I’ve finally got some time to do some work on my time-lapse project when I hit a brick wall straight off the bat. My $15 tiny wireless adaptor from Asus wasn’t working so I did some digging to try to work out what was going on. I first tried to use the GUI WiFi Config and it was able to detect the wireless AP but I was unable to connect. I did some digging and worked out what I needed to do to get it working.
I’m using the official Raspbian image from the raspberry pi website. The good folks over at Element14 have a page that outlines their wireless adaptor testing and list the N10 as a working adaptor with the right kernel module loaded.
It uses a Realtek RTL8188u chipset with the r8712u kernel module that is available in staging on wheezy.
This is what you have to do to get the Raspberry Pi + Asus N10 wireless adaptor working. I have the wireless adaptor plugged into a powered USB hub along with a Dell keyboard and mouse.
Load the module for your current terminal session
sudo mod_probe r8712u
Check that the module is loaded
sudo lsmod Module Size Used by r8712u 168753 0 snd_bcm2835 16165 0 snd_soc_bcm2708_i2s 5474 0 regmap_mmio 2806 1 snd_soc_bcm2708_i2s .....
This should output a bunch of other stuff but I’ve cut if off. If you see the r8712u in the list, then its loaded. If it does, you’re all good. If not make sure that you’re using the correct version of Raspbian.
Next you will want this to load on every boot so the easiest way to do that is to add it to the modules for boot.
echo "r8712u" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
Next I had to remove the wpa_supplicant configuration that was in my network interfaces file after the GUI WiFi config failed.
Your /etc/network/interfaces file should look like this. Use sudo vi to open the file and edit as required.
auto lo iface lo inet loopback iface eth0 inet dhcp allow-hotplug wlan0 auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid YourSSID wpa-psk YourPassword
Next you’ll need to take the interface down and back up again
sudo ifdown wlan0; sudo ifup wlan0;
Once this has completed you’ll be connected to your wireless network and it will output the IP for you once the DHCP lease is active. It should look something like the following.
Listening on LPF/wlan0/bc:ee:7b:e4:e2:41 Sending on LPF/wlan0/bc:ee:7b:e4:e2:41 Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5 DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7 DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12 DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 DHCPOFFER from 192.168.1.1 DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1 bound to 192.168.1.113 -- renewal in 40150 seconds.