wpa_supplicant.
First, log in and:
sudo killall wpa_supplicant
Add a file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf. Your interface may be different from mine, so replace wlan0 with your Wi-Fi interface name. Adjust the country to the two-letter country code and add your SSID and password, enclosing them in double-quotes
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US
network={
ssid="WIFISSID"
psk="WIFIPASSWORD"
}
Once this is set, we’ll bring up wpa_supplicant to check if we can connect:
sudo wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf -B
In my case, my Wi-Fi interface is wlan0, and it uses the wext interface for the older Wi-Fi drivers. You’ll probably have to adjust to get these working for your hardware.
Now, check to see if the interface comes up with:
ip addr show dev wlan0
If it has an IP address (configured via DHCP by default), you’re all set and you have it working. If not, double-check your interface(-i) and driver (-D) for wpa_supplicant.
To get it to start at boot, just enable it using systemd:
sudo systemctl enable wpa_supplicant@wlan0
Adjust the above command to use the interface name your adapter is using.
Now, reboot and see if your interface comes up automatically at boot.
Shawn