[hanoz]

Having had a proper play with a Raspberry Pi (Zero) for the first time this week I've been very surprised that setting up wifi is so much harder than it ought to be, especial when taking it out and about.

Is there any reason why Pi plus Raspbian can't/won't/doesn't have a Chromecast style setup built in, i.e. boots up, finds wifi adapter but no known network, hosts own network allowing connection from smartphone app to configure wifi settings for new network?

[gramasaurous]

That would be a pretty useful utility to build actually. I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work unless these wifi adapters don't have the ability to broadcast their own network. Would be fun to give it a try!

[davidmaitland]

I really like this idea actually. May see if I can cobble together a little program to do this.

[gramasaurous]

Found a guide to do this [0] but without a web interface for configuration, or figuring out if there is a wifi device. Would be easy to setup a script to run on boot to check to see if a wireless network interface is attached, then set up the ad-hoc network accordingly and serve a simple config page. Finally something to do with my pi(s)!

[0]http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/04/22/raspberry-pi-wireles...