Returning RPi User - 2 ->3.1 upgrade WiFi issues

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1

Greetings, folks.

It’s been quite a while since I was last around these parts. Moved halfway around the globe a couple of times, and I’ve just found my RPi 2, and wanted to get the PiAware setup again.

I grabbed the updated card instance, and installed it in my Pi.
I changed the config file on the SD Card to affect the SSID and Password of my WiFi setup here at the house.
Unfortunately, I can’t get it to connect! The USB WiFi dongle just flashes 4-6 times every few seconds like it’s “trying,” but no luck.
To troubleshoot, I unplugged the WiFi Dongle and the powered USB hub (don’t need it if I’m just running the receiver dongle w/o the WiFi), and connected the RPi to my router via network cable. Works well and lasts long time… I’m back up and running, but this isn’t where I want to leave the hardware, and I’ll have no ability to think about a better (and outdoor) antenna as-is.

I’ve done some searching through old threads in hopes of finding some sort of silver bullet for this issue, but I’ve had no dice.
Can one of you please kick me in the right direction?

Many thanks.

2

What is the make/model of the WiFi dongle? Give command “lsusb” and post output

pi@piaware:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:2832 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2832U DVB-T
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

3

Can you paste the parts of the config file you changed (obscure the password)
What is your wifi dongle?

You should be able to have both wifi and wired network connected simultaneously; this can make it easier to diagnose since you can ssh in even while the wifi is down.
Look in /var/log/syslog for anything unusual.
Try “iwconfig” and “sudo iwlist scan”.

4

Here’s the config file lines that I changed.



# Should piaware use the wired ethernet port
# for network access?
wired-network no

# change this to "yes" to enable wifi
wireless-network yes

wireless-ssid "Ecalevol Network"
wireless-password "XXXXXXX" (my password isn't just letters and numbers, but special characters, too)

I’m using a small WiFi dongle that looks just like the “suggested” version from the Build A PiAware page, but without the lettering on the end. I can no longer find the exact manufacturer on Amazon from my order in 2015.

I’ll reconnect it all and run some commands here in a minute.

5

Here’s the lsusb results:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0bda:2838 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 2109:2811
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Additionally, I ran a “sudo iwlist scan” command, and here are the results:

wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 90:72:40:11:9D:B4
ESSID:“Ecalevol Network”
Protocol:IEEE 802.11bgn
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.417 GHz (Channel 2)
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:144 Mb/s
Extra:rsn_ie=30140100000fac040100000fac040100000fac020000
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Quality=66/100 Signal level=59/100
Cell 02 - Address: E8:8D:28:61:6A:69
ESSID:“Ecalevol Network”
Protocol:IEEE 802.11bgn
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.417 GHz (Channel 2)
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:144 Mb/s
Extra:rsn_ie=30140100000fac040100000fac040100000fac020000
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Quality=66/100 Signal level=100/100

It definitely sees both access points I have up and running…

Here’s the iwconfig results:

wlan0 unassociated Nickname:“WIFI@REALTEK”
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

6

Possibly something is going wrong there. Can you check the contents of /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa-roam.conf and see if it got the PSK and the other details right?

7

Interesting… it looks like it’s adding in additional characters, somehow…

network={
ssid=“???Ecalevol Network???”
id_str=“wireless”
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk=“???XXXXXXXXX???”
}

but… the wpa_supplicant.conf file is correct (w/o the question marks).

Hrmph…

8

in your file /boot/piaware-config.txt, REMOVE quotes shown in RED

wireless-ssid “Ecalevol Network”
wireless-password “XXXXXXX”

9

Sure… rebooting and we’ll see how that works.

Was I not following directions?

If your SSID or password contains characters other than

numbers and letters, such as the # character or whitespace,

you should enclose the value in quotation marks. For example,

“pass word” or “pass#word”.

10

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:“Ecalevol Network” Nickname:“WIFI@REALTEK”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.417 GHz Access Point: E8:8D:28:61:6A:69
Bit Rate:72.2 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:------- Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=100/100 Noise level=0/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I guess that did it!

Thanks for the help!

11

What editor did you use? Some software likes to do strange things like using “smart quotes” which are probably being encoded as UTF-8 and won’t be recognized as ASCII quote characters (")

12

I use nano, and it changes quote " to ???
Please see red line below.

Wifi SSID and password.

This should be changed to match your wireless

network SSID and, for networks that require

a passphrase, the passphrase.

If your SSID or password contains characters other than

numbers and letters, such as the # character or whitespace,

you should enclose the value in quotation marks. For example,

???pass word??? or ???pass#word???.

To include quotation marks (") in a quoted value, use "

To include a backslash () in a quoted value, use \

wireless-ssid thunderbolt
wireless-password xxxxxxxx

13

That makes sense.

I’m on a Mac, and I used the built-in TextEdit application.

Then, when making the changes on the Pi, itself, I used the Nano editor.

Thanks again for the help and patience.

14

Hah! Ok, so this is actually a problem in the comment text in the standard config file, just in that comment. Not sure where it leaked in from, not from my editors but IIRC the wording of that comment got cut+pasted from email so it may have been introduced at that point. And the problem is not obvious if you just view the file in a UTF-8-aware terminal…

I’ll fix up the comment for the next release to reduce confusion.
edit: github.com/flightaware/piaware- … 6da1eb1d95

15

" "
Standard ASCII

“ ”
HTML named character entity references: “, ”
HTML numeric (decimal) character entities for standard values: “, ”
HTML numeric (hexadecimal) character entities for standard values: “, ”

Embedded UTF-8 Encoding
" U+0022 QUOTATION MARK
“ U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
” U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK