NOTE: This is an update to the accesspoint instructions below (Starting at "# accesspoint"

1. Hotspot support is now part of Raspbien, can can be controlled through the graphical desktop, or the command line using "nmcli".

2. Useful nmcli commands are as follows: a) sudo nmcli device wifi hotspot ssid password (Note: above will create a hotspot - YOURPWD MUST BE >=7 characters b) nmcli connection show --active (Note: above will show active connections. Use this to find the UUID of the preconfigured wireless network that you may use by default. You will need this to switch back fromm a hotspot to the preconfigured, shared network. EX:

     nmcli connection show --active 
     NAME           UUID                                  TYPE      DEVICE 
     preconfigured  d26740e1-5c55-4677-b5ec-b3f7b9dcbd93  wifi      wl
   
     Use the same nmcli connection show --active  command to obtain the hotspot UUID once connected and logged in over the hotspot.
   
   You can put the above into a script to switch back from the hotspot to the default shared network
   
     sudo nmcli con down 43d97f0f-1351-4122-a040-9ee87ef26a27
     sudo snmcli con up d26740e1-5c55-4677-b5ec-b3f7b9dcbd93
   

   c) nmcli c The above will show a history of connections

   USING The above information, you should be able to write a script that is called during system startup, usually as a script in /etc/init.d, and then symlinnked with an appropriate name in /etc/rc3.d (this is where networking is turned on. You could call it SNhotspot, where "N" is a number signifying where in the order you want to start it.

   See: https://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adminguide/html/ch13s04.html
   

   NOTES BELOW ARE ORIGINAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOTSPOTS

accesspoint

Setup an access point on a Raspberry Pi using only the necessary packages. Previous projects used Hydrosys to achieve this so I built this to make it easier.

This code was based on this tutorial

Usage

0. Setup the Pi
1. ssh into the Pi
2. Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/dhs-envirotech/accesspoint.git

3. Install the software necessary

sudo bash install.sh

4. Configure

This setup script always sets the password to the lowercase version of the provided SSID. Spaces & dashes will be removed from the password

Make sure to note down the credentials the script spits out at the end.

sudo python3 configure.py

5. sudo reboot now to restart the computer and initialize the access point.
6. After the Pi boots, your computer should list a new network. Connect to it with the credentials from step 5. Then, ssh into it.

Other notes:

• You can toggle the access point with sudo python3 ap.py on|off
• You can reconfigure by just running the script again. It will overwrite changes.

Technologies & Scripts

• hostapd & dnsmasq: These packages are installable through apt and are system daemons related to the access point.
• install.sh: Updates the Pi, installs necessary libraries/packages, enables hostapd, and prepares for the Python script.