HW091: WLAN Pi – MCP & OS Updates

Keith Parsons (0:01)

Welcome back to another episode of Heavy Wireless, part of the Packet Pushers Podcast Network. I'm Keith Parsons, and today I have with me Nick Turner.

We happened to be in Prague at the WLPC, an event that just finished. And I wanted to bring Nick on to talk about some of the updates to the WLAN Pi project. We sat in his deep dive, which was focused on, was called Advanced.

Nick Turner (0:24)

It was the WLAN Pi Advanced deep dive.

Keith Parsons (0:27)

And it was advanced. But the cool part about it was, there was a couple of things that were new. You've been doing WLAN Pi deep dives for how many years?

Nick Turner (0:38)

I'm going to say, conservatively, say six.

Keith Parsons (0:41)

Yes, it's been a long time. And every year, they get better, they get more information. This year, there was a couple of things that are new. One, a whole new OS, an update to the OS. That happens usually every year.

But additionally, it now has not only APIs that are working, but MCP in front of it.

Nick Turner (1:00)

Yeah.

Keith Parsons (1:00)

Additionally, on the second day, you also did some MLO testing. So let's talk about those three things.

Nick Turner (1:07)

Okay.

Keith Parsons (1:07)

The OS, yeah, the AI bits, and then the MLO. Okay.

Nick Turner (1:13)

So we fell into the traditional routine of releasing a new image. A few, I think two weeks before WOPC, we often find ourselves doing a development sprint towards the conference, so that we can put in features and fixes, so that we can use those tweaks in the deep dives.

Keith Parsons (1:35)

So it's actually a good thing for your team.

Nick Turner (1:37)

Oh, it is definitely a cadence and an event that force it. It's a forcing function to keep the software up to date.

One of the main things that changed for this OS, this image was the update to Trixie. So in the background, we are a fork of Raspberry Pi OS, and that means that we are in step with Raspberry Pi OS, and we take their image and add and tweak bits, and then release our own image, which is the WLAN Pi OS. The main thing that changes with Trixie is support for Raspberry Pi 5 and CM5, so they're the brains that would run a WLAN Pi.

Keith Parsons (2:15)

Why are you not going to CM5 or Raspberry?

Nick Turner (2:19)

Yeah, that is a really good question that crops up regularly of, now that you support Raspberry Pi 5s, why are we not switching to them?

Right now, our stance is the Raspberry Pi 5 doesn't bring a great deal to the table, and the CM5 is more... This is true for both. They are more expensive and they get a lot hotter. So it introduces a new dynamic of how are we going to keep the thing cool.

Keith Parsons (2:48)

So add a fan.

Nick Turner (2:49)

We could add fans, but we had some experience with fans for the WLAN Pi Pro, and I do not wish to repeat if at all possible. So right now, we don't feel that the...

Keith Parsons (3:00)

Did you say you're allergic to that?

Nick Turner (3:01)

I said at one point, I did say that I am allergic to fans.

No moving parts if we can possibly help it. So there's no reason why people cannot build their own Raspberry Pi 5 WLAN Pi, or be able to carry aboard CM5. But as far as units that we are going to assemble and distribute, we're going to, for the moment, we're staying with CM4 and Raspberry Pi 4

Keith Parsons (3:29)

Anything else that was added in that new image?

Nick Turner (3:32)

Uh, yes, lots of, lots of things.

But we could transition nicely over to the MCP. That would probably be the smart thing. So, a recent addition to the WLAN Pi team was Jake Snyder. He has been contributing for a while, and he raised his hand and said, it would be really great for the next deep dive if we could put an MCP server into the WLAN Pi and enable agents to talk and interact with the WLAN Pi. And that start moving us towards removing the necessity to learn the interface. You can talk to an with an AI prompt, and the agent can access the WLAN Pi through the MCP. And that this is fundamentally different than just giving an agent CLI access to your WLAN Pi. That it's more efficient and it is a lot safer with regards to what can it do and not go off down rabbit holes.