Cell phone network

Hello,

I was wondering if a cell phone can be used to share internet access with the imp? so the imp can be used in remote locations where there is no cable or isp providers, but you get a cell phone signal.

Thanks

Yes… many of us do this frequently. I did have trouble with my Verizon iPhone 4, the hotspot feature was not native to that hardware, but I’ve used the 5, and 5s quite a bit.

Thank you jwehr, do you know if there are any instructions or code in the forum that explains how to setup?

If your phone can behave as a “wifi hotspot” then all you need to do is blink the Imp with the wireless settings you need to connect to your hotspot. Nothing special needs to be done on the Imp

Yep… nothing special. You typically have to manually enter the network into the Electric Imp app, and sometimes I find I have to go into the hotspot panel on the settings page for the phone to make itself discoverable. In iOS 7 you’ll see a blue bar at the top with the number of connections.

That makes sense. Than you for the quick response.

This may seem obvious but it wasn’t to me at first - If you name your phone’s Access Point (AP) with exactly the same name and password as the AP the imp was previously “blinked up” with, the imp will connect without having to re-blink up. I have three separate fixed APs and two MiFi APs using the cellular network, and all of my imps connect to whichever is available without any hiccups. While the bssid’s of the APs are all different, the 802.11 protocol seems to allow clients to ignore the different bssid and treat all identically named and passworded APs as interchangeable. This is handy if you cannot blink up your device but do have access to your AP settings.