VOXL WiFi Guide

Overview

This page serves as a WiFi setup guide for all devices based on the original VOXL architecture including the VOXL and the VOXL Flight. Since the VOXL Flight is just a VOXL with an attached Flight Core, all instructions in this section are the same for both devices.

Hardware Setup

Disconnect power from the device
Attach Wi-Fi antennas as shown below (note it takes a little force to connect the MHF4 U.FL connectors)
Power up the device

VOXL Wi-Fi

You can also see a demonstration of this attachment in the VOXL Flight Quickstart video at minute 1:36:

Configuration and Connection

All devices support two WiFi modes, Station and SoftAP. Station Mode refers to the device being configured into a typical ‘WiFi client’ on a wireless network like your phone or laptop. Software enabled Access Point Mode (SoftAP) configures the device to generate its own hotspot so that other WiFi devices can connect to it. This is useful if you are in the field away from your home or office WiFi network. Switching between the two modes can be done at any time using the voxl-wifi command inside an ADB shell.

Configure and Connect in Station Mode

To configure the VOXL device into Station Mode, run the following command from the host machine:

me@mylaptop:~$ adb shell voxl-wifi station <SSID> <Password>

To finish the setup, reboot the device:

me@mylaptop:~$ adb reboot && adb wait-for-device

Once the device has rebooted, you can use the command ifconfig to get the IP address of your device on the network like:

me@mylaptop:~$ adb shell ifconfig
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2224 (2.1 KiB)  TX bytes:2224 (2.1 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 48:5F:99:9D:40:F7  
          inet addr:192.168.1.92  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::4a5f:99ff:fe9d:40f7/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:690 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:3000 
          RX bytes:225347 (220.0 KiB)  TX bytes:1358 (1.3 KiB)

The IP address can be found from the inet addr which in this case is 192.168.1.92. Now you can connect via ssh as:

me@mylaptop:~$ ssh root@192.168.1.92

Where here the IP address following root@ should correspond to the above output from ifconfig. The password to connect will be oelinux123.

Note: It’s not currently possible to assign a static IP, only DHCP is supported. If you need a static IP on your own wifi network it’s best to configure that in your router’s software.

Configure and Connect in SoftAP Mode

By default, the unit ships configured in SoftAP mode with an SSID of VOXL-XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX with password 1234567890 (where XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX is the unit’s MAC address. To configure the VOXL into Access Point Mode with your desired SSID, use the voxl-wifi utility:

me@mylaptop:~$ adb shell voxl-wifi softap <SSID>

To finish the setup, reboot the device:

me@mylaptop:~$ adb reboot && adb wait-for-device

Now on your host machine you can connect to the SSID specified above using the password 1234567890. The VOXL will assign itself the IP 192.168.8.1 and so from your host machine you can use ssh to connect as:

me@mylaptop:~$ ssh root@192.168.8.1

Your device will be assigned an IP with DHCP in the 192.168.8.X subnet, usually 192.168.8.60, but not always.

Next: Inspect and Configure SKU