Notices

Thanks for this, as you say it is an excellent place to start. I'm no programmer, so for the moment I'm just trying to provide proof of concept and demonstrate a use case.

I suppose I'm also trying to re-interest people in the idea itself; when I got my N900 there just weren't enough WiFi hotspots to make automation a sensible proposition. There are now, according to BT, over five million of them in the UK, and I understand that the national telcos of France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Brazil and others are doing likewise.

The perl client is not simple or elegant to install on the N900, because of dependencies that aren't easily met by Maemo; having understood how it works and made a successful login, I might look again at the python client as it would be easier to build into wifi assistant.

If I can come up with a "hack" solution that the average user can implement from a simple HOWTO, good enough for now, and as soon as people see the use for it, hopefully someone will build something better. I really think this could be a game-changer for the N900, who needs 4G if you can reliably get on WiFi?

Some further updates. I've given up on doing this in perl, we'll get further, faster in python, and there's a suggestion to integrate it with an app already written in python.

The python client identified in my earlier post cannot handle HTTPS and doesn't provide any useful response codes. This one does, although you'll need to manually install ssl support in python if you don't have it.

However, it provides the guts of a working WISPr routine in python, which could quickly be modified to accept credentials at command line, or doubtless the issue with the XML config file can be found and fixed. I have confirmed a successful login to BTWiFi using this code, although I have not yet gone live with it on my main phone.

The logic in this client is nice; it identifies the captive portal by the domain of the login URL, so if you're presented with a recognised login portal, regardless of the SSID that got you there, then the proper credentials will be selected. It also aborts graciously if we're already connected or there's no WISPr support, so I'd have no problem with running it on every connect. More testing is needed, and maybe a rewrite to use openssl which is more readily available in Maemo, but the guts of what we need is here.

It seems that in general support for this is pretty rubbish across Linux in general. Found some proposals for support in NetworkManager but nothing I can see in my distro (Arch) repos.

One thing I'm not sure about is how to handle automatic disconnection periods. IIRC fon/openzone logs out after 15 minutes of inactivity. As a result every now and then we will have to check the status BUT networks can allocate minutes or data restrictions, so we don't want to be checking unnecessary .

Hi Magick, I'm in about same position. I have a fonera hotspot (well 2 of them actually) in London and have wanted something more automatic as its so much pain to use other people's manually when I have contract-tariff 3G thats more reliable and works as you move between towers. But that data also has its cost/issues.

There are so many non-working fon hotspots/BT ones around ("FON" prefixed SSIDs everywhere else) that I don't bother much nowadays, so only if I KNOW Im connected to a working one from previous experience, do I bother, and obviously if Im hanging out there a while/have a desparate need due to no cell signal or other reasons (eg. near my monthly quota/whatever).

Wifi assistant app was only partly useful, but I agree, should be a good start. Its too slow to start up a full browser in maemo if Im only going to check email/fetch a podcast or other feed update (common task for me). I am a programmer btw, in python and c++ and have been looking at it tonight (hence the google/tmo search that got me here). I'd love to automate a bit more and speed up the Virgin Media wifi access I have underground in the tube stations that requires hitting the landing page the first time per day (or 6hrs ish? guess..) before you can connect to anything else - thats what I've just been automating(ish) a script for. The connectnow-home-widget might (if its open source enough) also provide some useful bits, thats what I've installed recently to aid various wifi connections at a single press and it can do stuff on connect/disconnect (oh but if only I could have it run a script as well as more switching options like wifi-only mode aka tablet mode to save battery on my commute!)

I'm also trying to record my data usage for wifi - its easy on cell data via the sqlite database it gets stored in; a couple of scripts and the Desktop Command Execution Widget show me what I've used/log+reset it each tariff period. But wifi, usage per SSID (or just for one ssid), is not available and I want it! When if-down scripts run, do you still have data in /proc/net/dev available? Do we have a pre-down script too? Or do I have to poll it regularly-ish (or even iptables-plugin-like method) to avoid missing some? Bleurgh if so, polling uses more cpu/battery.

I'd have thought there would be more apps for Linux desktop/laptop PCs that did this that we could look at, although N900 (my target device) may need its own modifications to techniques.

Regarding my mobile dev skills: I wrote the basics of a simple python gtk app a while ago with a couple of screens to get an idea how the event-loop and ui handling works (a london-underground-offline-data-related thing) but never done anything with Qt. Am a pretty skilled developer otherwise though (C++ and others)

Lets do this (and excuse me rambling a bit, its late...)!

Hi guys, i'm probably in the same position as you guys in terms of searching and messing about trying to get this to work

what am looking to do personally is use PyWispr and then see if i can add that to a .sh file and include a "&& sleep 60" and have it loop from boot, basically i've got my machine downstairs connected to a BTWiFi-With-FON router and i then share that connection to my PS3, soley for updates etc but obviously i have to continuesly login on my main machine alot.

i've tried looking into greasemonkey scripts for the browser and combining it with a autorefresh extension, None have worked successfully so i'm just wondering if any of you guys managed to get it to work specifically in a linux environment?

sorry to bump an old thread but this is the best info i've seen on this so far and believe me i have looked.

have you seen the wiki page?

i've been doing some digging and it appears connman supports wispr 1 and 2. maybe it would be possible to adapt thier code to work with our connection daemon.

That sounds like an awkward setup! Do I understand that your machine downstairs is acting as the wifi access point for your BT/FON thing (you said it was sharing the router connection to ps3)?
If that's so, Can I ask why your PS3 is not connected directly to your wifi router using your normal (not "open" fonera ssid)? Wouldn't that be way easier and in at least one way more secure?

I have a couple of Fonera's myself btw, but its pure Fon not BT router with fon support.