Beaglebone black, Debian, Setting up Wifi access point.

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1

Has anyone managed to get an access point up and running using latest debian image on beaglebone black?

I have installed latest debian image and have run apt-get update and apt-get upgrade. I have installed iw and hostapd.

My USB Wifi dongle (uwn100, which supports access point mode) is working and reliably connects to my external access point, but I am unable to configure the BBB to run as an access point.

Error seems to be related to missing NL80211 driver. Also running ‘iw list’ gives error stating that nl80211 can not be found.

I would appreciate input from anyone who has managed to get this working.

There are a ton of posts out there but non really address the issue or are pretty out of date.

Much appreciated,
Colin

2

Hi Colin,

I too have had some real bad experiences, but I now have an AP running reliably. First thing to do is to get a USB Wireless dongle that uses the RT5370 Chipset, its the easiest one to work with, and the most reliable, I’ve found.

I’m away from my office at the moment, otherwise I would post up the hostapd.conf file I’m using…if you decide to use the 5370 chipset, respond to this message and I’ll give you the file.

Aside from that, my deployment is a basic apt-get-driven job, on standard Arm Wheezy…nothing clever

Hope this helps

Jim

3

Hi Jim, appreciate your feedback. After many devices I have also ended up using RT5370 chipset with no messing around - amazing how much time one can spend on this.

Thanks again
Colin

4

I got the same Problems.

Could you please tell me which dongle you bought and send me the conf-file?

Thx, Heiko

5

Hi Colin,

Have you figured out whether it is a config or dongle issue?

Thanks!

6

Windows wifi access is working fine using device IP address. Issue I was having was with bonjour lookup.