Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Wi-Fi Repeater: Step-by-Step Guide (Part 3)

Neural Lantern

Join us in Scene 3 of our Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi Repeater series! This step-by-step guide walks you through compiling Wi-Fi dongle drivers from source, setting up Network Manager to connect to your router, configuring the Pi?s Wi-Fi adapter, expanding the file system, and installing DNS Masq for DHCP. Whether you?re extending your network to the garage or just geeking out, this tutorial is for you. Check out our other videos for the full setup, and subscribe to join our community of tech tinkerers!  Introduction and Recap 00:00:00 Wi-Fi Dongle Driver Compilation 00:00:04 Network Manager Setup 00:00:50 Connecting to Existing Router 00:01:05 Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi Configuration 00:03:23 Expanding File System 00:04:12 Verifying Wi-Fi Connection 00:05:05 Setting IP Address 00:06:39 Installing DNS Masq 00:08:53 Configuring DHCP Server 00:11:04 IP Forwarding Introduction 00:16:20 Closing Remarks and Subscription Call 00:16:44  Thanks for watching!  Find us on other social media here: - https://www.NeuralLantern.com/social  Please help support us!  - Subscribing + Sharing on Social Media - Leaving a comment or suggestion - Subscribing to our Blog - Watching the main "pinned" video of this channel for offers and extras

Transcript

00:00yeah there we go okay so we're back um i went away i forgot exactly what i told you before i

00:08cut the video but i went away i recorded a different video where i install the drivers

00:12for this wi-fi dongle from i compiled them from source i found them on you know github

00:17i wanted you to go to that video and use it to to learn how to compile the drivers for your own

00:23wi-fi dongle if you want to have the same dongle that i have that video i should have a link to

00:28where you can buy the same dongle that i have but if you have a different dongle that's okay

00:32the instructions in the other video should probably help you so at this point now you've gone away to

00:37compile the drivers for your wi-fi dongle and you're back you're ready to continue making your pi access

00:42point so what we should do is i'm logged into the pi right now and let's use network manager to see

00:57what's up network manager connection show we only have ethernet up right now we want to connect as

01:02a client to your existing router so remember we have two radios one is going to be the internal

01:08radio of the pi or or dongle if you wanted to buy two dongles and then the other one is going to be

01:13the dongle that we've been talking about so i mean i'm saying you can buy two dongles and stick them in

01:18the pi you want a little bit more range for me i just use the internal of the pi and then the dongle

01:23as the external so the dongle is going to connect nowhere it's just going to be an access point so

01:28that other clients can connect to it so i'm going to connect as a client specifically using wireless

01:34land zero because that's the built-in ethernet sorry wireless adapter of the pi we can do this in

01:40network manager we don't even need a desktop we'll say pseudo network manager device wi-fi connect and

01:47then we just have to specify the name of your uh original or how about your primary access point

01:56you know whatever it is whatever your wi-fi credentials are you got to put that there

01:59i'm not going to show you i'm going to type this into another window so that you don't have to see

02:05the name of my access point like a pseudo network manager uh device wi-fi connect i'm going to connect

02:14to

02:15like that the name of the access point and then after that you have to put a couple more things in

02:26so you're going to do the interface name uh you should name which radio you want to do the connecting

02:32as a client so i'm going to put wland zero because that's what we just said if name wland zero in the

02:38other window and then you want to provide the password for your wi-fi access point so i'm just

02:43going to put password here your password here and then i'm going to type that for myself up in the other

02:50window

02:50there we go

03:06okay um i think that's probably all we need right now i'm just gonna hit enter on my other window

03:13you should hit enter now

03:15um it's saying that it does not see the network we forgot to turn the radio on

03:20the the wi-fi adapter is off right now so that's that's a default thing with the raspberry pi

03:27so we'll go into a tool called raspy config raspy config raspy config um you could use a program

03:36called rf kill to activate the radio but the raspberry config is more fun

03:39so what you want to do is uh after you say you know sudo raspberry config you go into localization

03:46options and you select the wireless lan country so uh that's you know because different countries

03:54have different regulations they'll they'll restrict like the frequency bands you can use or whatever

03:57i'm not sure about all the countries but uh i'm going to find united states in the use there's only a

04:04few of us only a few use and now the uh the wi-fi should actually be on and then while we're here

04:11this is a pretty good idea um i go to advanced options and select expand file system because if

04:18you remember i'm going to do a reboot real fast yeah if you recall we uh what's going on man i want

04:26ping we wrote a very small image to the card it was only like two gigabytes or something right so

04:34that means the file system is only two gigabytes but the card is way bigger than that and i want

04:39i want to be able to take advantage of all the space on the card so that's why you expand the file

04:43system and raspberry pi has like a nice little tool that helps you do that so it's pinging again i

04:49should be able to get in there okay uh going back to my other window real fast i'm just going to check

04:57that the uh the connection actually worked so wireless land zero oh it didn't even work last

05:05time for sure so we're going to we're going to repeat that command because the wi-fi wasn't on

05:09before right so so if you recall uh we did sudo network manager device wi-fi connect and then the name

05:16your access point and then if name wireless land zero and then the password i'm going to type that

05:21into my other window here and if we're lucky it'll connect yeah okay it seems to uh have worked

05:29and then sudo and sudo connection show okay i'm going to rename the connection real fast and then i'll

05:37show it to you in the main terminal windows sudo network manager connection edit uh main one

05:44and set the connection id to um how about just like connect as client save quit show okay so now

05:56i think i can show you this so sudo network manager command line interface connections show and you can

06:02see that i am now successfully connected as a client to the rest of my network at this point i could pull

06:07out the wife uh i could pull out the ethernet adapter if i wanted to but i still don't like doing

06:12that because it's pretty easy to lose your connection and screw everything up and the ethernet is there

06:16to save you but for now i have connected as a client on wireless land zero make sure you have the right

06:21one selected and if you did it wrong you can do sudo network manager connection delete and then just

06:28name the connection but i think we're fine so let me just uh edit the uh ip address real fast

06:37edit uh connect as client you're probably going to want to do this because remember we talked before

06:46about the idea of you having ip addresses that you had to uh you know come up with to follow this

06:53video so i'm going to oh gosh what's happening there we go let me go to this one

06:58right so i'm trying to set up wireless land zero so it's going to be 147 for me

07:06maybe not the same thing for you so i'm going to go let's see i've just edited it okay so i'm going

07:13to set ipv4 dot addresses as that with a 24 block and yes i want to set to manual i want to set the

07:22gateway basically this is the same thing that we did with the ethernet already then i'm going to set

07:27the dns the only difference here between you know this connection and the ethernet connection

07:34is i'm just setting a different ip address but i'm giving it the same gateway in the same dns servers

07:38and everything so dns search home i'm going to save it and then i'm going to quit it

07:44uh at this point you could reboot the pi maybe i should do that so i can read my notes a little bit

07:51more let's reboot the pi and let's see if we can connect on the wireless interface so i think it was

07:57147 i just set up um let me do a ping at 147 so i'll know if the wi-fi comes on i may have forgotten

08:07to tell it to auto connect like i did last time but i feel like the wi-fi does that already

08:13we'll see what happens i'll just give it like 10 more seconds

08:17yay it worked okay so now we're connected we can connect through uh the wi-fi notice how it says i

08:27don't recognize this remote because it's a different ip address but we're on the pi so now you've got two

08:31ways to get into your pi i'm actually going to revert because i like staying on ethernet but uh

08:36just so you know this is how the pi will get its internet after you eventually put this repeater

08:41somewhere where you can't get ethernet you know like in your garage or on top of a china hutch or

08:46whatever so um the next thing that we need to do is um

08:54we need to install a program called dns mask we need a dhcp server because what's what's going to

09:03happen basically is when we connect it as a client to the primary router its dhcp server gave us an ip

09:09address on the normal subnet so that's fine we don't really need that for the primary connection

09:14but when we become an access point with the extra antenna whoever connects to our pi as a client is

09:22going to need ip addresses and it's not going to be able to get the ip address the clients are not

09:27going to be able to get the ip address their ip addresses from the router anymore because they're

09:31not even connected to the router they're connected to the pi and there's an isolation because there's two

09:35different networks so that means we need to put a dhcp server on the pi so the pi can just decide

09:42what ip addresses everybody has on its network so i think what i'm going to do since the video is

09:50already about 15 minutes long into this particular segment and i think the whole video is already like

09:54over an hour for sure i'm going to pause the video and i'm going to go away and make another video

10:00where i just talk about how to install dns mask on your raspberry pi so you should go to that other

10:06video and then come back when you have a dns mask all set up and then maybe i'll i'll just copy paste

10:14the config just so you can see the config that i'm actually using for this particular project

10:18just to make it more clear this is a sample configuration file for dns mask

10:23it's not too bad that that's kind of it it's kind of all you have to do so uh i think i'm just

10:29going to install dns mask uh right now for you uh what i did a moment ago is i said sudo apt install

10:36dns mask so it's already installed for me and then to give it some configuration we'll just go into a

10:43special directory called etc dns mask and any file you create in this dot d directory and this is kind

10:51of typical for programs that recognize a dot d drop directory you can just stick configuration files

10:57in there and they'll be read automatically so uh this is the configuration i'm going to use

11:02uh for my dhcp server on my pi you should probably use something similar but not exactly the same

11:08uh or not necessarily it doesn't have to be the same but um i'm using my search domain of home

11:14so you don't have to do that because you don't even you probably don't even have the home

11:17domain unless you want one and then i'm going to i'm going to specify what ip addresses should

11:23get assigned to clients that connect to the access point so then um

11:31what's going on how come i did not specify the adapter and it still worked on my other project

11:38we might have to specify the adapter if this doesn't work otherwise i guess it's fine

11:42by default nobody's going to be looking at this pi i don't know maybe i should specify the adapter

11:48i'll make a note um or i'll come back in a second but anyway so we want to specify an ip address range

11:54if you recall our ip address uh range that we chose for the clients of the access point is going to be

12:01dot five dot something right so this dhcp server is going to be for the clients so that means

12:07the uh the subnet should match what we've chosen so all of the ranged all of the ips that we give

12:15away should start with 192.168.5 and then something so notice here notice out here i'm just saying

12:20192.168.5.10 so i'm saying that the first ip address that i will give away is a something dot 10

12:28and the last one that i'll give away is a something dot 150 i think most people don't go up that high but i

12:33just i just feel like it i want to go from 10 to 150 and that gives me a little room to statically

12:39assign lower addresses if i really feel like it later or high addresses if i feel like it later

12:43uh this subnet right here that's the same thing as a slash 24 block it just means only the last number

12:50uh should be able to change and then the least time 24 hours that means if the if the pi dhcp server

12:58gives an ip address to a client then that ip address should last for about 24 hours before

13:03the pi has to decide um you know on another ip address or if it's going to give it a longer

13:10lease or something on the same one it'll just it'll just redetermine what's going to happen

13:13uh then we'll send a dhcp option uh basically we're going to tell the clients hey here's the ip address

13:20of your gateway so that's called option three for dhcp option so we say three comma and then the dhcp

13:27server is going to be dot five dot one at the end because that's the number we've designated for

13:32wireless land one the gateway uh you know the the wire the wireless dongle that we're setting up

13:38then we're going to send dns servers uh you need dns servers so that your clients can actually

13:43resolve names to addresses you know like yahoo.com or google.com instead of their numbers

13:48so that's going to be option six and then you basically just put every dns server you know

13:53about or you want the clients to know about uh separated by commas just to point out also

13:58we're not covering ipv6 in this video because we're trying to keep it short but uh you probably

14:03want to continue eventually and set up ipv6 um on your own at some point but this will totally work

14:09without it so my dns servers are 1.101 but again you probably don't have those as i uh as dns servers

14:16yours are probably just going to be the ipv6 of your router or maybe you can put in some public

14:21dns servers like 8.8.8.8 whatever you do write it all down there and save it and before we try to

14:30run dns mask let's watch messages and see what's going on um actually you know what let me just type

14:37it and i won't show you because there's probably sensitive stuff in there you use a command to watch

14:42service logs called journal control so you'll say pseudo journal control dash dash unit and then you

14:49just name the unit that you're interested in watching um if you type if you press enter right

14:54now you'll see all of the logs and you'll be able to scroll up and down hit q to exit but if you just

14:59want to follow the logs in a live view to see maybe problems as they're uh occurring uh then you'll do

15:05a dash f for follow i'm going to do that in my other window right now just so that um i can maybe

15:13catch myself if something goes wrong so i'm going to like copy paste this up here on a terminal

15:18blup blup blup blup blup okay so it says

15:22i think it actually just like reset itself once i change the config file that's kind of cool

15:28so but then the next steps you want to do just to be sure that this service is actually going to run

15:33for you you'll say pseudo system control status dns mask and then um it says it's enabled on my

15:42system so then i'm going to do uh pseudo system control enable dash dash now and that'll just

15:50ensure that it's enabled so it'll start whenever the system boots and then it'll start it right now

15:55also and every time you change the configuration you probably want to do something like restart i

16:00actually i'm not sure you need to do this because it looks like it was picking up the config once

16:04while i was typing it and saving it so pseudo apt sorry pseudo system control enable now and then

16:10restart and then the dns server should be running let's see how much time do we have seven before i

16:16have to cut another scene or the the camera's going to cut me off um so now we're at the point

16:24where we have to set up ip forwarding because what's going to happen is actually you know what let me

16:28do a scene cut because this is going to take more than seven minutes uh we're almost there we're

16:33actually almost finished well not quite we're getting closer okay i'm going to do a scene cut

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