Anyone using wifi direct?

matt

I am going to want (need) to use my Rpi in situations where there is no network available to hook in to eg my holiday home and friends who dont have networks running.
I will probably use usb drives or a external hard drive as a source when I do this but I am gonig to need to access the UI.
I think using wifi direct with my android phone will be the easiest way to achieve this.
Has anybody here tried this?
Is there a recommended dongle for this?
Is it the best/easiest way to access the UI without a network or is there something else I should be looking at?
Thanks
Matt

skrodahl

Hi matt,
I'm going to assume that you're not actually asking about the Wi-Fi Direct protocol, but rather accessing RuneAudio directly on Wi-Fi without any other network components or Internet connection.

This feature has been promised, and it may appear in RuneAudio 0.4. If you want do make it happen before that, you need to configure your Raspberry Pi as an access point. That's fully possible as long as you have a USB wireless network card.

One possible way to set up your Raspberry Pi as an access point is to use the Host AP Daemon (or hostapd), and the Arch Linux wiki contains instructions on how to do it on RuneAudio.

Adafruit has excellent instructions as well (they usually do). It's for Raspbian, but it should be applicable to RuneAudio/Arch Linux as well.

Edit: I found another tutorial that uses Arch Linux, you'll find it here.

matt

Hi skrodahl, yes I was actually thinking of the wifi direct protocol as it suppossedly only requires one compliant device, which would be my phone. I have also seen wifi direct dongles advertised so thought it looked like it could be a plug and play type solution. Is this not correct?
Thanks for the links.

skrodahl

matt wroteHi skrodahl, yes I was actually thinking of the wifi direct protocol as it suppossedly only requires one compliant device, which would be my phone.

I suspected that I misunderstood you.
There's a thread on raspberrypi.org discussing this, it might be of some help:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=31596

I have not looked into the topic, but I reckon that you will need some way of feeding the (presumably) sound stream into MPD or directly through the sound card on the Pi.

matt

I'm only looking to use wifi to access the ui. When I'm away from home and an i'll most likely use a powered usb hard drive as the music source connected directly to the Rpi.
I'm just thinking out loud about this I guess so i'm happy to be told I'm on the wrong track or if there are better ways to achieve this.

skrodahl

If you are just looking to connect your phone to the Raspberry Pi in order to control RuneAudio, my first post about hostapd should help you reach the goal.

It is possible to set up RuneAudio and the wireless network card in ad-hoc mode (Arch Linux wiki). Ad-hoc mode will let you connect two or more devices without using an access point.

Your wireless network card has to support monitor mode and IBSS.

Android won't talk ad-hoc directly, so you will either need an ad-hoc enabler for Android or root your device. Cyanogenmod will provide support for ad-hoc for supported devices out of the box.

But all in all, hostapd will probably be easier and more versatile.

Edit: Here is an article about Wifi Direct on Linux. It seems to be, at least partially, some manual setup. It may not be what you're looking for.

cmh714

I have an RA5730 and so far havent had any luck putting it into Ad-Hoc mode OR using hostapd to make it a WIFI AP. Supposedly it can do both, but it wont go into either mode for me yet....I may just try to get another wifi adapter to try.

bam94

Hi ! Do you have any news about the wifi direct for RuneAudio ? I now own a Rpi 3 and I may use RuneAudio by controlling it with my phone

. Thanks a lot

SimonS

You can. Download app. It work great!

bam94

SimonS wroteYou can. Download app. It work great!

So I've just downloaded the app, and I'm still wondering how to connect my andoid device and my Rpi3 by using wifi direct...Do you guys have any advices ?
Thanks a lot