Raspberry Wi-Fi Pi

Edimax Wi-Fi dongleHope you like my play on words in the title Wi-Fi Pi! I’m doing a tutorial on getting your raspberry pi to run off a Wi-Fi USB key. This way you no longer have to use an Ethernet connection or have that cord running across your living room floor like mine was doing for months. I also wanted a way to connect to the RasPi when I *cough* finish my robot project. Yes I will very soon. So lets get started by covering the require parts and tutorials you might need to follow to get everything working.

Previous Tutorials Recommended:

 
Parts List:
  • Raspberry Pi (any version)
  • Wi-Fi USB (EdiMax EW-7811Un)

I chose the Wi-Fi USB module that I did because it had compatibility success stories online with working on linux, it runs at 802.11b/g/n and it was cost effective. All in my favor.
Setup/Install:
If you don’t have it installed then you need to install the WPA Supplicant package.

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

Next open up the network settings and adjust it to look like the following picture.

 

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

The important parts are as follows, be sure to save on exit (press ctrl+O (save) then ctrl+X (exit)):

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
allow-hotplug wlan0
wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Wi-Fi setup
The next thing is editing the wpa_supplicant.conf file that holds all the network connection information.    This will all vary by your network setup. I happen to be running a WPA2 that is TKIP/AES with a network name of “LALALALALALA” and you’ll want to set your password instead of ‘mypassword’.

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Now all I had to do was reboot the raspberry pi and check my connection,

sudo shutdown -r now

End Result (Connected!)

ifconfig wlan0

My favorite part is connecting to Putty over ssh from my laptop to my raspberry pi without any cords. Then i can sit in the other room and do my coding. Sweet!!! 

>>> Putty Download <<<
Putty Setup


3 thoughts on “Raspberry Wi-Fi Pi

  1. nice tutorial.

    I've had to change usb wifi and of course it was a different chip set. Was able to get the individual distro's [wheezy, occidentals, etc] working , but have not been able to figure out how to get the proper driver to berryboot and configure it

    appreciate your thoughts.

    john

    nice website

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