Campus wifi photon setup

Is there a way to setup photon on university campus using campus wifi without using a mobile hotspot?

If your campus has a special wifi network catered for devices that require password authentication for Wifi, it would be the easier with a request sent to the respective department.

If it’s running a 802.1X authentication where you have to enter your username and password, the devices will not be able to do that.

Right. I tried setup using cli and it gave me the message that I “won the Internet” but then I got the message “It doesn’t look like your Photon has made it to the cloud yet.” And my photon is still flashing blue.

What kind of network is available?

My campus have WPA2 802.11n and another network that’s also 802.11n but unsecured

Are they 2.4GHz, since 5GHz won’t work. Also, other than the standard WiFi password, there may be no further login required. Landing pages where you have to click ‘accept’ and such aren’t compatible.

Could you try placing your Photon in Listening mode, and then issue particle serial wifi? I’ve personally had better success with that than with particle setup.

I tried doing that also but I kept getting the error message ‘No device available via serial.’ Did I miss an essential step somewhere? The photon is plugged into my usb port on my laptop and I am connected to the internet

Is it in listening mode, and did you install the proper serial drivers? Also, could you try a different USB port and/or cable?

It scanned after exchanging the cable. I connected to wifi and it is now solid instead of blinking blue. Could I setup this way?

Is it solid blue or cyan? Normally, after entering valid credentials, the LED should eventually change to ‘breathing cyan’.

Blue. It could be due to the fact that I haven’t ‘claimed’ the photon yet?

Hmm, strange, solid blue shouldn’t even happen. Could you try hitting reset if you haven’t already done so? What colors does it show after that?

It shows a bright magenta then back to blinking blue.

Hmm, appearently, the credentials didn’t stick. Could you try entering them once more?

I tried using different network but they all don’t seem to work properly. Solid blue -> reset -> blinking blue

Does the campus have MAC address filtering/you have to go through a splash page to connect to the internet? Mine does and it led to a lot of chicken before the egg issues. Try connecting to the photon over a serial port when it is in listening mode and press “m” in order to get the mac address, then you can call your IT department to get it whitelisted.

Hi, I was just having the same issue. I solved it following skorn’s advice (I just googled MAC registration for IT department at my university).

Another trick to get the MAC address without serial connections, you can also put the Photon into listening mode and then scan WiFi networks using

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan   (LINUX)
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s (MAC)
netsh wlan show network mode=bssid (WINDOWS)

and look for “Photon” which will list the mac address.