Adding support for multiple radios

[duhmojo]

Hi jrobble.

I don't have the time to detail everything here, but a friend of mine was playing with external radios on Android. (he's kind of an old school nerd and loves radios) He's managed to get USB support working on our S4s. I took a look at how device specific wireless interfaces are selected and it looks like DeviceConfig.java getWifiInterface() returns wlan0 and eth0.

If I was able to find a reliable way to determine if a device had support for a 2nd network interface (that wasn't loaded yet, because we need ManetManager to do so from adhoc/iwconfig) would you have a problem (or recommendation on how to) with me enhancing ChangeSettings.java and DeviceConfig.java to add both the default wlan0 + external wlan1?

I threw him a build with wlan1 hard coded for him to test. Do you know of anywhere else wlan0 or eth0 would be a factor?

Hopefully it'll all work out. If it does I'll post some info on the external device. I don't have the radio make and driver info. With the S4s I know USB support was missing and we had to rebuild the kernel. Thanks!

[jrobble]

Glad to hear you two got USB support working on your S4s. Which USB radios are you using?

Yes, right now the default wireless interface is hardcoded for each device; however, the Manet Manager does allow you to set the wireless interface to something else through the "Wireless Interface" setting. Once set, the property will be remembered after the device is rebooted. The same is true for the gateway interface setting.

Note that the Manet Manager will revert to the default wireless interface if the new interface is not detected after the device is rebooted and the Manet Manager is started.

You can load the appropriate kernel modules for your external device in DeviceConfig.loadKernelModules(). That should be invoked during the time the Manet Service is initialized.

I would tell your friend to manually select the wireless interface for the USB radio through the Manet Manager settings the first time he runs the app. and make sure the USB radio is hooked up before starting the Manet Manager app after the device is rebooted. If the USB radio is not hooked up, he will have to change the setting again.

Note that the wireless interface and gateway interface cannot be set to the same thing. The Manet Manager will automatically set the gateway interface to none if it detects a conflict.