So I started feeding recently and I am happy with my setup at home.
I know how to setup my Piaware so it connects to my wifi at home.
I was thinking about adding another site, I would be able to place a site at my grandmothers house.
However, she does not have any internet connection. But my ISP has a hotspot nearby and it would be possible to connect to it.
How would I go ahead with setting this up in the piaware ? To connect to the hotspot, I need to connect to the wifi hotspot and once connected on a page I need to enter my username and password. Is this even possible ?
It is possible depending on how much time you want to spend.
Most of those wifi hotspots have a timeout of a few hours where you have to reenter the login information. This means you need to reconnect many times a day.
If your hotspot allows multiple days between login this is much much easier to setup.
I would suggest using a router that can act as a repeater to do the hotspot connection. If your router can use DD-wrt this is very easy to setup and will rebroadcast a local wireless network that the RPi and any other computer can connects too.
If the hotspot connection is active for days I would just login once on another computer in the network. This should also activate the RPi internet connection for days or months.
If the hotspot connection is only active for a few hours you need to install a script that opens up the firefox browser to the login page with an firefox add-on to auto enter passwords. The script will just need to run every so often to get the hotspot active. This requires scripting experience and can also be hard to setup.
I use an out of date Samsung smartphone with data connection, set up a Wifi hotshopt on it, then edit the config file in the boot folder of the PiAware image with username and password.
Takes a few minutes and reliably works for me.
If you need an outdoor connection point to reliabily reach the hot spot I had good luck with EnGenius ENH500 - wireless access point. It can be configured as a client bridge which is what you need however its a 5ghz band device only. Depending on your location if the hot spot accepts 5ghz connection that band is usually a lot less crowded. I used these in a highly corrosive industrial environment with lots of steam and good luck. (application was for IP CCTV cameras monitoring process) They make a 2ghz version but my suppliers web page had only 2 reviews and both were negative. (EnGenius and other makers have similar devices but they come at a cost premium)
With these you would take the wired Ethernet from Pi and pass it through a POE insertion point supplied with the device then on to the access point configured unit. You will be forced to use their included insertion point because its non standard POE. (other makers use standard POE)
In case you are not familiar with the term client bridge consider it to be akin to the Wi-Fi dongles that hook up to the USB ports on Pi 2. All of the connection configuration is handled from a computer using a browser. Its not a real trick to learn configuration. Other brands are available but EnGenius is the one I am familiar with.
I would highly recommend that the Ethernet cable used for any of these type devices be shielded. There are arguments pro and con shielded cables but my experience was bad using unshielded cables. My problem there was traced back to lightning induced transients. There were not direct hits as nothing will survive those.
