USB modem + HassOS

Hardware
1

How to connect to the Internet via USB modem from RPi with Hass.io?
As I understand, there is no ready solution. But is it possible in principle and where to look?

2

I do not know but you would likely find more solutions if you installed hassio on Raspian Lite. Raspian is a full OS with more options.

3

Wow! You’re taking me back a long way now contemplating if your solution could be the Unix suite called UUCP.

4

Does this help?

https://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/how-setup-usb-3g-modem-raspberry-pi-using-usbmodeswitch-and-wvdial

5

Have considered attaching the modem to a wifi router? That would also give your pi some more isolation/protection from the internet. I believe there are a number of routers that support that option.

6

I know about this opportunity and I’ll do it if I don’t find a more economical solution.

Thanks to everyone for the advices, after reading the documentation I came to the conclusion that the best solution would be to use ModemManager.

I create a custom addon with RUN apk --no-cache add bash dbus modemmanager in Dockerfile. Then I write commands in run.sh and see results in addon’s log.

>mmcli -L 
error: couldn't get bus: Could not connect: No such file or directory

Instead expected like a Linux Mint No modems were found.

Probably, mmcli cannot to find the file /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket. The file I can see only from root console, but from addon the /var/run/dbus/ is empty. I need somehow inform, by analogy with USB devices, that my addon needs a system d-bus. For example, in balena documentation there is a special setting in docker-compose.yml file.

The research continues.

UPD: adding "host_dbus": "True" into config.json give access to D-Bus.

7

Have you found any solutions?

8

Unfortunately not.

9

That’s where I stopped with addon - needs disabled protection mode.

Dockerfile

ARG BUILD_FROM
FROM $BUILD_FROM
ENV LANG C.UTF-8

# For parse options
RUN apk add --no-cache jq

# Install software
RUN apk --no-cache add usb-modeswitch modemmanager udev ppp

WORKDIR /data
COPY run.sh /
RUN chmod a+x /run.sh
CMD [ "/run.sh" ]

config.json

{
  "name": "ModemManager",
  "version": "1.05",
  "slug": "modemmanager",
  "description": "ModemManager - connect to the Internet via USB modems",
  "arch": ["armhf", "armv7", "aarch64", "amd64", "i386"],
  "devices1": ["/dev/bus/usb/001/007:/dev/bus/usb/001/007:rwm"],
  "startup": "once",
  "boot": "manual",
  "host_dbus": "True",
  "full_access": "True",
  "host_network": "True",
  "host_ipc": "True",
  "host_pid": "False",
  "docker_api": "True",
  "kernel_modules": "True",
  "options": {},
  "schema": {},
  "ports": {}
}

run.sh

CONFIG_PATH=/data/options.json

CMD_LINE="$(jq --raw-output '.cmd_line' $CONFIG_PATH)"

echo "Available USB devices before switching:"
echo ">lsusb"
lsusb
echo " "

export LIBUSB_DEBUG=3
echo ">usb_modeswitch -v 0x05c6 -p 0x1000 -KWR -C 0xff -s 12"
usb_modeswitch -v 0x05c6 -p 0x1000 -KWR -C 0xff -s 12
echo "Wait for 12 seconds before re-checking"
sleep 12
echo " "

echo "Available USB devices after switching:"
echo ">lsusb -v"
lsusb -v
echo " "

echo ">modprobe ppp_generic"
modprobe ppp_generic
echo " "

echo ">mmcli -L"
mmcli -L
echo " "

echo "Finished!"

ModemManager should be started from the console before run the addon, how to run it in the background from run.sh could not find.

It successfully change USB-stick to Modem mode but there is no reaction from OS…
Please let me know if you find something interesting.

1 Like
10

hi @ArtHome, did you managed to disabled protecion mode on local addon?
this needs to be disabled to pass devices, right?

11

I could not achieve success, support for the USB modem was cut at the OS level

12

Ah ok, my driver was included in HassOs, so I managed at the end