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Install from scratch

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Vasily Evseenko edited this page Nov 23, 2022 · 5 revisions

  1. Install libsodium You can download and build sources from https://download.libsodium.org/doc/installation#integrity-checking or install binary packages from you linux distro.

    To install from sources:

    git clone https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium --branch stable
cd libsodium
./configure
make && make check
sudo make install

  2. Install wifibroadcast

    install deps:

    apt-get install virtualenv fakeroot debhelper
apt-get install python-twisted libpcap-dev libsodium-dev python-pyroute2 python-future python-configparser python-all

    Build:

    cd ~
git clone https://github.com/svpcom/wfb-ng.git --branch stable
cd wifibroadcast
make deb

    Install:

    cd deb_dist
dpkg -i wifibroadcast*.deb

  3. Configure:

    Please follow wiki here: https://github.com/svpcom/wfb-ng/wiki/Setup-HOWTO

    Create /etc/wifibroadcast.cfg modify the wifi device(s) to use in /etc/default/wifibroadcast

  4. Troubleshooting

    Check your wiring. You may run into all kinds of strange problems, crashes, unstabilites, packetloss, bad blocks and glitches if you don't! YOU NEED TO SUPPLY BOTH THE ARM BOARD AND THE WIFI CARDS WITH STABLE 5 VOLTS!

    • use short wires
    • use wires with proper gauge, 20AWG (0.5mm²) is recommended
    • solder everything, avoid any USB cables or plugs, often they are of questionable quality, wires are too thin and connectors fit too losely and can't cope with vibrations/shocks
    • If you don't want or can solder directly to the card (for example if solder pads are very small), use a a USB cable and cut it off right behind the connector, then solder thicker wires to it (or directly to the board). Another alternative is to buy DIY USB connectors and solder cables to the conenctors directly.
    • use a quality BEC which can handle the load, depending on number and type of cards and arm board used, current consumption can be as high as 3A for short peak periods.
    • consider adding low-ESR electrolytic caps near the wifi cards and Pi
    • do not use USB power banks, often they're of questionable quality and cannot deliver the advertised current
    • do not use the micro USB socket for power supply, apart from the drawbacks of the micro USB connector itself, on the Pi1/2/3 (as well as Pi1A+ and Pi3A+) there is a polyfuse in the current-path which lowers voltage and limits current which can lead to issues and instabilitues. If you want to power the Pi through the testpads at the bottom, make sure you use the testpads that are after the polyfuse (search Raspberry forum for details)
    • power through the GPIO pins

    Check for EMI interference

    USB2 bus frequency is 480MHz so 433MHz high-power telemetry radio (like SiK radio) can cause WiFi card disconnects. Need to use shielded cables and copper foil.

    Check that you WiFi card and driver support selected band and/or channel

    Old Atheros cards are 2.4GHz only. Some cards don't support arbitrary subsets of WiFi channels in 5.8GHz band.

    Check wifibroadcast logs

    Most of error messages are self-descriptive and help you to fix error quickly. Use following commands for drone:

    systemctl status wifibroadcast@drone
journalctl -xu wifibroadcast@drone

    and for gs:

    systemctl status wifibroadcast@gs
journalctl -xu wifibroadcast@gs
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