Wi-Fi on/off buttons

Quite a bit of devices come with at least one button (apart from the omnipresent reset/recovery button, which isn't convenient to press), which in the stock firmware is used for WPS, toggling Wi-Fi, or whatever, and on OpenWrt is not usually connected to any function.

In this article we will install and configure a package called wifitoggle, which allows us to configure one of such buttons as a Wi-Fi on/off (toggle) button.

• This package lacks a graphical interface so for the setup we will need to connect to the OpenWrt device using SSH (remote terminal).
• Install wifitoggle package with opkg update && opkg install wifitoggle
• see the new uci configuration for it uci show wifitoggle, you will see something like this

# uci show wifitoggle
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0]=wifitoggle
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].button='wps'
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].timer='600'
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].persistent='0'
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].led_enable_trigger='timer'
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].led_enable_delayon='500'
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].led_enable_delayoff='500'
wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].led_disable_default='0'

• Do any customizations to the configuration and then save the changes with uci commit

The wifitoggle section contains these settings:

Common internal names for button (by searching through the source code) are:

• wps = Wi-Fi protected service, most likely to be free in OpenWrt and also default in wifitoggle
• wlan = used for buttons that toggle Wi-Fi on/off in stock firmware
• rfkill = also used for buttons that toggle Wi-Fi on/off in stock firmware
• wifi = also used for buttons that toggle Wi-Fi on/off in stock firmware, yes there is a bit of creativity going on.
• power = used to power up some devices, may be bound already to system shutdown function
• help = unknown, but I see it in the source code of some devices
• phone = unknown, but I see it in the source code of some devices
• BTN_0 = unknown, but I see it in the source code of some devices
• BTN_1 = unknown, but I see it in the source code of some devices
• ses = cisco services button
• reset = the reset button, usually already bound to system restart function

Here's a way to identify the internal name of your button if just trying the above list blindly does not work.

If the script isn't working on your Wi-Fi networks, or it works only on some but not all, try deleting and creating again the ones that don't work.

Default Wi-Fi networks look like this in the config, and it seems the script can't parse that.

wireless.default_radio0=wifi-iface
wireless.default_radio0.device='radio0'
wireless.default_radio0.network='lan'
wireless.default_radio0.mode='ap'
wireless.default_radio0.ssid='myWifi'
wireless.default_radio0.encryption='psk2+tkip+ccmp'
wireless.default_radio0.key='password'
wireless.default_radio0.disabled='1'

This is how it looks after I deleted and created it again (and is actually working)

wireless.@wifi-iface[0]=wifi-iface
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].device='radio0'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].mode='ap'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].ssid='myWifi'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].encryption='psk2+tkip+ccmp'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].key='password'

Anyone that can fix the script please send a PR from the link below.

If you like to have Wi-Fi disabled after power on, set it disabled by default and then set wifitoggle to NOT save Wi-Fi state changes to permanent memory (so that whatever the state was on reboot it would reset to disabled) with the following:

uci set wireless.@wifi-device[0].disabled=1
uci set wifitoggle.@wifitoggle[0].persistent=0
uci commit

Or add this to /etc/rc.local or in Startup (LuCI System - Startup):

uci set wireless.@wifi-device[0].disabled=1
wifi

This package drops a script called 50-wifitoggle into /etc/hotplug.d/button and this script relies on the OpenWrt Hotplug infrastructure to be called when you press the button.
The other component of its package is the uci configuration file to integrate it with the uci system. See the source here