Connecting to WPA2-Enterprise Networks (e.g., Eduroam, university settings)

Request Help
1

We’d really like to get our OpenFlexure connected to Eduroam (or our University of Toronto WiFi). We really only have WPA2-Enterprise networks at our disposal, due to very stringent university procedures. I know we can do direct ethernet connections, or use a phone hotspot, but ideally we’d still be able to get connected to Eduroam.

Recently, we were able to connect to Eduroam from a Raspberry Pi 5 on a separate project, but I’m noticing that WPA2-Enterprise networks are grayed out on the Raspbian-OpenFlexure. To be fair, I’m not sure if this is related to the use of RPi 4B vs. 5, or if it’s due to the use of Raspbian-OpenFlexure instead of a later, default RPi firmware version, though I would have thought the latter.

I imagine something like these instructions would work (I looked into this a while back, and ChatGPT’s version seems consistent with what I remember). I wanted to check first before diving into a possible rabbit hole.

I also found some Eduroam instructions for this: https://cat.eduroam.org/, when choosing Linux as the platform, it gives you a Python script to run, which defaults to a wpa_supplicant file if it can’t do it natively).

1 Like
2

Connecting to Eduroam is something we managed a workaround for a little while back, but wasn’t a massive priority as we usually use Ethernet (and didn’t want to upset university IT too much!). From memory the trouble comes from interactions between the current version of raspbian-openflexure and wpa_supplicant with Eduroam - I think it’s possible to install Network Manager* on the Pi and then disable wpa_supplicant to allow it to take over, then login as normal. @JohemianKnapsody am I remembering this correctly?

*Installing Network Manager on Raspberry Pi OS - Pi My Life Up

1 Like
3

Yeah generally I think the problem is that Eduroam seems to be set up differently at every uni, so it’s hard writing instructions that work everywhere

There’s also some security concerns with connecting a microscope to Eduroam, but I’m going to assume that your IT team has made sure that you’re not storing private data in plain text, or otherwise making it too easy for people to access data.

Installing Network Manager and using sudo nmtui seems to allow you to connect to WPA2-Enterprise networks. When we release the next version of the SD card on a more recent OS, this is likely to be included by default

2 Likes
4

Going to give this a try!