Using Pycom FiPy as network adapter for Raspberry Pi?

[patrickl]

Hi, I was wondering if there was some way to configure the FiPy (or other similar products) to behave as a network adapter or modem for a Raspberry Pi over a cellular connection? I don't care if it's connected to the Raspberry Pi through WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, UART, SPI, or something else, as long as the Raspberry Pi can be configured to treat it as a network adapter recognized by the OS. Does afnyone have any code or suggestions on how to implement this or how it can be done?

I'd also like to add LoRa transmitting too at some point if possible, but that's less urgent, and I'm happy to experiment more to figure that out once I have the basic functionality working.

This post suggests that using it as a WiFi hotspot isn't possible (or wasn't as of 2018 anyway), but doesn't cover alternative methods of connecting it to the Pi aside from WiFi. https://forum.pycom.io/topic/5416/creating-a-wifi-network-with-a-fipy

Edit: after having done more research, I suspect the best way to do it would be utilizing PPP over a UART connection to the Pi. I'm still not entirely sure where to start, or certain that there's no limitation making this impractical, so I'd appreciate any example code, or at least confirmation that it is possible with the FiPy.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Patrick

[jcaron]

@patrickl That's indeed what I would do: just "interconnect" the UART connected to the Pi with the LTE's UART, sending data receiving from one end to the other and vice versa.

Then the modem will look like it's directly connected to the Pi.

Just don't call LTE and make sure you have the same speed settings everywhere.

An alternative would probably to do it over BLE, but that seems like quite some more work to me.