All working now! Here is an outline of the process.
The goal is to have a working wireless substitute for the ethernet connector which does not exist on the BeagleBone Green Wireless.
This is for a “headless” embedded project with the primary access using a terminal and ssh.
Download and expand the IOT bone image per Robert’s link and flash to micro-sd. I used this one:
bone-debian-8.7-iot-armhf-2017-01-15-4gb.img
Write the image to the micro-sd (I put the micro-sd in a USB adapter plugged into my Ubuntu workstation):
sudo dd if=bone-debian-8.7-iot-armhf-2017-01-15-4gb.img of=/def/sdb bs=8M
Eject the micro-sd from workstation and insert in the BBGW micro-sd slot.
Connect a USB 3.3V serial device to the “debug serial header”. The USB network connection could be substituted, however, my experience
with this is that using the serial device is solid and will work consistently.
Also, since the BBGW doesn’t have a dedicated power connector. It uses the micro-USB.
It is my preference to use a high-current dedicated USB power supply and ignore this as a possible network connection.
Power-up the BBGW and wait for the boot process to complete.
Open a bash terminal and use screen to connect via the serial USB device.
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200
I had to hit enter after the above command to get to the login prompt.
The login user is debian and the password is temppwd.
You may have to install screen:
sudo apt-get install screen
After logging in, a good thing to do first is to run this shell script:
cd /opt/scripts/tools
sudo ./grow_partition.sh
Next:
ifconfig
You should see 4 different network resources (not showing the full output here):
SoftAp0
lo
usb0
wlan0
The network resource SoftAp0 represents an “access point”.
Apparently the BBGW is configured as a wireless router!
That is not the goal, and fortunately this is easily removed.
As Robert described above, edit the file:
/etc/default/bb-wl18xx
Change the line:
TETHER_ENABLED=yes
to
TETHER_ENABLED=no
Save and exit, and reboot, and login.
ifconfig should now show only 3: lo, usb0, and wlan0.
Now to configure WIFI! It is assumed you have a home wireless router and you know the SSID and passphrase.
Also that the router is configured for DHCP (automatic assignment of IP addresses).
sudo connmanctl
scan wifi
Scan completed for wifi
services
(your router broadcast) (router info)
agent on
Agent registered
connect (copy router info here)
Agent RequestInput (router info)
Passphrase = [ Type=psk, Requirement=mandatory, Alternates=[ WPS ] ]
WPS = [ Type=wpspin, Requirement=alternate ]
Passphrase? (your passphrase)
Connected (router info)
quit
The above configuration is permanent and will survive reboot.
An outstanding page with good info on connman:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Connman
Another very good thing is to login to your router and use this to determine if your BBGW is successfully connected.
And remember the router may have security settings which may block it from connecting.
Also, rather than attempting to force a fixed IP address on the BBGW, I used the “address reservation” feature
so that the IP address assigned by the router will be the same each time it connects. This is done using the MAC address of the BBGW.
After the above configuration is done, shutdown and remove the USB serial device.
Power up the BBGW and wait for it to boot, and then using a terminal and ssh you should be able to connect to the BBGW as if an ethernet cable was connected:
ssh debian@(the assigned IP address)
After logging in you should have internet connectivity, so don’t forget to:
sudo apt-get update
Here is an example USB serial device. This should be on your tool kit list:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AFQ00G2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Thanks Robert for the tip on the 8.7 image! After switching to the new image all went very smoothly after that.
Regards,
Greg