How to troubleshoot a WI-PI

Hi Daniel,

First of all it's probably worth making sure that you have a dedicated power supply (i.e. not from a laptop) to make sure it can draw enough current. Which operating system are you using?

What information do you have in the interfaces file? In the end I just used this and nothing else (assuming you're using WPA):

allow-hotplug wlan0

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa-ssid NAME

wpa-psk PASSWORD

In the more recent Raspbian distributions there is also a GUI for setting up USB Wi-Fi dongles which might help.

If you don't have any luck try calling tech support and hopefully they can help you out!

Cheers,

Joe

Thanks for the help! The problem was user error . Thanks for showing me what you use for a interface file. For some reason I had brackets around my username and password, and I'm new to Linux and it's syntax, so now I know a bit more thanks to you!

I did grab a powered usb hub. The Wi-Pi dongle works with it or without it, however I haven't been sending a lot of info over the connection, so it might end up needing it but I hope not.

Thanks again!

No worries, glad you got it sorted out!

Cheers,

Joe

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.

Another Wi-Pi installation problem!

I followed the Wi-Pi installation manual and the Wi-Pi would not work at all. I made sure that I followed the instructions in the manual, I did the ping and received no connection. Then I thought I would check to see if the Wi-Pi would work on Windows 7. I plugged it into my PC and had it install the drivers but I could not get it to work there either.

Then I checked the Advanced Settings for the Wi-Pi and basically enabled all that I could under that section. The Wi-Pi still would work no matter what I did even though I disabled the PC's wifi connection and plugged the Wi-Pi in again.

Even though I could not get it to work on Windows, I though that this might have changed something internally for the Wi-Pi and plugged it into the RPi and booted it up. The ping was pinged, the Web worked and ta-da! Just to make sure that it was not a one-time thing, I shut down the RPi and restarted it with success.

By the way, I could not get the ifconfig to come up before, when the Wi-Pi was not working, but it does come up now.

Hi Chase,

What happens if you type lsusb from a command line window?

You should see something like "Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter" appear if your Wi-Pi has been detected.

If you can't see that, then try unplugging the adapter and re-inserting it (while the Pi is running), and then retry typing lsusb

If you don't see the Ralink text then there may be a power supply issue; worth trying a different power supply that is rated 1A or more.

Hi Chase,

I think the wi-pi is functioning if you can see that text. However, the WLAN settings now need to be configured. I presume you're using WPA? Could it be a password issue, or something like that?

It could be a password issue, I can't find the settings to configure the wifi and I tried following a guide from your website that I found.  Now on the startup it says failed under the wilan0 and its sending out a ping on something. What should I do