Hi! I just wanted to ask if there is anyone in the Panic team that can do this please hear me out. When the playdate tries to connect to some public wifi or hotel wifi that requires a sign in or agree to terms and conditions page to be opened in the devices webpage, the Playdate says its connected but it never is because it was never able to open the sign in/ terms and conditions page. I have three ideas:
When the Playdate is requested to open a page it can instead bring up a QR code and a web address so that the process can be completes on a phone, tablet, or PC.
Give the Playdate a Web Browser.
Give the Playdate a Web Browser ONLY for this wifi registration.
Please comment if you like, if this is possible, or if you have a different solution.
I'm all ears!
1 is not possible because public WiFi signing is often based on the physical address (called MAC for Media Access Control) of the device connecting. And in this case, the device connecting to the public WiFi would be the phone/tablet/PC, not the Playdate.
Sorry I was wrong.
Both 2 and 3 are also very difficult to implement. Web browsers require a lot of RAM and CPU. It would have to be a very minimal web browser to work. That is still the best solution in my opinion but it would require a lot of development and I don't think Panic has enough time for this at the moment.
This is not really an answer to the question, or the ideal solution, but if you just want to get it working, you can spoof the Playdate's MAC address from your computer, then go through the procedure to connect to wifi from your computer pretending to be the Playdate. Then connect to wifi with the Playdate and you should be good to go.
I think 1 is entirely possible. Sony recently announced public WiFi support for the PlayStation Portal, and they seem to be doing exactly this. That being said, I wasn't able to find any evidence online of anyone actually using the new feature, so who knows.
In any case, most (all?) of the captive portal pages I can remember include the device's MAC address in the URL, so it seems likely that this sort of approach would work. I just tested with a nearby 'xfinitywifi' hotspot, generating a QR code on the connected device and signing in on another, and it totally worked!
