Connecting Bela to wifi

We tested Bela with a few wifi dongles. Many more dongles which are compatible with Linux will work out of the box if their drivers are included in the 3.8.13 kernel. Newer devices may require to compile the drivers for this kernel. Tested devices:

• NETGEAR A6100-100PES AC600 802.11AC (more expensive, but better performing)
• Ralink RT5370
• Ralink MT7601U 148f:7601

Here are some steps to follow to setup your network connection with a wifi dongle.

First of all, run

$ lsusb

on the board to make sure it shows up correctly. If it does not, reboot your device. If you have an old Bela image (before v0.1) and want to use the NETGEAR A6100-100PES AC600, then first follow the steps below for driver installation. Otherwise, just go through the Network setup.

Network setup

• Get the name of your wifi device:

ip a

One of the devices should be called wlanX, where X is a number, that is the name of your network device. In the following we use wlan1 as the name of the interface. You should replace it with the device name you found in this step.

• Edit the /etc/network/interfaces file:

# WiFi Example
auto wlan1
iface wlan1 inet dhcp
  wpa-ssid "yourNetworkName"
  wpa-psk  "yourNetworkPassword"

• Run the following:

$ /etc/init.d/networking restart

• Verify your settings are correct by running:

$ ip a

and check that your device is working and has an IP address.

Driver setup

Note: These steps are not required if you have a Bela image v0.1 or above. We are maintaining it here for reference. Be careful with these steps - if not done correctly, you will not be able to ssh into the board.

• Download the pre-compiled archive containing the drivers and uncompress it on your BeagleBone:

$ tar -xvf rtl8812AU-bela.tar && cd rtl8812AU-bela && make install

• Enable the driver module:

$ modprobe 8812au

• Add the following line at the bottom of the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:

UseDNS no

Router

If you are searching for a battery-driven wireless router, try the USB-powered TPlink tl-wr902ac. Among other things, it allows to reserve IP addresses for specific MAC addresses, which ensures your BELA to always show up at a defined IP.