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Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

improv-wifi.com

21–26 of 26 posts

Re: Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

#21

I think there are two issues with trying to get adoption for this in mainstream products: 1. Loads of products that have this problem use a wifi hotspot to do that transfer instead. Yes it sucks, but they don't want to pay for BLE that is only used for the connection process. 2. Both Apple and Android already have wifi-based connection processes built into the OS that have the enormous advantage of being able to fidd…

This may be a stupid question but I was actually looking for this the other day - what is the existing way to do this specifically with iOS? I couldn't find any sort of docs or SDK describing how I might setup a device to talk to iOS and get on the local wifi.

Re: Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

#22

This is great. I needed something like this for bootstrapping headless raspberry pis. I ended up rolling my own ad hoc provisioning script, and packaging it in a custom raspbian image. This seems like a great candidate for inclusion in a Pi distro.

I don't if useful but there are also existing projects like https://github.com/schollz/raspberry-pi-turnkey and https://github.com/sabhiram/raspberry-wifi-config which have the Pi configure an open WiFi AP if a network has not yet been configured which then allow the user to setup their network through a simple wizard-like web interface.

Open wifi networks for configuration used to be a pretty good solution, but have become less useful since the advent of phones automatically failing over to their mobile connection if the local network can’t route traffic to the internet.

Re: Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

#23

This looks interesting, hopeful it gets some adaption. On a related note most mobile devices already support QR code for setting up a WiFi networks (iOS, Android). Works extremely well. This website has a JavaScript implementation you can take offline for generation: https://qifi.org/ Declaimer: I have no relationship with the site. I've just used it for generation after a code review and taking the site offline.

QR code based Wifi setup is extremely handy for guest networks with obscure SSIDs and long complex passwords, and makes it easy for visitors to reconnect when the password changes.

Re: Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

#24
I'm not so interested in setting up WiFi, as I don't trust most of these devices on my network or connected to the internet. However it would be nice to have an easier way to connect to a WiFi Direct network and load up the "configuration" website on that network.

Re: Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

#25

"Your browser is not supported" Only works with Edge and Chrome? Firefox user here, what have they done that makes it incompatible with web standards?

> The standard should work without requiring the device to contain a screen

How are they going to meet this goal if they can't even get it to work in a major browser?

Re: Improv Wi-Fi: Open Standard for Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

#26
post #21

I think there are two issues with trying to get adoption for this in mainstream products: 1. Loads of products that have this problem use a wifi hotspot to do that transfer instead. Yes it sucks, but they don't want to pay for BLE that is only used for the connection process. 2. Both Apple and Android already have wifi-based connection processes built into the OS that have the enormous advantage of being able to fidd…

This may be a stupid question but I was actually looking for this the other day - what is the existing way to do this specifically with iOS? I couldn't find any sort of docs or SDK describing how I might setup a device to talk to iOS and get on the local wifi.

As I recall it's all via MFi (Made For iPod, etc.) which unfortunately isn't accessible to the average man on the street. All behind NDAs in a special developer portal. Typical Apple.
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