RetroPie Wifi Manager

ParadoxGBB

@philcomm For what it's worth, I agree with you very much. I didn't really expect pushback in that other thread, but I did, a bit. The fact is people want to travel with their pis, and some others feel that this is outside the bounds of the project.

In my scripts I was leveraging generating wifikeyfile.txt (in clear text!) and dropping it into /boot. Then you can import it with RetroPie's existing wifi configuration screens.

I think the sticking point might be that there's not firm consensus on the cleanest way to integrate to get the job done. The previous approach was to build this in emulationstation but that doesn't directly configure WiFi. The existing screens RetroPie-Setup uses might be able to be extended, but I'm not sure what dependencies they leverage to work without digging.

Good luck and again, let me know if you want another pair of eyes.

Philcomm

@paradoxgbb said in RetroPie Wifi Manager:

@philcomm For what it's worth, I agree with you very much. I didn't really expect pushback in that other thread, but I did, a bit. The fact is people want to travel with their pis, and some others feel that this is outside the bounds of the project.

In my scripts I was leveraging generating wifikeyfile.txt (in clear text!) and dropping it into /boot. Then you can import it with RetroPie's existing wifi configuration screens.

I think the sticking point might be that there's not firm consensus on the cleanest way to integrate to get the job done. The previous approach was to build this in emulationstation but that doesn't directly configure WiFi. The existing screens RetroPie-Setup uses might be able to be extended, but I'm not sure what dependencies they leverage to work without digging.

Good luck and again, let me know if you want another pair of eyes.

I kinda get the RetroPie team on the topic of not baking a OSK into emulationstation, since this would mean they need to make a seperate build of es and then constantly rebasing it on a new release and making sure it works. So I think my solution is more reasonable. I would really be interested how the wifikeyfile.txt stuff works, so far I have only worked with the wpa_supplicant.conf (just a minute ago I finished the full parsing, so now I can disassemble it, do changes programatically, assemble it and then write it to the file).

ParadoxGBB

@philcomm Since you seem interested, this is an earlier version of the script I was using. It's super easy, just put the sid and psk and that's all you have to do. Very little fuss. I had another script that copied this into \boot. On the wifi screen option 3 allows you to import the credentials from there, so the integration might be easier as you won't have to deal with hashing. Since it's in a more secure cleartext should be ok to store temporarily but you'll need sudo.

#!/bin/bash

##########
# GLOBALS
##########
exportTarget="/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/wifikeyfile.txt"
defaultssid="GregMotoX4"

function logInfo() {
	echo [$(date)] $1
}

#######
# MAIN
#######
echo 

currentssid=$(wpa_cli get_network 0 ssid)
currentssid=$(echo "$currentssid" | tail -1) #Second line
currentssid=$(echo ${currentssid//$'"'}) #Trim quotes

if [ "[$currentssid]" != "[FAIL]" ] && [ "[$currentssid]" != "[Using interface 'wlan0']" ]; then
	logInfo "Detected current SSID...[$currentssid]"
	defaultssid=$currentssid
fi

logInfo "Default SSID if entered blank: [$defaultssid]"
read -p $'SSID: \x0a'
ssid=${REPLY//$'\r\n'}
logInfo "ENTERED SSID: [$ssid]"

if [ "[$ssid]" == "[]" ]; then
	logInfo "SSID not set! Using default..."
	ssid=$defaultssid
fi

read -p $'PSK: \x0a'
psk=${REPLY//$'\r\n'}
logInfo "ENTERED PSK: [$psk]"

if [ "[$psk]" == "[]" ]; then
	logInfo "PSK not set! Try again."
	exit
fi

if [ -f $exportTarget ]; then
	logInfo "Target [$exportTarget] found. Overwriting..."
fi

echo ssid=\"$ssid\" > $exportTarget
echo psk=\"$psk\" >> $exportTarget

logInfo "Done!"
echo

mitu

The gdrive link worked, thanks.
Looks nice, it reminds me of the stage password screen for old games.

Philcomm

Quick update on the project:

It is now in a fully usable state.

First you have the wifi selection screen where you ... select your wifi. If you select one that is already saved, a prompt pops up asking if you wanna proceed since the old config will be overwritten.

Then you need to enter the password. B now acts as backspace, so you don't need to use the one on the OSK.

The next screen shows the integrity of the entered password. Since wpa_passphrase, which I use to generate the config text, requires at least 8 characters, this needs to be checked before saving.

If everything is valid, the next step then puts together the old wpa_supplicant.conf with the new network. The generated network also gets priority=1, all other networks get priority=0.
Then the config is saved and the network card restarted.

The next step is to add wifi deletion from the selection screen. I also wanna have a set priority button or something on the same page.

I am really happy how this turned out. I will create a PR to the RetroPie-Setup repo, hopefully someone will look into it.

Philcomm

Please send it some love: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/3429

Philcomm

@paradoxgbb if you are interested, wget -P /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/ "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OfficialPhilcomm/retropie-wifi-manager/master/advanced-wifi.sh" will download a config file into your RetroPie-Setup. You can then open RetroPie Setup from EmulationStation -> Manage packages -> experimental -> advanced-wifi. Let me know your thoughts, would love to hear them!

ParadoxGBB

@philcomm I will very soon, thanks. Probably won't be until Monday or Tuesday though... good luck with the PR, I'll nudge there when I have the chance to play.

Lolonois

@philcomm if one would like to keep the local master of RetroPie-Setup clean (which has serveral advantages), it can be done by creating a local branch with your proposed pull request, as outlined here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/260327 - saves you the burden of adding/removing files to/from the local master explicitly.

Philcomm

@lolonois Thank you, I might do this when they don't accept the PR.

Philcomm

In the meantime, here are some development updates:

Screenshot 2021-11-20 at 22.19.57.png

Screenshot 2021-11-20 at 22.20.37.png

Lolonois

@philcomm my git hint was more general for anyone interested to testdrive your proposed change/PR. I just missed to remove your handle :/ -- However, your PR looks very promising.

Philcomm

@lolonois Thanks! I really hope it gets accepted. I put a solid 20 hours into this so far.

Philcomm

@lolonois said in RetroPie Wifi Manager:

@philcomm my git hint was more general for anyone interested to testdrive your proposed change/PR. I just missed to remove your handle :/ -- However, your PR looks very promising.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/3429#issuecomment-974847831 :(

mitu

@philcomm Sorry for the PR not being accepted, unfortunately maintainance considerations are always a big factor for new additions in RetroPie.

I liked your idea of adding a text (curses) based OSK and the minimal ui. My intention was to add some sort of OSK and was considering something SDL based (eitherpython-sdl2 or python-imgui[sdl] so it would be easy to script).

I experimented a bit with the urwid python library to add a simple input box to the WiFi module. My main goals were to make it work with joy2key and to look similar to the existing text UI (based on dialog) that RetroPie-Setup uses.

It turned out pretty close to the dialog based screens

Default view	Smaller screen	Error message

I have submitted a PR with this and some minor changes to the WiFi module.

NOTE: the changes I proposed don't include support for multiple networks or prioritization (which your WiFi manager has), but I think these can be added later in the main WiFi module.

Philcomm

@mitu Nice, I will check it out later!

Philcomm

@mitu said in RetroPie Wifi Manager:

@philcomm Sorry for the PR not being accepted, unfortunately maintainance considerations are always a big factor for new additions in RetroPie.

I liked your idea of adding a text (curses) based OSK and the minimal ui. My intention was to add some sort of OSK and was considering something SDL based (eitherpython-sdl2 or python-imgui[sdl] so it would be easy to script).

I experimented a bit with the urwid python library to add a simple input box to the WiFi module. My main goals were to make it work with joy2key and to look similar to the existing text UI (based on dialog) that RetroPie-Setup uses.

It turned out pretty close to the dialog based screens

Default view Smaller screen Error message

I have submitted a PR with this and some minor changes to the WiFi module.

NOTE: the changes I proposed don't include support for multiple networks or prioritization (which your WiFi manager has), but I think these can be added later in the main WiFi module.

How can I get it to work? I cloned your PR on one of my machines, updated RetroPie to make sure everything is installed, but I don't see the osk.

mitu

@philcomm You need to run first

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh joy2key depends
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh joy2key install_bin

and then use the WiFi module as usual. The OSK should be used when the network name/pass is asked.

EDIT: commands should be run from $HOME/RetroPie-Setup.

Philcomm

@paradoxgbb tip from me: you can spice your GPi up by using https://github.com/OfficialPhilcomm/retropie-music, a music script I wrote a while ago to have background music in the menus. I never get over hearing Without Me by eminem in 8 bit while in the menus.

ParadoxGBB

@philcomm First off, I'm sorry that your OSK as originally engineered looks like it won't be accepted --- but I wanted to thank you for really moving the ball forward on this, because it looks like the python-based one will make it through as per recent comments on the PR. This is going to save a lot of people time and frustration and you should get a large chunk of the credit.

For fun last week as I was setting up my Zero2W I connected via SSH to it and attempted to enter Wifi via my phone using the existing infrastructure by executing RetroPie-Setup directly. Although in theory this seemed like a good idea, the WiFi won't drop and reconnect to a new network when you're using that connection for the terminal session, turns out. So, still very clunky.

Will check out your music suggestion, and also the new OSK coming down the pike. Thanks so much.

I think I might have found some quirks around the safe shutdown script with the Zero2W around pin allocation and interaction with WiFi but I want to do some more testing this week before making further topics or inquiries about it here. I also will share some additional script suggestions / observations too.