Raspberry Pi As a Wireless Access Point/Router

[SirLagz]

Hey Everyone,

I'm attempting to turn my Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point, just for the fun of it
Here's a link to my blog on how I'm doing it so far.
http://sirlagz.net/?p=589

Please feel free to leave any feedback

[simplesi]

You might fancy looking at making it a simple bridge as well while your busy

e.g Download Raspbian onto a card - stick a script in the same manner as http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... lit=edimax onto it and then Robert is a non immediate relative of you

Simon

[bredman]

Well done. A lot of people are looking for this.

Any chance that you could link to your blog from the RPi tutorials wiki?
http://elinux.org/RPi_Tutorials

What is the brand name and product number of your WiFi device? It can be difficult to find out the chipset within a device. Did you buy it online?

[SirLagz]

You might fancy looking at making it a simple bridge as well while your busy

e.g Download Raspbian onto a card - stick a script in the same manner as http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... lit=edimax onto it and then Robert is a non immediate relative of you

Simon

Yep, That's one of the planned end results of this experiment

Well done. A lot of people are looking for this.

Any chance that you could link to your blog from the RPi tutorials wiki?
http://elinux.org/RPi_Tutorials

What is the brand name and product number of your WiFi device? It can be difficult to find out the chipset within a device. Did you buy it online?

Indeed I did buy it online, so I don't know if there's a specific brand name to it.
It looks very similar to this one, except mine has an external antenna.
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mini-usb-2 ... 33?item=40
^ That one also has the required chipset, so if anyone wants to try this out, that stick is a good bet.

I'll be happy to link my blog posts up once I'm finished with them.
At the moment, the post only details how to get a very basic Wifi AP Up and running. It won't actually let you access anything yet haha.
That's next

Edit -
One thing that will help me, if anyone feels like doing this, is to run the "iw list" command on their Raspberry Pis when they run through my blogpost, and see if the "AP" interface mode is supported. If enough people do it on enough different USB adapters, we can start to build a list of all WiFi adapters that we can use to create RaspAPs

[bredman]

Thanks, I just bought one from DX.

[recantha]

I'm trying to do the same thing. My plan is to get it so my old PDA with touchscreen can wifi connect to the Pi without the need for them both to connect to a wifi router for connectivity.

[SirLagz]

I'm trying to do the same thing. My plan is to get it so my old PDA with touchscreen can wifi connect to the Pi without the need for them both to connect to a wifi router for connectivity.

Sounds fun
What WiFi adapter are you using ?

[recantha]

It's a Belkin dongle... Which I don't have in front of me...
It's one like this:


I was possibly going to try it with two dongles so I can allow incoming connections with one and then out to the Net through a Wifi router with the other. I'm not sure if I need both, though.

[SirLagz]

It'd be better to have both as WiFi is half duplex, so it'd be a whole lot faster if you had 2.

[recantha]

I don't want much bandwidth. My main concern is the connection between the Pi and my PDA.

[SirLagz]

Part 2 completed
http://sirlagz.net/?p=597

[erniesthings]

With this capability, I think I can build an inexpensive portable wifi streaming media server/nas.

I've been wanting to build something like a CloudFTP or Seagate GoFlex Satellite, but with more flexibility and customization options.

Add usb HD (powered by hub), set up samba share, ftp server, OpenDAAP or GNUMP3d.

Connect with iPad or computer for streaming media on the go.

[SirLagz]

With this capability, I think I can build an inexpensive portable wifi streaming media server/nas.

I've been wanting to build something like a CloudFTP or Seagate GoFlex Satellite, but with more flexibility and customization options.

Add usb HD (powered by hub), set up samba share, ftp server, OpenDAAP or GNUMP3d.

Connect with iPad or computer for streaming media on the go.

Easily. You only need Part 1 of my guide to do that actually.
In Part 1, once you connect to "RaspAP" you get an IP address, and you will be able to talk to the Raspberry Pi.

[Faperdaper]

It seems my Pi has trouble with the nl80211 driver. I've tried other available drivers as well but still getting the same error. I read some of the documentation of hostapd and I think I do need this driver, maybe there is some trick I have to do with my Pi to make it work. Another option was compiling the program myself and installing the nl80211 driver, but that didn't work out for me either. During the compile process it said there were some files missing that were in the libnl-1.0pre8 package.

My wifi usb stick (drivers were already installed it seemed, because it was working pretty much out of the box)

Code: Select all

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0ace:1215 ZyDAS ZD1211B 802.11g

The errors I got

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Line 3: invalid/unknown driver 'nl80211 # The driver that is being used by the WiFi adapter, this could be different for everyone'
Line 8: invalid SSID 'RaspAP # First up, the SSID or Network name. This is what other devices will see when they try to connect.'
Line 9: unknown hw_mode 'g # I'm setting this to Wireless G mode. A, B, and G are available here.'
4 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'

Output of lsmod

Code: Select all

Module                  Size  Used by
snd_bcm2835            21485  0
snd_pcm                82208  1 snd_bcm2835
snd_seq                59808  0
snd_timer              21905  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_seq_device          6920  1 snd_seq
snd                    57668  5 snd_seq_device,snd_timer,snd_seq,snd_pcm,snd_bcm2835
snd_page_alloc          5383  1 snd_pcm
arc4                    1319  2
zd1211rw               60598  0
mac80211              253889  1 zd1211rw
cfg80211              180459  2 mac80211,zd1211rw
evdev                   8922  0

I'm using Raspbian.

Thanks

[SirLagz]

It seems my Pi has trouble with the nl80211 driver. I've tried other available drivers as well but still getting the same error. I read some of the documentation of hostapd and I think I do need this driver, maybe there is some trick I have to do with my Pi to make it work. Another option was compiling the program myself and installing the nl80211 driver, but that didn't work out for me either. During the compile process it said there were some files missing that were in the libnl-1.0pre8 package.

My wifi usb stick (drivers were already installed it seemed, because it was working pretty much out of the box)

Code: Select all

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0ace:1215 ZyDAS ZD1211B 802.11g

The errors I got

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Line 3: invalid/unknown driver 'nl80211 # The driver that is being used by the WiFi adapter, this could be different for everyone'
Line 8: invalid SSID 'RaspAP # First up, the SSID or Network name. This is what other devices will see when they try to connect.'
Line 9: unknown hw_mode 'g # I'm setting this to Wireless G mode. A, B, and G are available here.'
4 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'

Output of lsmod

Code: Select all

Module                  Size  Used by
snd_bcm2835            21485  0
snd_pcm                82208  1 snd_bcm2835
snd_seq                59808  0
snd_timer              21905  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_seq_device          6920  1 snd_seq
snd                    57668  5 snd_seq_device,snd_timer,snd_seq,snd_pcm,snd_bcm2835
snd_page_alloc          5383  1 snd_pcm
arc4                    1319  2
zd1211rw               60598  0
mac80211              253889  1 zd1211rw
cfg80211              180459  2 mac80211,zd1211rw
evdev                   8922  0

I'm using Raspbian.

Thanks

Try using driver zd1211rw or madwifi instead ?
Sorry, I've never used that network adapter before.

Also, it looks like you may have some errors in the configuration file...

In other news. Part 3 is finished
http://sirlagz.net/?p=606
I even got my HTC Desire connected through it to upload a pic to twitter ! :D:D
Pretty happy I got it going

[Faperdaper]

Try using driver zd1211rw or madwifi instead ?

I installed the zd1211rw driver already, but it still didn't seem to work. I think my chipset isn't compatible with madwifi, but I could try it though.

Also, it looks like you may have some errors in the configuration file...

I used the exact same config file as in your article so I think that should be all good.

Thanks for your reply.

[SirLagz]

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Line 3: invalid/unknown driver 'nl80211 # The driver that is being used by the WiFi adapter, this could be different for everyone'
Line 8: invalid SSID 'RaspAP # First up, the SSID or Network name. This is what other devices will see when they try to connect.'
Line 9: unknown hw_mode 'g # I'm setting this to Wireless G mode. A, B, and G are available here.'
4 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'

For some reason, there seems to be a ' in front of nl80211, as well as RaspAP and g
Perhaps that is causing the issue ?

[Faperdaper]

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Line 3: invalid/unknown driver 'nl80211 # The driver that is being used by the WiFi adapter, this could be different for everyone'
Line 8: invalid SSID 'RaspAP # First up, the SSID or Network name. This is what other devices will see when they try to connect.'
Line 9: unknown hw_mode 'g # I'm setting this to Wireless G mode. A, B, and G are available here.'
4 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'

For some reason, there seems to be a ' in front of nl80211, as well as RaspAP and g
Perhaps that is causing the issue ?

I think that is because the error handler is just quoting where the error was found, because there are none of them in my .conf file

Edit: May I ask you what distribution you are using and what extra software regarding your wifi dongle you have installed?

[bredman]

It looks like the config file is trying to parse the contents of the comments (after #).
Try removing # and all the text to the end of the line.

[Faperdaper]

It looks like the config file is trying to parse the contents of the comments (after #).
Try removing # and all the text to the end of the line.

Thanks, that worked!

@SirLagz; it might be a good idea to add this to your blog articles

[SirLagz]

ahh. I'll have to fix that
edit -
updated the blog post now. Thanks guys

[rasbeer]

It looks like there's a version of this wireless adaptor with a removable aerial.

Perhaps this would improve the range on the Piuter?

[SirLagz]

I would say it definitely would. I've actually used one with the removable antenna on my RaspAP.
The link provided was just as a reference for the chipset.

[SirLagz]

I've just created an image for a instant WiFi Bridge, however my WiFi USB stick decided to pack it in. I think I fried it =/
So, does anyone want to help me test out my Instant bridge and see if it works ?

[simplesi]

Lets be clear - So you've burnt YOUR device up with YOUR code and you want US to try it out

Simon
PS Glad to help BTW - i've a Edimax nano thingy and since I was the one who wanted it to work as a bridge......

I use a Buffalo as a bridge to get net to TV from computer room so I can do a real test with it

Simon