6.1 Wireless Access Point

Turn your Pico into a Wireless Access Point so you can connect to it like a WiFi hotspot.

Instructions

Look at picow_access_point.c. Here, you can edit the SSID (hotspot name) and password of the access point.

const char *ap_name = "my_pico_1234"; // Change to something 
const char *password = "password123"; // Put in a secure password

Once you’ve chosen a password, compile the code again and load picow_access_point_background.uf2 onto your Pico.

Once it starts running, you should see your access point appear in the WiFi options of your computer.

When you connect, you will be sent to a captive portal page to “login” to the network.

• If you don’t get sent there automatically, go to http://192.168.4.1/ledtest in your browser.

From this page, you can control the LED on the Pico.

Exercises

Exercise

The HTML that defines how the page looks is defined in the first few lines of picow_access_point.c. If you know CSS, can you spruce it up a bit to make it look nicer?

Exercise

The behaviour of the Pico when it receives an HTTP request is defined in the test_server_content function. What else could you do in this function that could be interesting?

Think about controlling some of the other components that we have covered in this workshop.