Hi Team.
Background
I am trying to discover wireless web interface options for Mod Duo X, where the main goal is to be able to do minor changes into the pedalboard, while reducing rig weight to the bare minimum, and leave laptop at home. For this task I should be able to use my Android phone’s browser.
I’ve tried bluetooth: Yet another bluetooth thread - #16 by jon
And wifi: Wifi dongle MT7601U
And got some controversial success in both of cases.
During both of these experiments, I’ve bumped into the need of knowning what MDX ip address is, because using modduox.local dns address is impossible.
Issue
- In case of Bluetooth it is a just minor inconvenience - you should google for MDX wiki pages and remember that ip will be 192.168.50.1 , it is more or less doable, while kind of feels a bit inconsistent compared to the USB access that uses modduox.local address.
If you forget it, and will have to connect in some place where you do not have possibility to google it - you might have unpleasant time. Probably need to write it down somewhere with a pen.
- In case of Wifi (that seems to be much more interesting option due to much better connection speed and distance) things are getting much worse. WiFi connection works as MDX being connected to the Wifi Hotspot raised on the phone. Therefore, MDX ip address is granted by dhcp and is dynamic, and you do not know it, and it can be any one from 253 addresses, randomly. (even if you manage to know the subnet).
And here the most disappointing and unexpected part for me - starting with Android 10 there is no more any easy way to see IP addresses of the devices connected to your hotspot, only MAC addresses are shown. I am really frustrated that they had removed this feature, and even removed access to the arp cache, and there is no native way to see ip addresses. I have no idea why so basic feature had been removed, but here we are. You cannot see IP addresses of the connected devices. Even could not find any working third-party-application to provide this information from phone’s UI.
As result, even after setting wifi on the MDX side, you end up with MDX succesfully connected to your phone by wifi, and no way to know which IP to use to connect to MDX from your browser.
I’ve spent hours to find a workaround, and found the only solution on the android 10 side: running
ip neigh show command in the Termux terminal of my phone can provide the list of connected IPs, but that’s still ugly and not user friendly.
- Probably, I could somehow force static IP on the MDX system side for the wifi by doing some system tweaks, but it will break possibility to connect MDX to the different wifi hotspots that provide different IP ranges. (Even phones seem to use different ip ranges for their hotspots - 192.168.42.x is stated everywhere for the hotspot subnet, but mine uses 192.168.101.x, so swapping a phone for tablet wihout modifying settings on MDX, for example, is not possible if static address is forced on MDX) .
- Even while being at home I am starting to prefer wireless connection to get rid of the noises introduced by the ground loop, so I would like that it should be possible to use the same wireless connection from my PC. In case of wifi it basically means that instead of the phone’s hotspot I turn on home wifi AP with the same SSID and key as my phone hotspot has, MDX will connect to my home network and the granted address will be different, and will belong to another subnet.
To conclude, ip address should be assigned dynamicaly as it is currently, and there should be a way to know what this ip is.
Proposal
Could you please add possibility to see list of network interfaces and their ip addresses to the physical UI of the MDX?
Something like:
usb0: 192.168.51.1
bnep0: 192.168.50.1
wlan0: 192.168.101.40
It can serve as a cheat sheet, so you do not have to remember the IP address for bluetooth/usb , and in case of wifi it will be easy way to find current dynamic IP address. Also, wifi connection has completely no visilibility on the physical displays currently, so it could also serve as indicator for the succesful WiFI connection status.