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Wireless Features

Enable Wifi

Wifi (and SSH) can be great tools to debug a camera if it misbehaves, or even to start developing on it.
In the future, a direct server-to-camera connection my be used to supplement or even replace the wired connection through the controller.
Any image that has the wifi packages installed and wifi or SSH not explicitly forbidden via config, can be made to connect to a wifi network using the "Wireless Setup" view panel.

Wireless Setup

The wifi credentials currently need to be provided every time, as there is no support within the server for either storing them on the host via a secrets API, nor on the camera.
To set the credentials, use a tool like wpa_passphrase (on linux) or write the wpa_supplicant.conf manually (on windows) and enter it in the wpa_supplicant.conf field hidden behind a collapsing header. Details on wpa_supplicant.conf can be found here.

SSH for Development

If the camera is connected to a wifi network, it will show its IP and the SSID of the network (shown in the tooltip of the IP).
When trying to connect, you will have to enter "piCore".
Using dev images, you have all capacities to start developing:

  • stop.sh to stop the currently running instances of the program
  • sources of the current build (always updated with firmware updates)
  • build_release.sh / build_debug.sh to compile the program
  • active sftp service to transfer new sources and extract compiled builds
  • debugging with sudo gdb --args TrackingCamera/TrackingCamera_armv7l -u

Wireless Camera Operation

While the AsterTrack Cameras currently need a wired connection, it is theoretically possible to operate them wirelessly in the future.
This requires solving two problems:

  • Very Low-Latency Wireless Sync
  • Low-Latency Bulk Data Transfer

There are some options being considered but nothing concrete has been planned yet that doesn't involve significant compromises.