🔧Wi-Fi Console Mode

Access console ports of access points or controllers remotely

Plug 'the blue cables' to your WLAN Pi and access appliances remotely

1. Switch to Wi-Fi Console mode

From FPMS Modes > Wi-Fi Console > Confirm

2. Join to the WLAN Pi wirelessly from your laptop

Select the WLAN Pi xxx SSID, where xxx represents the last 3 digits of the MAC address of the WLAN Pi's eth0 interface. You can find both the SSID and WPA2 passphrase under Utils > SSID/Passphrase.

Alternatively, press the joystick center button to display the QR code, scan it with your phone and it will automatically connect.

Wi-Fi Console QR code

3. Connect a USB serial/console cable

Plug the USB to serial console cable to the console port of the AP or switch.

4. Navigate to Cockpit terminal

Navigate to the IP address or name of your WLAN Pi in your web browser. When the web UI loads, click TERMINAL.

Verify that the USB to serial adapter has been correctly initialized by checking for terminals /dev/tty*

ls /dev/tty*

This will output quite a few virtual consoles. We most likely care about a USB one.

But to troubleshoot which terminal we actually care about, try using the dmesg command to check messages from the kernel ring buffer. Maybe we got a message when we plugged in the console cable?

dmesg

Focus on the most recent few lines, at the bottom of the output. Or you can filter the output down to lines that include tty*

dmesg | grep tty*

Great, it looks like in our example we want ttyUSB0!

5. Open a serial connection using GNU Screen

Let's connect to an AP console

sudo screen /dev/{terminal}
sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0

By default a baud rate of 9600 is used. We can set a different one like so: sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Remote console port connection

To stop screen session, press Ctrl+A followed by K key and Y.

Ctrl+D to detach

screen -x to reattach

Type man screen to learn more about how to use GNU screen.

6. Switch back to Classic Mode

Via FPMS Modes > Classic > Confirm