Access Eduroam on a Raspberry Pi (in Cambridge)

Introduction

Accessing the Eduroam WiFi network on a Raspberry Pi is not very intuitive, and it's a question that google is reluctant to provide answers to. In this tutorial, I will show you how to connect your raspberry pi to Eduroam automatically from startup. I'm running Raspbian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie) on a Raspberry Pi 2 model B.

I connected my Raspberry Pi to the Eduroam of Cambridge University. The exact keywords and arguments seem to differ slightly from place to place, so if you're trying to access Eduroam on a Raspberry Pi from elsewhere, then although this Instructables won't provide you with everything you need, it will serve as a useful guide. Try also checking out the sources I've referenced, along with any information which your university IT department provides regarding manually connecting to Eduroam.

My reasons for connecting my Raspberry Pi to Eduroam is so that I can use it as a Twitterbot, scheduled to take pictures at regular intervals and post them on Twitter, using the 'cron' utility, a Raspberry Pi camera and the 'Tweepy' module. My Twitterbot is part of a larger project of a DIY algae growth chamber: stay tuned for more Instructables!!

Step 1: Opening "/etc/network/interfaces"

Open up File Manager, and navigate to "/etc/network". Right click on the file called "interfaces", select "Open With..." go to the "Custom Command Line" tab, and under "Command line to execute:", type in "sudo leafpad". Then press "OK".

Step 2: Editing "/etc/network/interfaces"

Replace the contents of the text file with those shown in the picture (there's no need to worry about lines which start with a '#'). Once finished, save and close the file.

Step 3: Opening "/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf"

Navigate to "/etc/wpa_supplicant". Right click on the file called "wpa_supplicant.conf", and once again select "Open With..." go to the "Custom Command Line" tab, and under "Command line to execute:", type in "sudo leafpad". Then press "OK".

Step 4: Editing "/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf"

Replace the contents of the text file with those shown in the picture. Take care to copy every character exactly (except for "identity" and "password", which you should replace with your own @cam.ac.uk email address and network access token). Make sure not to insert any extra spaces. Once finished, save and close the file.

Step 5: Reboot & Success

Now reboot your Raspberry Pi. Once it reaches the desktop, within a few seconds you should see blue bars in the WiFi icon in the task bar. Check your connection by opening up "Web Browser" and navigating to your favourite website.