How to setup a Raspberry Pi as an access point for its own wireless network. The discussion below is a review on some of the ways to interact with this device.
- A credit card sized computer that’s significantly cheaper than most of its rivals (~$35)
- Applications: media center, cloud server, smart TV, game emulator, robotics brain, cheap educational tool, home automation, etc
- Great comumunity, including numerous blogs, tutorials and libraries
- How to easily and wirelessly interact with the Pi. Even for non-interactive projects, you need to diagnose issues, check system health.
- Need a UI of some kind for an embedded, headless PC
- External monitor
- requires expensive screen, requires Pi enter display mode
- cost defeats the purpose of buying a low-cost Pi
- Ethernet
- HTTP allows us to use the web browser to display information, receive input. A great cross-device platform
- cumbersome cords, bad for outdoor applications
- WiFi
- looks better but has signal range issues. Difficult to configure
- Bluetooth
- Requires a dedicated client-side application in order to receive and display signals
- SSH onto the Pi
- Requires specialized knowledge to operate, not user friendly
- Pi connects to remote server
- Hosting costs
- Security concerns
- Pi becomes a web server that user connects over home network
- User must somehow detect local ip address (too hard for enduser)
- Or open port on home network and use dynamic ip stuff (not secure)
Create your own local network with the Raspberry Pi as the router, DNS, and web server.
- Instant wireless connectivity wherever you go
- If internet access becomes available, you can choose to forward remote requests
- No security problems due to limited range
- Leverages web browser as a cross device platform
- Can create custom domain names, network name
- Fairly simple for enduser
- Same method used by Chromecast to configure its wifi connection
- hostapd: wifi device mode (access point), network security (WPA2)
- dnsmasq: DHCP and DNS
- nginx: webserving
- socket.io: 2 way communication
- init scripts: automatically stop and start on reboot
- Interactive LED table: individually addressable, multicolor LEDs
- Smartphone enabled TV remote: chromecast and IR commands
- Weather station: collection of environmental sensors
- Try a different WiFi mode. For example, ad hoc or mesh networks (multiple masters)
- Try using Multicast DNS to broadcast domain name over home network
- Try to access webpages over bluetooth
- Forward http requests over bluetooth PAN
- Bluetooth PAN
Author: Bereket Abraham