Wait, do you mean the screenly screen that shows up when your device is not configured for wifi? this doesnt work for you? how so?
Unless you connect to that wifi, and then type in your URL browser http://screenly.io/wifi , and configure the SSID of your wifi there, this will always come up as the AP mode, unless you connect an ethernet cable which will then prevent this from coming up since the ethernet connection (if properly working) will establish the connection thus the RPi no longer needs you to give it wifi.
if you want to manually configure the wpa_supplicant.conf then you need to edit this file: /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
is there any way to avoid the WIFI AP mode whenever network connection failed?
Our screen will be visible from the street (like many I think) and I don’t feel good if the AP mode starts only because local WIFI network had a temporal failure.
Otherwise anybody on the street may try to connect to this device…
Yes, you would need to SSH into the Pi or with physical keyboard connection get to the console (ctl+alt+f1), and disable the wifi-connect.service with command: sudo systemctl disable wifi-connect.service
If you are using the new experimental version then this has been temporarily disabled so nothing to do on that branch.
Hello everybody.
Thanks to ealmonte for his insights, really interesting as always.
I would be very interested in having the possibility to disable the AP. I would like it to be bypassed at launch (maybe getting a 169.254.x.y self-attributed IP address instead of what it would have got from an AP or a router) and going to the assets but when I try
sudo systemctl disable wifi-connect.service
then at next launch it is replaced by a “404 not found” nginx error page.
Is there a way to bypass this please ?
Hi, I am trying to understand the request a bit, but not fully getting it.
When you say “Disable the AP”, you dont want the wifi-connect to automatically start up in an Ad-Hoc mode network and let you connect to it in order to configure it? Can you explain why?
If you dont have a valid internal IP then you cannot access it.
I haven’t refreshed my memory on wifi-connect service in a while but from what I remember since everything is connected and conditional, if one service is not running, some other services dont properly run, therefore if you manually disable the wifi service then nginx might not properly run…
Again, we have to go back to the root reasoning of why you need the wifi-connect service to be disabled?
When you say “Disable the AP”, you dont want the wifi-connect to automatically start up in an Ad-Hoc mode network and let you connect to it in order to configure it?
Exactly. Here is my use case : when my digital sign is being prepared, it is connected to a router and prepared (assets uploading) from a computer connected to same router.
Then, it’s being used in a room where there is no network available (be it wire or wireless). So to start the visual show I have either :
to bring there the extremity of a very long ethernet cable connected to the router (then the sign starts and I can take the cable back) ;
or to use 2 smartphones (1 to connect to its hostpot and select on it the second one, in AP mode ; then the sign starts and I can take them back).
So, in my perspective, the internal AP, coming with good intentions, prevent starting in those conditions.
If there was a way, once the assets uploaded, to tell to my sign either :
“from now on no more internal AP until I change my mind please” ;
or “after 5 minutes of not used internal AP, close it and start the show please” ;
that would save me from that routine each time.
Is the AP connection working with the latest Anthias build? I imaged an SD card for a Raspberry Pi2 with wifi dongle. I saw the Anthias logo appear, but no AP info.
Our digital signage isn’t located near an Ethernet connection or easy to connect to a keyboard, so I’d like to be able to set it up headless via WiFi if possible.
I tried manually adding wpa_supplicant.conf to the root directory of the SD card before booting, but that didn’t see to work either.
Ah, you want to use it offline, now I understand.
Ok, so you want an easy way to tell the wifi-connect service to go away before deploying it somewhere without connection and then turning it back on whenever you need it.
Before I look into an easy way for you to do this out of scope bypass modification, what happens when you tell Anthias during install that you don’t want it to manage your network by saying No to that line?
Ah, you want to use it offline, now I understand.
Ok, so you want an easy way to tell the wifi-connect service to go away before deploying it somewhere without connection and then turning it back on whenever you need it.
Yes, that feels good to be understood !
Before I look into an easy way for you to do this out of scope bypass modification, what happens when you tell Anthias during install that you don’t want it to manage your network by saying No to that line?
Well, I am still using Screenly OSE with a purple splash screen and I love it !
Is it possible to tell to an existing installation “I changed my mind since first installation, don’t manage my network” ? Or does this imply I make another, separate installation of the newest version ?
Thinking about it again, I would like it to Manage my Network, but only when I’m OK with that. Or to give up such management when a certain time elapses and no network is to be seen …
you won’t be able to “reinstall” an older version via the bash script that easily since it goes to github and uses the master branch by default, you can get the old releases though manually and use those images to install the old version…
it is in your ./screenly/bin/ folder, if you want to disable it from checking for wifi connectivity, just edit that file and where it says IS_CONNECTED='' you can override it and say ='true' so that it never gets to the part that checks the cloudflare 1.1.1.1 connectivity line… does it make sense?
I can install Anthias via installing raspbian OS lite and running the bash script perfectly fine, so I will assume these issues you guys are having are with the balenaOS version?
…thus if you dont have it then you must still be using an old version of anthias/screenly-ose, this i cannot help you since i dont go backwards in terms of troubleshooting and dont have your version installed anywhere to even look for what to change…
But yes, that file you mentioned is the one that runs the AP part, but there are other files and services that interact with it, so you will need to do some reverse engineering to see what files or startup services calls up that start resin wifi file and then edit it in a way that will accomplish your offline mode, it could be something as simple as renaming that file so that it never starts, but you might have another file that if it fails to find that file it might cause the whole viewer not to work… good luck.
Thank you very much for the additional info : I will try that way and in case of success, I will tell here for any other person in my case that might be interested.
