Raspberry Pi Project

Installing A Ralink USB WiFi Dongle

Raspberry Pi does not have a standard pci slot to install a wifi card but it will power most usb ones. I purchased a Ralink usb wifi dongle and this is how I got it up and running. You can purchase these in a lot of places but I got mine at http://www.dx.com/p/k11-mini-ieee-802-11-b-g-n-150mbps-wi-fi-usb-2-0-dongle-black-147188

To make sure you have the same one as mine go to a termainal and type

lsusb

You should get a list returned, one item in the list should show
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp.
You may have a different bus or device id number but the identification "148f:7601" should be the same

Although it may not be necessary you should keep your PI up to date and should update it now before installing:

sudo apt-get install rpi-update sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo rpi-update sudo reboot

Download the driver HERE

Extract and install the driver

tar zxvf rpi_mt7601-3.18.11-777.tar.gz sudo bash install.sh sudo reboot

Now install the necessary wifi software

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant wireless-tools

If you dont know the name of the ESSID / wifi network name, look it up...

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | grep ESSID

Now we create our configuration files

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

If you are running the pi via DHCP add the following to the bottom of the file

allow-hotplug wlan0 iface wlan0 inet manual wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf iface default inet dhcp

If you want the pi to have the same address use the following...replacing the address and other network information as needed

allow-hotplug wlan0 iface wlan0 inet manual wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf address 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1

Now we need to let the pi know the network name and security password.

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

At the end of the file place the following. Replace the ESSID_NAME and WIFI_PASSWORD with your own

network={ ssid="ESSID_NAME" psk="WIFI_PASSWORD" key_mgmt=WPA-PSK }

And now restart the network interfaces

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

You should now have a connection to your wifi router / access point