How to troubleshoot a WI-PI

I too had similar troubles. When I began editing etc\network\interfaces I had  the wrong key mapping - so stings  were't quoted and  the pipe  symbol was also not available.

remapped  to a US english keyboard and went to Paul Bryant's DEC 28, 2012 post:

Re: My Christmas RPi is rockin, my Wi-Pi..not so much. What am I doing wrong....

Thanks for the reply Fergus.

I put double quotation marks around the ssid and the passkey as you suggested and saved and then rebooted. Unfortunatly there was no difference in the outcome. The RPi still didn't have access to the network. I checked the interfaces file to make sure that I had indeed saved the file correctly and it was as I had edited it. Then I had a thought, I'll go into Xwindows and see if I can access the WiPi via the application on the desktop. Sure enough I was able to do a scan of the local access points and I found mine. Then I selected it and typed in my passkey and 'bingo', network access and the little blue light on the WiPi was mine. The browsers worked and everything. Then I exited out of Xwindows and the network access persisted as demonstrated by pinging the router from the command line. So then I rebooted and sure enough, the WiPi initialized immediatly and I was linked to my access point. So I checked the interfaces file and it was exactly as I had left it before going into Xwindows. In fact just as a test I purposely broke the SSid and Psk entries in the Wlan0 section and rebooted. It made no difference. The RPi connected to my access point without a problem. Then I deleted the whole Wlan0 entry as shown in the install PDF. Obviously the RPi/Wheezy is not looking in the interfaces file for it's login information.

So now I have two questions for the engineers at Element 14;

1, what did the Xwindows WiFi application modify (because it wasn't the interfaces file) to enable the WiPi to work on the latest version of the RPi/Wheezy.

2, Did anybody at Element14 actually tested the instructions PDF on the E14 website regarding the WiPi and the installation to the RPi because quite obviously they don't work, and don't get me started on the instructions that come in the E14 WiPi branded box.Those caused me to have to reflash my SD card because they wrecked the OS (not happy. Wasted an afternoon on this foolishness).

I suspect that the instructions to install the WiPi on the current RPi are actually really simple.

1, Use the latest version of Wheezy (if you don't you're on your own)

2, Plug in the WiPi to the Raspberry Pi

3, power up the RPi, log in and type 'startx'

4, Doubleclick on 'WiFi Config'

5, click on the Scan button

6, Enter your passkey for your respective network security (probably WPA)

7, click on the Close button.

8, click on the Connect button.

9, close the application.

Thats it. You should see a blue light on the WiPi and you should be connected to your network.   ....

Which took care of things.

I had downloaded Raspian 02.09.2013  wheezy -  Works  just  fine.

I too had similar troubles. When I began editing etc\network\interfaces I had  the wrong key mapping - so stings  were't quoted and  the pipe  symbol was also not available.

remapped  to a US english keyboard and went to Paul Bryant's DEC 28, 2012 post:

Re: My Christmas RPi is rockin, my Wi-Pi..not so much. What am I doing wrong....

Thanks for the reply Fergus.

I put double quotation marks around the ssid and the passkey as you suggested and saved and then rebooted. Unfortunatly there was no difference in the outcome. The RPi still didn't have access to the network. I checked the interfaces file to make sure that I had indeed saved the file correctly and it was as I had edited it. Then I had a thought, I'll go into Xwindows and see if I can access the WiPi via the application on the desktop. Sure enough I was able to do a scan of the local access points and I found mine. Then I selected it and typed in my passkey and 'bingo', network access and the little blue light on the WiPi was mine. The browsers worked and everything. Then I exited out of Xwindows and the network access persisted as demonstrated by pinging the router from the command line. So then I rebooted and sure enough, the WiPi initialized immediatly and I was linked to my access point. So I checked the interfaces file and it was exactly as I had left it before going into Xwindows. In fact just as a test I purposely broke the SSid and Psk entries in the Wlan0 section and rebooted. It made no difference. The RPi connected to my access point without a problem. Then I deleted the whole Wlan0 entry as shown in the install PDF. Obviously the RPi/Wheezy is not looking in the interfaces file for it's login information.

So now I have two questions for the engineers at Element 14;

1, what did the Xwindows WiFi application modify (because it wasn't the interfaces file) to enable the WiPi to work on the latest version of the RPi/Wheezy.

2, Did anybody at Element14 actually tested the instructions PDF on the E14 website regarding the WiPi and the installation to the RPi because quite obviously they don't work, and don't get me started on the instructions that come in the E14 WiPi branded box.Those caused me to have to reflash my SD card because they wrecked the OS (not happy. Wasted an afternoon on this foolishness).

I suspect that the instructions to install the WiPi on the current RPi are actually really simple.

1, Use the latest version of Wheezy (if you don't you're on your own)

2, Plug in the WiPi to the Raspberry Pi

3, power up the RPi, log in and type 'startx'

4, Doubleclick on 'WiFi Config'

5, click on the Scan button

6, Enter your passkey for your respective network security (probably WPA)

7, click on the Close button.

8, click on the Connect button.

9, close the application.

Thats it. You should see a blue light on the WiPi and you should be connected to your network.   ....

Which took care of things.

I had downloaded Raspian 02.09.2013  wheezy -  Works  just  fine.