Raspberry Pi + 3G (vodafone)

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patrickdavey

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#166207 5-Mar-2015 22:11

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone here has experience connecting a raspberry pi (or linux flavour) to the vodafone network. I am thinking of buying one of these: http://www.vodafone.co.nz/shop/mobileDetails.jsp?skuId=sku500386 (a vodafone prepay dongle) so that I can put my raspberry pi somewhere with cellular coverage and upload photos periodically over 3G data.

Any advice / suggestions would be most welcome!

Thanks,
Patrick

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2847 posts

Uber Geek

#1252002 6-Mar-2015 06:42

My advice would be to check the chipset is supported by Linux, specifically with the ARM architecture, and also that it does not depend on any pre-compiled proprietary binary which may not be available on that platform.

ianboag

103 posts

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#1256268 11-Mar-2015 12:49

I'm looking at the same problem. Setting up a 3G stick directly on the Pi looks like a bit of a mission ......

My thoughts are to use a wifi thingo (WiPi) and have a mobile cellular hotspot in the same case ..... Hotspot is essentially a 3G router, so I could also use any old wireless 3G router with a USB stick.

The cellular hotspot has one drawback in an unattended situation - if the battery runs flat then someone has to press the switch to make it go again. My thoughts are to power it off a mini usb cable and make sure that is never unpowered for very long.

Alternatively if I use a "standard" 3G/USB router - and it has a power outage - it will come back to life when power is re-applied. I think.

Any comments from someone who has actually done this ..... ?

ianboag

103 posts

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#1256925 12-Mar-2015 11:07

Knock me down with a feather. The Wipi/hotspot thing don't work .....

I have a Pi with a WiPi - connects quite happily to my regular wifi. The desktop next on the same bench connects quite happily to the hotspot. The Pi finds the hotspot, but won't connect. It just sits there saying things about 4-way handshakes and disconnected - over and over. It's not a WPA key issue. Consumed a couple of hours of my life and has me stumped.

richms

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#1256928 12-Mar-2015 11:16

Can you plug the hotspot in over USB and have it bring up a ethernet over USB interface? That was rock solid reliable on one that a friend did for a similar purpose - was monitoring a construction site with 2 or 3 USB webcams connected to the pi.

Richard rich.ms

Killerkiwi2005

374 posts

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#1256929 12-Mar-2015 11:16

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/07/3g-internet-on-raspberry-pi-success/

ianboag

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#1257205 12-Mar-2015 14:23

How do I " bring up a ethernet over USB interface" .... ?

richms

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#1257290 12-Mar-2015 16:07

It was a case of a setting on the hotspot and plugging it in, then an ifup command on its interface name

Richard rich.ms

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Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

ianboag

103 posts

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#1257327 12-Mar-2015 17:13

Now all I need to know is the "setting on the hotspot" .... :-) There are quite a few

richms

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#1257329 12-Mar-2015 17:17

USB teathering had to be enabled. It was basically an android phone with no phone.

Richard rich.ms

ianboag

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#1257334 12-Mar-2015 17:24

Aha! Thanks.

ianboag

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#1258261 14-Mar-2015 09:53

I cracked it. Dunno if anyone is interested, but ......

The aim was to run VNC over cellular to get access to a remote Pi.

First thing was to set up an inwards connection - generally not available for cellular data. Not all that hard - as a Spark user I just had to choose direct.telecom.co.nz as the APN. See below for how that is done.

Next step was to install tightvnc on the Pi. Just follow the instructions stuff.

My cellular device is a Huawei hotspot which connects to a wifi dongle on the Pi. I couldn't get a t-stick to work, so went for wifi/hotspot which works OK.

The hotspot is actually a router. LAN-side is 192.168.1.1 and the Pi defaults (DHCP) to 192.168.1.100. As it will be the only device on this network I was happy not to fiddle with that. I logged into the hotspot (browser from the Pi) (admin/admin), fixed the APN and set up the "virtual server" (as they call it) to forward port 5900 (the default VNC one) to port 5900 on the Pi. Standard NAT stuff.

I found out the hotspot WAN IP (whatismyip.com works, but http://icanhazip.com is better). I connected from my desktop with a VNC viewer and it all worked. Wahoo.

But of course there is still the dynamic IP problem.

So I went to dtdns.com and got myself a free domain. Then went looking for an update client to use with Linux on a Pi. That turned out to be harder than I thought it would be (for someone like me who started with no knowledge of this stuff). I ended up writing a not-very-long-or-complex bash script which I am happy to pass on to anyone who wants to know.

I think this approach would also work with a t-stick ....

patrickdavey

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1258270 14-Mar-2015 10:35

Hi Ian,

Well done! I'd be very interested in seeing your bash script! I've just now got the (vodafone) vodem stick, they tell me it has linux drivers - so hopefully I can get that working.. Anyway, my plan at the moment is to allow someone to send a text to the device, and for the PI to email them back a picture.. I'd not really thought as far as how to setup an inward connection - but the VNC idea does sound good.

Anyway, I for one would be interested in seeing your setup. Assuming I can get my setup to work, I'll also send through the details.

For anyone who is interested, my pi currently takes timelapses from my house (in Christchurch) and uploads them (automatically) to youtube.. http://timelapses.psdavey.com

Thanks for all the help so far!

ianboag

103 posts

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#1260837 17-Mar-2015 10:36

Hi Patrick

I more or less have things sorted now. Connection through wifi and the hotspot is dead simple as there are no drivers required. I tried fooling round with a stick .....

Choosing the right Spark APN (I'm a Spark user) and a bit of port forwarding on the hotspot (it's just a router) gets me an inwards connection to the Pi. I think vodafone have an APN that works for inwards connection although I gather they are a bit cagey with it. One might try direct.vodafone.co.nz as the APN for your stick .....

An SSH connection into the Pi is good enough for most of what I want to do, but running VNC is not hard. With PuTTY and WinSCP I can run things from the PC, transfer files back/forth, edit stuff on the Pi and all that. Can have multiple sessions where I run something on the Pi in one session and watch the syslog in another one. Nice. Wish I'd figured all that out yonks ago.

Unfortunately I don't know how to programatically get texts off the hotspot. This is a pain as it is dead easy to get/send texts logging into the hotspot with a browser on the Pi. Bah ... What I need is a Linux "robot" that will log into a site (the router), execute a predefined series of keystrokes and possibly log some of what comes back. Haven't found one yet :-(

However it would be a piece of the proverbial to do your "hello - send me a pic" thing if the hello was an email rather than a text. Just make the Pi check its email every few minutes ....

I'm ian.boag@gmail.com if you want to continue this discussion without boring everyone else to death :-)

IB

richms

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#1260841 17-Mar-2015 10:41

curl is what you need to get into things and run scripts that are web accessible.

You will need to use a cookie jar to keep the login cookie in. I would suggest deleting the jar and relogging in between each session, as when I tried keeping it when accessing sites, it would randomly decide I needed to log in again and break everything till I manually deleted the jar and then re-requested the login urls.

Richard rich.ms

ianboag

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#1260845 17-Mar-2015 10:47

I have used curl here and there, but can't quite see where I use it here.

To get texts off the hotspot, I log in to it (192.168.0.1), put in a user/password then follow (well defined) interactive steps to get to "read SMS" or "send SMS" option. I dont' know how to automate the steps .... In the good ole DOS days I had a thing called keyplayer that did all this a treat. Well maybe they weren't all that good :-(

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