[feature] Enable 3G Dongles

[johnnyman727]

To get 3G Dongles working, we'll need to update some dependencies on the device, add a udev rule, and finally add logic to the CLI to write the appropriate options to the /etc/config/network file. This issue is about that final piece which needs to be in t2-cli.

To see how to do this, check out https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/3gdongle.

[johnnyman727]

This would still be a great feature and we can't use 3G dongles smoothly until it's added. If anyone is interested in contributing and needs more help, feel free to ping me here.

[shaochuancs]

Hi, @johnnyman727 , this would be a great feature. Looking forward that we can use 3G dongle automatically.

I opened https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/3gdongle but feel completely confused (I'm a web developer and not familiar with OpenWRT/hardware/system programming). Does it mean we need to ssh to Tessel machine and run several commands there?

Thanks

[johnnyman727]

Hi @shaochuancs, thanks for getting involved!

I opened https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/3gdongle but feel completely confused (I'm a web developer and not familiar with OpenWRT/hardware/system programming)

No worries - I felt the same way when I first started perusing through OpenWRT docs (and still do sometimes). Feel free to ask me any questions that come up.

Does it mean we need to ssh to Tessel machine and run several commands there?

Yes, that's exactly right. If your Tessel is connected to your wifi, you can get a shell with t2 root. That's the preferred way to work with Tessel's console (it uses ssh internally). If not, you can still get a shell over USB but you'll need to use a tool like dterm or screen (you'd use the command like screen /dev/usbmodem1422).

Typically, the way we build things for the CLI, is we'll use the shell to figure out what commands we need to run to get some feature to work. Once we have a list of commands to run, it becomes relatively simple to automate those commands with the CLI.

As an example, here is how we enable access points. You can see that we have a lot of commands that use:

tessel.simpleExec

This is basically a wrapper over:

tessel.connection.exec(SOME_COMMAND, () => {});

and it's a shorthand way of saying "run this shell command and then resolve a Promise once that command completes.

We have one file where we list all the commands we use on Tessel (and pass to simpleExec or tessel.connection.exec).

I hope that all makes sense - let me know if you have any questions!

[shaochuancs]

Hi, @johnnyman727, Thank you so much for the explanation! I'll read some OpenWRT docs and try to enable my 3G dongle.

Thanks

[johnnyman727]

No problem. Let me know how it goes!

[JakeHP]

+1

[aquaminer]

+1

[brihijoshi]

Hey, @mittalshravika and I have been trying this issue. We used a shell over USB (screen) to ssh into Tessel and update the "opkg" but are encountering the following issues (as in the screenshot)

We tried looking up the error here and here but there has been no progress.

Could you please help?

@Frijol @johnnyman727

[johnnyman727]

Hi @brihijoshi, did you ensure that the Tessel has an internet connection before running opkg update?