I spy Pi Wi-Fi with my little eye
Posted by Steve Revill Sun, 25 Feb 2024 17:28:00 GMT
It’s the number two most popular bounty we’ve ever run (by votes) and following a surge in pledges this year, we’re excited to be able to confirm Wi-Fi to RISC OS 5 now underway.
Visitors to the MUG Christmas market last December will already have seen the proof-of-principle driver targetting the Raspberry Pi. Drivers aren’t the most visually exciting part of the OS, but they’re the foundation on which higher level functionality is built.
End to end flow
On the stand at the recent South West show the most recent driver was ready to join a live network from any of the numerous Pi variants which boast a Broadcom Wi-Fi chipsets – that’s 3B, 3A+, 3B+, 4B, Compute Module 4, Pi 400, ‘ZeroW’ and ‘Zero2W’.
Even though February this year has an extra leap day, unfortunately that comes after the show, so a last minute compromise had to be made to turn off the encryption code which was interfering with the demonstration. Once the encryption issues are ironed out, you’ll be able to give the beta release Wi-Fi software a spin from the bounty progress page by simply enabling the software (held on disc in Boot Resources) from InetSetup in the usual manner.
This technology is generally expected by default by people just trying out RISC OS for the first time on one of the millions of Raspberry Pi computers. It’s also a great benefit to existing users.
Doesn’t 3 come after 2?
The observant will note that TCP/IP Step 3 would classically follow Step 2. Due to delays in the completion of the next stable release of RISC OS, the more high-risk aspects of upgrading the network stack (step 2) are currently postponed, but that doesn’t prevent getting the Raspberry Pi wirelessly connected in parallel – packets are just packets after all, whether they arrive via wire or via air!
Other aspects of Step 3 such as the detailed API design and integration to the command line tools like ifconfig will be revisited in future, once Step 2’s changes have been integrated into the RISC OS nightly builds.
Special mention
We would like to extend our thanks to Elesar Limited for providing the related Wi-Fi Manager desktop application. This provides a field-proven user interface to search for and join nearby wireless networks, and has been written using RISC OS’s standard User Interface Toolbox.
Excellent news.
I have found myself wondering how to reconcile the bounty steps with the wifi work! It also makes perfect sense that getting the next stable release out there is a prerequisite to starting to make radical changes for the next version.
Good news!
Quick thought: I hope that the GUI will also show the WPA version and not just WPA-*. Given the version matters a lot! Thanks for the work! :)
NVMe and Wifi and the year has only begun! Can it get any better?
This is a significant step forward for RISC OS and great to see the bounties delivering on their promises