Network Manager inside Retropie Kodi

jctots

Hello,

I recently bumped into this problem when I lent my RPi3 RetroPie+Kodi with cheap USB controllers to a friend without a USB keyboard.

He wanted to try Kodi to watch movies on shared on his laptop, but he can't connect to his Wifi (since you need a USB keyboard to enter the Wifi password in RetroPie setup).

Using LAN cable is also not possible since the router is unreachable.

I tried to search online and I saw that Kodi has a "network manager" that you can configure your Wifi password using on-screen keys so normal USB controller can be used. But when I check this is RetroPie's version of Kodi, this option is missing.

Is there any other way of configuring Wifi passwords in RetroPie just by using a USB controller?

PetroRie

Why doesn't your friend install Kodi on his laptop?

mediamogul

One way or another, you need a LAN cable or a keyboard. You could sneakernet the 'Network Manager' addon over on a thumb drive, but I don't think there's a compatible version for the Raspberry Pi.

Rascas

The network manager addon is deprecated, it doesnt work in any platform. Openelec and OSMC addons use connman network stack but I never tried connman on Raspbian. It shouldn't be to much dificult to write a python addon which works with Raspbian but my python are pretty bad. I have read that there is now a way to configure the network with a file in the boot partition, but I dont remember how. Try to search the raspbian forums.

mediamogul

@Rascas said in Network Manager inside Retropie Kodi:

I have read that there is now a way to configure the network with a file in the boot partition

I can see that trick paying off in the future. I'll have to look that up. Thank you.

chavatar

Just a (probably daft) thought: how unreachable is "unreachable"? Completely or just from where you're set up? All you have to do is temporarily get the pi on the network and use SSH to set up the wifi from the laptop. Think you can start RetroPie headlessly. You'd have to work out the IP address etc, but I think that would work.

Also, assuming the laptop has ethernet, you could directly connect it to the pi via a crossover cable - though tbh, getting your hands on a usb keyboard seems easier (and they always come in handy)