Sunday, June 3, 2012

USB wifi for Raspberry Pi

Here are steps for setting up the USB wifi adapter TP-LINK TL-WN722N on my Raspberry Pi:


  • Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze non-free at the end

  • sudo aptitude update

  • sudo aptitude install firmware-atheros

  • Download the firmware
    cd /lib/firmware
    sudo wget http://linuxwireless.org/download/htc_fw/1.3/htc_9271.fw

  • Protect the file /etc/network/interfaces
    sudo chmod 0600 /etc/network/interfaces

  • Edit /etc/network/interfaces
    sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

  • Add the following lines. Note that I am using WEP. If you are using WPA, use the fields wpa-ssid and wpa-psk instead
    auto wlan0
    allow-hotplug wlan0
    iface wlan0 inet dhcp
            wireless-essid your-ssid
            wireless-key your-hex-key

  • Bring up the interface
    sudo ifup wlan0


About the performance. Using sftp to copy /dev/zero via wifi maxed out the CPU with transfer rate at around 1.6MB/s... maybe need to test the speed without encryption...






Reference: http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Working_USB_Wifi_Adapters