Depending on the layout and size of your home, and the router you have installed, you may have some problems bringing WiFi to every corner of your home. This can be quite annoying, especially in large homes or with a very long distribution and the router at one of its ends. Luckily there are solutions that we can buy to expand the WiFi signal, and in this article we are going to show you one that you can use at home spending just under 10 euros.
You can use this solution that we bring you today as an alternative to all the sections that you can buy to amplify your WiFi signal. We are referring to PLCs, repeaters and WiFi Mesh, solutions that, although it is true, work very well, have a much higher cost in the market.
Get a great repeater for less than 10 euros
If we go to Amazon, for example, we can find repeaters or PLCs for our home for prices between 17 and 100 euros . It is true that if we search a little we can find one that is cheap and works correctly, but if you have a little skill you can get one of better quality than those for, as we have said before, less than 10 euros.
The solution we are referring to involves using a Raspberry Pi , and as we say, turning it into a WiFi repeater will cost us really little. With it we are going to have some interesting features like ad blocking and also run software that is highly customizable. This project itself is quite unique, as most of the projects on the internet about turning a Raspberry Pi into a repeater use an Ethernet cable, and in this case it is not necessary.
Follow these steps for it
The first thing to do is download the “raspbian lite.iso” file from the Raspberry Pi website . Once the operating system is downloaded, we must open BalenaEtcher, select the file that we have downloaded and the SD card. We will then press the flash button and wait for the process to finish . Once this is done we will have to open the boot partition and within it create a blank text file called “ssh” without any extension. To finish this first step, we will need to create a text file called “wpa_supplicant.conf” on the boot partition and paste the following content.
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev<br>update_config=1
country=IN
network={
ssid=”mywifissid”
psk=”mywifipassword”
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}
It is important to replace “mywifissid” and “mywifipassword” with the name of our WiFi and its password, respectively. Once we have done this, we will have to turn on the Raspberry pi, and we will have to use a tool like Angry IP Scanner to find its IP. Once this is done, we must activate the SSH of our Raspberry, and update the list of packages and packages and restart our device. From this moment we will have to use SUDO to enter several commands , but if you follow the steps as they are you should not have too many problems.
Starting with the commands, the first thing is to prevent the use of dhcpd , as well as use the built-in systemd-network. To do this we will have to enter the following commands in order:
sudo systemctl mask networking.service dhcpcd.service
sudo mv /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces~
sed -i ‘1i resolvconf=NO’ /etc/resolvconf.conf
sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service systemd-resolved.service
sudo ln -sf /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
Once we have done this, we will have to create a new file, also through SUDO. To do this, enter the following command:
sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf
This created file is very important, so we will have to create it as you are seeing it in the command . Once this is done, you will have to copy a series of content that you are going to see just below. When you have it created you will have to save it by pressing control X, Y and Enter.
country=IN
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
ssid=”TestAP-plus”
mode=2
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk=”12345678″
frequency=2412
}
If you look at this content you can also see how the SSID and password are present, but in this case it is different from what we have seen before. We will have to configure these values, because they will be what we will use to connect to our WiFi extender . The next thing we need to do is grant the user read and write permissions on the file and restart wpa_suplicant. To do this, we must enter the following commands:
sudo chmod 600 /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf
sudo systemctl disable wpa_supplicant.service
sudo systemctl enable wpa_supplicant@wlan0.service
Again, we will have to create another file , and as before, it is something that we will do through the same command that we have seen before:
sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan1.conf
Something that we will have to repeat will be pasting content into this new file that we have created. As we have told you before, it is important that you copy this content as we indicate, since a simple error in the code could cause it to not work correctly:
country=IN
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
ssid=”Asus RT-AC5300″
psk=”12345678″
}
On this occasion, we see how two SSID and password parameters are also indicated for us to adjust. Contrary to what happened in the previous file, in this case we must enter the SSID and password of our router . I have done this, we must again also give the user read and write permissions and restart wpa_suplicant, something for which we will use the same commands by simply changing the name of the file to the one we just created.
To finish, we will only have to create two new files and copy content inside them. The creation of the first of them and its content can be seen below :
sudo nano /etc/systemd/network/08-wlan0.network
[match] Name=wlan0
[Networking] Address=192.168.7.1/24
IP Masquerade=yes
IPForward=yes
DHCPServer=yes
[DHCPServer] DNS=1.1.1.1
And for the second we will have to do something very similar, although this time the code that we will have to copy inside will be much shorter :
sudo nano /etc/systemd/network/12-wlan1.network
[match] Name=wlan1
[Networking] DHCP=yes
Once this is done, we will only have to restart our Raspberry Pi and we will have created our wireless access point. As you can see, it is a process that is somewhat complex, but with which you should not have problems if you follow the steps just above you have been able to read. It is a great way to put a Raspberry Pi to use, since the results are very good and have nothing to envy much more expensive devices.