Using Raspberry Pi as Access Point

Last Updated on 15th September 2020 by peppe8o

One of my friends asked me in last weeks to provide a simple how-to guide to transform a Raspberry Pi in an Access Point able to add WiFi connectivity to old routers. There are several ways to accomplish this need, but for this task I remembered that DietPi has a very user friendly procedure, So I decided to write it down to make procedure available to peppe8o.com readers.

The idea is to realize what sintetized in the following picture:

Our router will take internet connectivity from its connection, giving it to all ethernet clients. The Raspberry Pi, on the other side, will share this connectivity in its WiFi Lan created in the following procedure. So, the router will be connected with its WAN port to internet, while Raspberry Pi will be connected to one of router Ethernet ports.

What We Need

As usual, I suggest adding from now to your favourite e-commerce shopping cart all the needed hardware, so that at the end you will be able to evaluate overall costs and decide if to continue with the project or remove them from the shopping cart. So, hardware will be only:

• Raspberry PI Computer Board (including proper power supply or using a smartphone micro USB charger with at least 3A)
• high speed micro SD card (at least 16 GB, at least class 10)

Step-by-Step Guide

OS Installation

We’ll use my previous article, already containing all the steps to install the OS (how to install DietPi). Please note that in this case you will skip step 2 (Wifi settings), because in this case our Raspberry PI is going to become an ethernet client.

Access Point Software Setup

Once the OS installation is finished, we can go on in WiFi software setup. Enter the following command:

dietpi-software

go to “Search” (as in the following picture) and press Enter

type “WiFi” in the Search box and press enter:

press Space Bar to enable software selection and press enter:

the following screen will confirm the requirements meet. Press enter again

the screen will go back to dietpi-software. Go down to “Install” and press enter:

next screen will ask you for an installation confirm. Go to “Ok” and press enter:

a reboot will be required after installation. On the next screen guess what… press enter!

At this point, we need to fine tune the configuration. Connect via SSH to you Raspberry PI and launch the following command:

dietpi-config

Select “Network Options: Adapters” and press enter:

Go to WiFi and press enter:

edit the Country Code according to your Region

press enter to confirm the need to reboot

Exit from dietpi-config. At this point, there is a known issue (referred here): hostapd seems to be not working properly, so we need to reinstall it:

apt install --reinstall hostapd

Reboot the system. Now you should see in you available WiFi a new connection wit SSID “DietPi-HotSpot”. Use this with password “dietpihotspot”. You should now be able to navigate in internet and use your Raspberry PI as Access Point.

Enjoy!