Teensy 3.6 & Hotel WiFi?

[Darkphibre]

I'm working on a project that gathers biometric telemetry. I'd like to have it upload wirelessly to a website so that others could see my stats. I'll be taking this to offsite locations, typically with Hotel-style "Guest WiFi" where everything is initially redirected to a web page that requires a code before granting internet access.

Does anyone have experience connecting a Teensy to internet in these scenarios?

I could probably go with a Raspberry Pi as a forwarding device and do the registration from the Pi. Another idea I had was seeing if the ATWINC1500 or ESP8266 provided MAC address cloning (don't know if that would even work, but guessing it may).

Thanks for any advice you may be able to provide,

-TomM

 

[jpsabo]

Adding a WiFi breakout board to the Teensy 3.6 as a means of wireless connectivity should work (I have seen posts in this and the Adafruit forum regarding this hardware addition).

You would need to “spoof” the MAC address of the WiFi module by first changing the MAC address of your PC or Pi to that of the ATWINC1500, log into the hotel network, reboot your PC or Pi to return it to the default MAC address, then start your Teensy 3.6 (with the sketch containing the hotel SSID to which you had just connected). I have to do this procedure when I use an Apple TV when traveling as Apple does not provide a way to login to the captive webpage that is commonly used by hotels (acct or guest name and room number, or just checking a box to acknowledge use policy).

 

[Darkphibre]

I was worried about that. Thing is, I'm thinking of making this a commissionable item, so I was hoping to find a simpler means of logging in for customers (like, 'Fill in these fields in the SD card text file, and we'll regex the firewall and submit the right responses'). Sounds like the Pi may be the way to go, if I want simple way to go through guest network for real-time updates.

 

[Darkphibre]

Hmm. I wonder if a smartphone bluetooth app would be better yet, since most people have smartphones with either data or wifi...

 

[jpsabo]

Trying to account for all scenarios with the captive hotel WiFi access pages would be a real problem. I was at a Residence Inn yesterday that only needed the user to click the type of access desired (free or high speed @$4.95/day). Only very occasionally will a hotel have an open WiFi that does not require any user input.

The other suggestion that was given for Apple TV users was to call the hotel ISP and have them add the device MAC address to the whitelist for devices at that hotel.