class WLAN – control built-in WiFi interfaces

This class provides a driver for WiFi network processors. Example usage:

import network
# enable station interface and connect to WiFi access point
nic = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF)
nic.active(True)
nic.connect('your-ssid', 'your-password')
# now use sockets as usual

Constructors

class network.WLAN(interface_id)

Create a WLAN network interface object. Supported interfaces are network.STA_IF (station aka client, connects to upstream WiFi access points) and network.AP_IF (access point, allows other WiFi clients to connect). Availability of the methods below depends on interface type. For example, only STA interface may WLAN.connect() to an access point.

Methods

WLAN.active([is_active])

Activate (“up”) or deactivate (“down”) network interface, if boolean argument is passed. Otherwise, query current state if no argument is provided. Most other methods require active interface.

WLAN.connect(ssid=None, password=None, *, bssid=None)

Connect to the specified wireless network, using the specified password. If bssid is given then the connection will be restricted to the access-point with that MAC address (the ssid must also be specified in this case).

WLAN.disconnect()

Disconnect from the currently connected wireless network.

WLAN.scan()

Scan for the available wireless networks.

Scanning is only possible on STA interface. Returns list of tuples with the information about WiFi access points:

(ssid, bssid, channel, RSSI, authmode, hidden)

bssid is hardware address of an access point, in binary form, returned as bytes object. You can use ubinascii.hexlify() to convert it to ASCII form.

There are five values for authmode:

  • 0 – open

  • 1 – WEP

  • 2 – WPA-PSK

  • 3 – WPA2-PSK

  • 4 – WPA/WPA2-PSK

and two for hidden:

  • 0 – visible

  • 1 – hidden

WLAN.status([param])

Return the current status of the wireless connection.

When called with no argument the return value describes the network link status. The possible statuses are defined as constants:

  • STAT_IDLE – no connection and no activity,

  • STAT_CONNECTING – connecting in progress,

  • STAT_WRONG_PASSWORD – failed due to incorrect password,

  • STAT_NO_AP_FOUND – failed because no access point replied,

  • STAT_CONNECT_FAIL – failed due to other problems,

  • STAT_GOT_IP – connection successful.

When called with one argument param should be a string naming the status parameter to retrieve. Supported parameters in WiFI STA mode are: 'rssi'.

WLAN.isconnected()

In case of STA mode, returns True if connected to a WiFi access point and has a valid IP address. In AP mode returns True when a station is connected. Returns False otherwise.

WLAN.ifconfig([(ip, subnet, gateway, dns)])

Get/set IP-level network interface parameters: IP address, subnet mask, gateway and DNS server. When called with no arguments, this method returns a 4-tuple with the above information. To set the above values, pass a 4-tuple with the required information. For example:

nic.ifconfig(('192.168.0.4', '255.255.255.0', '192.168.0.1', '8.8.8.8'))
WLAN.config('param')
WLAN.config(param=value, ...)

Get or set general network interface parameters. These methods allow to work with additional parameters beyond standard IP configuration (as dealt with by WLAN.ifconfig()). These include network-specific and hardware-specific parameters. For setting parameters, keyword argument syntax should be used, multiple parameters can be set at once. For querying, parameters name should be quoted as a string, and only one parameter can be queries at time:

# Set WiFi access point name (formally known as ESSID) and WiFi channel
ap.config(essid='My AP', channel=11)
# Query params one by one
print(ap.config('essid'))
print(ap.config('channel'))

Following are commonly supported parameters (availability of a specific parameter depends on network technology type, driver, and MicroPython port).

Parameter

Description

mac

MAC address (bytes)

essid

WiFi access point name (string)

channel

WiFi channel (integer)

hidden

Whether ESSID is hidden (boolean)

authmode

Authentication mode supported (enumeration, see module constants)

password

Access password (string)

dhcp_hostname

The DHCP hostname to use

reconnects

Number of reconnect attempts to make (integer, 0=none, -1=unlimited)