Raspbmc - Making WiFi Work

Wireless - a minor PITA to get working

Ok - I Had the adapter plugged in, powered the unit on and noticed that the adapter light wasn't doing anything.

FYI - this is the adapter I'm using.

Unplugged and re-plugged the adapter with the unit powered on and was greeted with the message indicating detection of the adapter:

Pulse-Eight CEC Adapter

That's good - but it's still not joining the wifi network.

Maybe I ballsed up my psk (which is pretty cryptic).

As the PSK is hashed out as you type it, thought I'd just tackle it through SSH through a wired connection.

So I had a quick look around and most info was pointing me to edit /etc/wpa.conf

Only problem was, that file didn't exist.

Ran a quick GREP to hind my SSID which I'd saved through the RaspBMC interface and found it (and my psk) in the following file:

/home/pi/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/script.raspbmc.settings/settings.xml

So now I've copied and pasted my PSK but still no dice.

Now I started to think the raspbmc GUI might not quite be telling the truth about what's going on - being that it was displaying the ethernet adapters MAC address where it should be showing me the wifi adapter's...

At this point I thought - hmmm - let's just forget XBMC and attack it as just a linux box.

I then performed the following steps as per the main post and a comment over at anup narkhede's blog (thanks anup).

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

allow-hotplug wlan0

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa-psk wifi_password_noquotemarks

wpa-ssid ssid_noquotemarks

wpa-conf /etc/wpa.conf

* exit and save

sudo nano /etc/wpa.conf

network={

ssid="YOUR_SSID"

proto=RSN

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

pairwise=CCMP TKIP

group=CCMP TKIP

psk="YOUR_PASSWORD"

}

Now - disconnect your wired LAN connection and reboot.

You'll probably notice the light pattern of your wireless adapter is a little more random now - that's a good thing :)

I looked in RaspBMCs network settings area and nothing had changed.

I then however looked at the connected devices on my wireless AP and saw that my raspbmc device had got a lease and I could now ping it :)

Fired up a video and all good.

W00t.

To hold you until the review is up...