In this post I’ll quickly cover how you can set up your pcDuino8 uno to automatically connect to your wireless network. All you need is a WiFi-dongle.

Because the pcDuino8 uno only has one USB-port, you have to use an USB hub to expander USB port.

Requried

1. pcDuino8 Uno
2. USB Hub
3. USB keyboard and mouse
4. USB WiFi Dongle
5. Screen with HDMI port and cable

Setting up WiFi connection

Start by booting the pcDuino8 uno, connected to a display and a keyboard. Open up the terminal and edit the network interfaces file:

sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces

This file contains all known network interfaces, it’ll probably have a line or two in there already.

Change the first line (or add it if it’s not there) to:

auto wlan0

Then at the bottom of the file, add these lines telling the pcDuino8 uno to allow wlan as a network connection method and use the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf as your configuration file.

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

The next step is to create this configuration file.

Configuring WiFi connection

Open up the wpa_supplicant.conf file in the editor.

sudo vim /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Again, some lines might already be present, just add the following.

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
    ssid="YOUR_NETWORK_NAME"
    psk="YOUR_NETWORK_PASSWORD"
    proto=RSN
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    pairwise=CCMP TKIP
    group=CCMP TKIP
    auth_alg=OPEN
}

• proto could be either RSN (WPA2) or WPA (WPA1).
• key_mgmt could be either WPA-PSK (most probably) or WPA-EAP (enterprise networks)
• pairwise could be either CCMP (WPA2) or TKIP (WPA1)
• auth_alg is most probably OPEN, other options are LEAP and SHARED

Make sure it works

Reboot the pcDuino8 uno and it should connect to the wireless network. If it doesn’t, repeat above steps or get help from an adult.

A big thanks to Automatically connect a Raspberry Pi to a Wifi network and pcDuino8 Uno section on LinkSprite’s Forum