Connecting BlueROV2-Rpi to WiFi using MAC address on router (no password for network)

Blue Robotics Vehicles
1

My team is building out our first BlueROV2 (Heavy) and we’re trying to update the firmware on the Raspberry Pi. The twist is that our company has the network locked down for security reasons and we cannot access the internet using the standard SSID and Password. The network we have has to have the MAC address added to the server to have access the network. We’ve added the Mac address. Now I’m wondering how to get the pi on the network without the SSID and PW?

Does anyone have any suggestions for this problem?
Thanks,
Bolli

2

After adding the MAC address of your BROV2 to the server, if the network SSID is available (it’s broadcast, a.k.a. it’s not a hidden SSID network) you can just connect to it with the BlueOS interface.

If it’s a hidden SSID, we still don’t support it, but I can add a patch for that, or we can help you do it manually through BlueOS’s terminal.

Edit: you should be able to access the BlueOS interface through blueos.local if you’re thetered to the ROV, or by accessing BROV2’s hotspot through blueos-hotspot.local (for that, you need to be using Beta6 or greater).

3

Thank you for that reply Rahael. Even though it’s a new BROV2 its an R3 version and I dont think we’re using the Blue OS?

The SSID is available and not hidden, so we at least have that going for us.

4

Hi @Bolli, welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

Do you have access to a web interface for your vehicle? If so, is it the BlueOS one (http://blueos.local), or the old Companion Software one (http://192.168.2.2:2770)?

If you’re not already using BlueOS I recommend you switch to it, especially if you’re just starting out. Our old Companion software is no longer being developed, so better to start with the new and improved one if possible, both for the features and for future updates and extensibility :slight_smile:

If you’re on the Companion Software and want to try out that connection first, you should hopefully be able to connect to your wifi from the Network page.

5

I tried to install BlueOS, but it turns out that we just reinstalled the companion software, not BlueOS. Your document HERE says it has a download of BlueOS but I have yet to find a functioning link to a downloadable version.

I was able to find the Github site for the BlueOS releases. Is the BlueOS-raspberry the file I need to flash to an SD card or is it all 4 of those associated files in the release?

6

The download link for the latest stable version (1.0.1) on that page works fine for me. If flashing on that image presents the same interface as you had before then you were already on BlueOS. The web interface for the old Companion Software looks like this, which is quite different to the BlueOS interface :slight_smile:

BlueOS-raspberry.zip is the image file that can be flashed onto an SD card (and is what gets downloaded by the link in the docs). The other files are source code (if for some reason you want to download all the code for a specific version), and a core file (if you already have BlueOS installed, and want to manually upload a new core docker image to load instead of your installed one, rather than using the more standard internet based updating process).