Turning the Pi into a Wi-Fi hotspot

Let's say you're out in the field with a couple of fellow agents and you want to quickly put up a network for your computers, maybe even share an Internet connection together; your Pi equipped with a Wi-Fi dongle (or with just a Pi 3 with the built-in Wi-Fi) can easily be made into a makeshift access point.

Before setting up your wireless hotspot, ensure you have set up a static IP on your Pi, as per the previous section, then follow these steps to set up your hotspot:

  1. First install the required software with the following command:
    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install hostapd bridge-
    utils
  2. Next we need to prevent Raspbian from interfering with the Wi-Fi interface. Open up /etc/network/interfaces for editing:
    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
  3. Find the block that starts with allow-hotplug wlan0 and put a # character in front of each line, like we've done here:
          #allow-hotplug wlan0 
      #iface wlan0 inet manual 
      #wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf 
      #iface default inet dhcp
  4. Optionally, if you would like to share a wired Internet connection with the wireless clients, add the following three lines to create a bridge between the Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces:
          auto br0 
      iface br0 inet dhcp 
      bridge_ports eth0 wlan0

    Turning the Pi into a Wi-Fi hotspot
    Adding a bridged Wi-Fi interface on the Raspberry Pi

  5. Save and exit nano, then reboot your Pi.
  6. Next we need to create a configuration file for hostapd. In nano, open/create the configuration file:
    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
  7. Add the following configuration options:
          interface=wlan0 
      bridge=br0 
      driver=nl80211 
      country_code=UK 
      ssid=AGENT-PI 
      hw_mode=g 
      channel=6 
      auth_algs=1 
      wpa=2 
      wpa_passphrase=SecretAgent 
      wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK 
      #Wireless N Settings 
      ieee80211n=1 
      wmm_enabled=1
  8. Let's take a look at some of the options:
    • interface=wlan0: This is the wireless interface you are using for the access point.
    • bridge=br0: Allows hostapd to share the wired Internet connection by creating a bridge between the Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces. You can comment this out if you didn't create the bridge earlier.
    • ssid: Change this line to choose a name for your access point.
    • auth_algs=1: Supports WPA2 encryption that we're going to enable on our network.
    • wpa=2: Enable WPA2 encryption.
    • wpa_passphrase: The password (8 characters minimum) required to join your Wi-Fi network:

    Turning the Pi into a Wi-Fi hotspot

  9. Now we can try out our new access point, first running it in the foreground:
    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo hostapd -d
    /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
  10. You should now be able to find and connect to your Pi access point from other computers. Type Ctrl + C to quit hostapd.

    Note

    Attention Edimax EW-7811Un Wi-Fi dongle users

    This popular tiny USB dongle, and possibly others like it based on the Realtek RTL8188CUS chipset, needs a special version of hostapd to work. Simply download and replace your installed hostapd binary using the following command:

    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo wget http://files.raspiplace.com/hostapd-rt -O /usr/sbin/hostapd

  11. To make your Pi run hostapd automatically in the background on boot, we need to make a slight adjustment to a configuration file:
    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd
  12. Uncomment the line beginning with DAEMON_CONF="" and change it to point to your hostapd configuration file:
          DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"

    Then save and exit nano. Your Pi will now become an access point on boot.

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