Connecting to the Web Interface

Using MOD devices
25

My experiments lead me to the following conclusion.

  1. Bluetooth is no go, it is slow as hell, true. At least 4.0 does not worth the trouble configuring it. Bluetooth 5, while theoretically faster - seems to have compatibility issues, almost every topic mentioning 5.0 dongle ended up with “it was not tested”.

  2. Wifi is much better, speed feels not worse than USB, pretty much usable, but it does not work as an access point, it works only as a client.

It is not your tablet/phone connecting to MOD device WiFi, it would be MOD device connecting to some WiFi access point you’ve configured in wpa_supplicant config.

This means you need a hotspot to connect, and a way to determine an IP address of connected mod device to type into your browser.

As a hotspot you can use:

  1. a small usb wifi router as in this topic: Work! Access over WiFi with GL.iNet GL-MT300Nv2 - #4 by eggsperde I had not tried that, but author of the topic seems to be satisfied.
  2. Your android phone tablet itself in “wifi hotspot mode”. Probably Ipad should be capable of something similar.

Issues are the following:

  1. Wifi connection is not managed at all from the physical interface of the mod device, all configuration should be done in advance via ssh console in advance, there is no status information. Everything is quite blindfolded.

  2. If using android phone as a hotspot - I found that it is hard to determine MOD’s ip address at all - mod device does not show it all, and on android side it was very tricky to get it. (List of network interfaces on physical UI) I do not know if on Ipad it is any better. Also using dns name modduox.local did not work for me in case of phone-provided hotspot on all my phones. ( Works with my home wifi router though. That’s why I often used WIFI approach at home) Still, have no idea about Ipad.

  3. Also sometimes I had to reconnect the dongle after powering on my MDX, because it does not always connect reliably on boot, but reconnecting forces another connection attempt.

To conclude, my current approach is configure MOD to connect to my home wifi and use it that way most of the time, accessing it via regular modduox.local url/name.

For a field trip I take my phone, raise a hotspot on the phone named the same way as my home router with the same password, and use a long unsatisfying termux workaround to get an IP. The termux part is so time consuming, that usually I still bite the bullet and take a laptop with me instead if possible.

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