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Front Panel Menu System
Front Panel Menu System (FPMS) is a 'homegrown' name, it came from the development team. FPMS refers to the screen and the buttons.
The display is a 1.44" 128×128 pixel color TFT LCD display by Waveshare.
Time
Internet status globe
Wireless interface status
Operating Mode
(eth0) Ethernet IP address
Link connection speed
Additional interface IP addresses (mode dependent)
The Operating Mode (in yellow) will show the WLAN Pi model when the device is in classic mode. Otherwise it will show the operating mode (Console, Hotspot, Server, Bridge)
The WLAN Pi hostname is listed at the bottom of the screen.
Where do you think the last 3 characters come from?
Write the answer on your worksheet before clicking the answer tab to view the answer
The xxx represents the last 3 characters of the eth0 MAC address.
To the left of the display, you will find a 5-way joystick (J)
To the right of the display, you will find 3 action buttons:
Button A cycles through wired network troubleshooting tools:
Reachability
LLDP neighbor
eth0 IP configuration
Button B is a shortcut to activate Hotspot mode – useful for wall attenuation measurements
Button C allows you to shut down or restart the unit
Explore the menu options and you are welcome to experiment.
System > About
System > Date & Time
System > Summary
System > Reboot
and center click, used to execute the selected menu item.
There is no power button, the WLAN Pi M4 will boot up as soon as power is provided via either integrated PoE (802.3af) or USB Type-C port.
Connect the Ethernet cable present on your desk
The red activity LED indicates that the unit has been powered on
Look for the green activity LED blinking, this means the OS has been initiated
After a few moments, the screen will come to life.
When you insert a freshly imaged SD card, the initial boot can take up to 120 seconds!
Why? During this time, the WLAN Pi will resize the SD card partition and configure parameters specific to the hardware platform (M4 / R4 / Pro).
The SD card present within your WLAN Pi M4 provided at WLPC should already have been initialized, theoretically you will not experience this long initial boot period.
The USB Type-C port can be used to power the WLAN Pi M4 from a laptop, battery pack, or 5V power supply.
Note that some older laptops might not be able to provide enough power via USB.
Unfortunately, the USB Type-C port on the M4 does not offer OTG (Ethernet over USB Type-C port) data connection.
There are several ways to interact with your WLAN Pi:
Physical display and buttons (FPMS)
Ethernet
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth (Experimental)
The 3D-printed case is made up from 7 primary components.
1
Case extrusion
2
Ethernet end cap
3
USB Type-C and HDMI end cap
4
Support sled (for the waveshare display & buttons)
Aux antenna
Antenna lead management slots
5
V-plane antenna riser
6
Vanity plate
7
Vanity plate shroud
8
1/4" - 20 thread assembly
9
4x threaded slug inserts provide accessory mounting points
These can optionally be replaced with magnets (sizes below)
On the rear face of the case:
1 x 1/4" - 20 thread
4 x M3 threaded mount points
M3 threaded mount points are available:
40 mm and 80 mm apart on the back
80 mm apart on the top and bottom
The 4 mount points on the back of the unit are provided by 3D-printed slugs of plastic with an M3 threaded hole in the center.
These can be used for attaching 'accessories' to the back of the WLAN Pi, or they can be removed and replaced with bar magnets.
The 4 threaded slug inserts may be replaced with Neodymium bar magnets.
The suggested convention is to install magnets with the North pole facing upwards, this convention would be used to make any future magnetically attached accessories compatible.
These magnets are optional, they do not come pre-installed. Magnet specs: 25 × 10 × 3 mm N52 Neodymium Magnets.
Available at BadgerWiFi.co.uk and at all good Wi-Fi conferences.
Available at BadgerWiFi.co.uk and at all good Wi-Fi conferences.
is a lightweight web browser-based speed test server running on your Pi. It is implemented in JavaScript using XHR (XMLHttpRequest) that runs in a web browser. No special client application is needed, so you can run this on any device which has a web browser.
Go ahead! Hit that START button.
Make sure you think carefully about what link is "actually" being measured when you use this tool!
How did we get the extra details on this screen?
LibreSpeed is a service running on the WLAN Pi, and therefore you are testing the link speed between the device (you are viewing the page with) and the WLAN Pi. This particular configuration of LibreSpeed is not measuring the Internet link speed.
Hover over SPEED TEST in the menu bar and select SPEED TEST (DETAILS) for the view with extra details.
This part is not really a lab, but you should definitely do these steps!
The WLAN Pi OS ships with no 'default RF regulatory domain'.
Note the warning message shown on the display.
As you are sitting here in Phoenix, let's apply the relevant regulatory domain. This will unlock the permitted channels and enforces limits and DFS rules defined by the FCC (or whichever regulatory body governing the alpha-2 country code you select).
Curious what channels are permitted? SSH into your unit and check the output of iw phy0 info and scroll up to the Frequencies section in each band to see which channels are permitted. Try iw phy0 info | less to paginate the output.
Using FPMS, click the joystick in any direction to open the menu. FPMS menus "scroll". To quickly select System, you can click the joystick up once:
Menu > System > RF Domain
Select Set Domain US
This can be reconfigured any time you like!
If the unit is connected to the Internet, you can update the timezone automatically by navigating through:
System > Settings > Date & Time > Set Timezone > Auto
If you do not have a connection to the Internet, you can update the timezone manually by navigating through (Phoenix is quite a way down the list so you will have to repeated click down):
System > Settings > Date & Time > Set Timezone > Manual > America > Phoenix
Under the hood, chrony is used as the NTP client.
A web-based graphical interface for Linux
What is Cockpit?
It is a web-based graphical interface for Linux machines. It simplifies management, and critically, it allows easy CLI access to the WLAN Pi without requiring a dedicated SSH client.
Click on COCKPIT from within the menu bar
If you get a connection failure, try again using a different browser.
Login using the default 'first time boot' credentials
username: wlanpi
password: wlanpi\
You will be prompted to change your password, this is NOT optional. YOU MUST do this to proceed\
The first time you log in to Cockpit, you will be in limited access mode.\
Now please have a poke around, explore what functionality is exposed by Cockpit UI
The menu option at the bottom of the left side panel is Terminal
For the duration of the Deep Dive, this web-based terminal will be the default (recommended) method for accessing the WLAN Pi terminal. Although if you want, you can SSH into the WLAN Pi.
Execute command reachability in the Terminal window within Cockpit.
System-level updates will be made occasionally that require re-imaging your microSD card.
If you choose to re-image your SD card with the latest release of WLAN Pi OS, this will come with the latest version of all the default packages found in the package archives enabled by WLAN Pi OS.
To update only WLAN Pi packages to their latest versions, you can use this CLI command:
wlanpi-update is a wrapper around aptitude which only updates WLAN Pi packages. You can also update WLAN Pi packages by using apt update and apt upgrade.
Or you can navigate to the Software Updates section in Cockpit.
If you have not already done so (via FPMS) you can configure / double-check the timezone from Cockpit.
Open Overview and click on System time 'Feb 5, 2024 6:39 PM' – highlighted in red below**.** You can figure out the rest 😉
Overview
SoC
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
Memory
LPDDR4 RAM (2 to 8 GB)
Network
1 GbE RJ45 (802.3af PoE)
Wireless
Wi-Fi 6E (2x2:2) MT7922 module
USB
3 x USB 2.0 Type-A connector
Storage
microSD 32 GB memory card
Display
1.44" Color TFT LCD (128 x 128)
Other
Activity indicator LED (green)
Power indicator LED (red)
4-way joystick with center select 3 shortcut buttons Standard size HDMI port
Power Supply Options
DC 5V via USB Type-C connector
802.3af PoE (via RJ45 port)
Powering the WLAN Pi M4 via USB-C and PoE at the same time may cause damage to the WLAN Pi M4 or the USB-C host.
Power LED
Red
Both case ends
Solid LED = device is powered on
Activity LED
Green
Next to Ethernet port
Blinking LED = Heartbeat, OS is initialized
Solid LED = hung
Discover your network in a single click
The cards in the network page will only be complete if you have an Ethernet connection to a network.
Connect to your WLAN Pi from your mobile device
Recent versions of macOS no longer support Bluetooth PAN
The WLAN Pi M4 has a built-in Bluetooth 5.2 radio, in this lab we will go through pairing a smart device to a WLAN Pi.
Enable Bluetooth pairing mode on your WLAN Pi Via FPMS: Bluetooth > Pair Device
Your WLAN Pi will be discoverable for 30 seconds.\
Grab your smart device (iPhone/iPad, Android). We recommend using your mobile device for this lab rather than your laptop. And we say that because laptops don't support this feature.
Switch on Bluetooth and search for nearby Bluetooth devices
Be sure to select your wlanpi-xxx from the list of nearby Bluetooth devices. Be patient, your WLAN Pi may take 10 seconds to appear.
If pairing is successful, FPMS will display a notification indicating the success
If unsuccessful, re-initiate the pairing process by selecting Pair Device from display
Navigate back to the 'home screen'
You should see PAN: 169.254.43.1 displayed. This is your Bluetooth network interface IP address.
Open your mobile browser and navigate to the WLAN Pi WebUI
https://wlanpi-xxx.local
You should see the WLAN Pi Web UI landing page.
If you were to perform a LibreSpeed test, right here and now.
What would you 'actually' be measuring?
That's right! You would be measuring the speed of the Bluetooth connection between your mobile device and the WLAN Pi.
You should also double-check that your WLAN Pi is not reachable via some other route, for example, if your WLAN Pi and mobile device were on the same LAN, you might be testing the Wi-Fi connection speed.
How fast is your Bluetooth link?
Once paired, you can easily disconnect and reconnect to your WLAN Pi by selecting it from the list of paired Bluetooth devices on your mobile device.
Recent versions of macOS have removed the GUI to enable Bluetooth PAN. This effectively means that you cannot connect to your WLAN Pi from your Apple Mac running Big Sur and above.
Welcome to the new WebUI for the WLAN Pi!
If your access device is on the same network segment, the WLAN Pi WebUI is hosted at https://wlanpi-xxx.local otherwise go to https://<IP>
https://wlanpi-xxx.local swap out xxx to the identifier for your specific WLAN Pi
We use "https" port 443 with a self-signed certificate!
You will be greeted with a "connection is not private" warning
Click Advanced or similar option in your browser
Proceed to wlanpi-xxx.local (unsafe) continue to the new WLAN Pi landing page
On Chromium based browsers you may need to type thisisunsafe to bypass the security warnings.
If the ".local" address did not resolve, for example if your laptop is on another network segment, you will want to use the IP address of your WLAN Pi.
Navigating around the features of your WLAN Pi is now super easy with the new dynamic menu bar. On larger screens, the menu bar will appear at the top of the web page.
Menu items with a (downwards "⌄" chevron) have additional options.
While it is not quite bar-o'clock yet, let's discuss the orange strip displaying system stats. We like to keep an eye on microSD card free space, especially if you use your WLAN Pi as an FTP/TFTP server or you're saving large packet captures.
Next, let's take a look at a couple of these WebUI applications.
We will not go through these in the order they appear on your screen. Stick with us as we will come back to some of these later in a lot more detail.
To help prevent data corruption, the best practice is to 'gracefully' shutdown your WLAN Pi using one of these listed methods. An 'ungraceful' shutdown is when you just yank the power source!
This can be done via:
FPMS (screen & buttons): Menu > System > Shutdown
CLI command
sudo poweroff
sudo shutdown now
Cockpit via WebUI
The beauty of WLAN Pi OS and the way of distributing WLAN Pi features as Debian packages, is that your WLAN Pi can be easily updated without the need for re-imaging the SD card. Having said that, occasional re-imaging might be required, mainly because some code changes need to be applied to the actual low-level system files and services.
When we say "all packages", we mean packages created by the WLAN Pi team, as well as other application and system packages. You can check for available updates to packages. This command won't install any package, it will only check what are the latest versions of packages available from the online repositories.
After the first process finishes, the updates can be installed with:
WLAN Pi OS Linux kernel is now also distributed as a Debian package, and it can be updated using the same apt commands shown in the paragraph above.
If you only want to update packages that we have created, use the wlanpi-update command.
It will first check for available updates:
After you press the letter y, followed by enter key, the upgrade will begin:
