I’m trying to install code onto a Rachel-Plus 3, when I was physically at the Archive this was easy, I could plug it into the Ethernet and then have my laptop connect to the Rachel WiFi, the laptop accessed the net via the Rachel, and the Rachel had direct access - great.
BUT I’m now trying to install at a different location without a convenient ethernet connection, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to do it since the Rachel box doesn’t seem to be able to use WiFi to connect to the Internet.
I’m presuming I’m missing something, because someone told me that a use case was teachers taking the box to a cafe in town with unmetered internet access where they could have it update its software, and I’ve yet to find a cafe with an ethernet connection.
Am I missing something obvious, or is this a significant limitation, and in which case can anyone suggest an optimum configuration for a laptop able to talk to a Rachel box and the net, and the Rachel box also able to talk to the net. (So the laptop can tell the Rachel box to download code/content).
Hi @mitra – if you have a laptop with an ethernet jack you can share your laptops WiFi connection with RACHEL via an ethernet cable between RACHEL and your laptop’s ethernet jack. There are also other hardware devices which can take a WiFi signal to an ethernet cable.
I use these methods in hotel rooms where I would otherwise have to call the hotel and register the MAC address of RACHEL if I plugged into their WiFi.
OPTION 1: When you are in places where internet is limited, the best way to do installation of contents is to do it offline. If you have access to internet, download the CONTENT folder you want to install in your Rachel and save it internal or external hard disk. Then you can transfer it to Rachel offline using software like Filezilla etc
OPTION 2: If you have another Rachel Plus that is installed with content that you want to appear in other Rachel Plus that doesn’t have, then you can copy from that Rachel to your hard disk drive and then back to your empty Rachel using the same software tool File Zilla.
Sure - I guess that should work, but @jeremy, how do you know what the IP address of the Rachel box is in this case, since my laptop is then being the DHCP server and providing an IP address to the Rachel box.
Unless I know that, I can’t figure out how to ssh into the Rachel with it connected to the net, which means I can’t tell the Rachel to do things (like apt-get). I cant even figure out if the Rachel is successfully connected since I cant access it by Wifi
@mitra - easiest way to do it is to use your smart phone to connect to RACHEL WiFi signal and look in the top right corner of the RACHEL homepage which shows the LAN IP of the device.
Thanks - one more step required, you have to plug it into the ethernet port next to the power connector otherwise it gives an address like 203.30.1.1 which doesnt work - the other port (at least for me) is on 192.168.2.3
For a system as well designed at the hardware level & conceptual level, some of the integration could use some dev and docs!
I guess the system was never intended to be used the way Ed suggested when we first discussed it, i.e. where a teacher would “take the Rachel box somewhere that internet was unmetered and have it connect to the net and download missing resources”. That process sounded great, but if I’m having difficulty getting this to work, then I doubt any remote user is going to figure out the steps described above (and which are not documented in any of the docs), nor in most cases will they have the requisites available to get it to do an update i.e. laptop with ethernet cable (most don’t have ethernet these days); plus smart phone;
I’m not sure the right way to fix this given the current physical hardware - with hindsight it would probably have made much more sense to put a second radio in the device so that it could act as a bridge than two ethernet ports. In particular since then it could have shared a WiFi signal to a mobile phone.