Pi or Fin wifi as access point?

Product support
1

Hi, I’m curious if anyone has tried running a Pi or Fin as an access point / hub / local gateway for wifi nodes. The assumption being that you route sensor data via wifi to the Pi and backhaul to the cloud via Ethernet.

If so, could it be taken a step further and have a single Pi or Fin act as a hub for both Lora devices (with the additional concentrator of course) and Wifi devices in a single place? Taken even further, backhaul via LTE?

I saw some conversations about the Pi as an access point, and understand thats what is happening under the food with the wifi-connect project but I’m not sure about the limitations the Pi’s lightweight wifi handling more than a few sensors/nodes. I’m also a little unclear how robust NetworkManager is in handling those requirements.

Thoughts?

@mpous this must have crossed your mind at some point :wink:

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Hi, you can definitely do all of that under balenaOS. For the WiFi part you will need to setup a WiFi hotspot - https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/network/2.x/#creating-a-hotspot. It is all handled by NetworkManager. If you need more complex logic, then you may use the NetworkManager API, but you may start with a simple example.

You may setup Lora in a container - NetworkManager is not used for the Lora part.

The if you would like to connect to the Internet via LTE you may do that through NetworkManager/ModemManager: https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/network/2.x/#cellular-modem-setup

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Excellent thanks for the tip @majorz will spend some time with these docs.

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@barryjump did you read this? https://www.balena.io/blog/turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-a-wi-fi-access-point-or-repeater/

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@mpous Sheesh how did I miss that? Thanks!

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hahahaha no problem! let me know if that works for you @barryjump

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Older topic but curious if anyone knows the maximum amount of devices that are able to connect to Balena Fin WiFi AP?

I know that Raspberry Pi 4Bs are limited to 8.

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Looks like the max is 10…

Does anyone know how to increase?

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Hi,

Regarding the fin, the wifi module in the schematics specifies for AP mode:

Association support up to 10 stations

So I doubt you’re gonna get this number up while running on that hardware.

According to this thread, the main issue for Raspberry Pi’s is the RAM in the wifi module that’s being used. They suggest they had a higher max number of clients when using Stretch vs Buster and pi3 vs pi4. This may have to do with a newer version of the firmware and different wifi modules

That being said, using something like a USB dongle, should allow for a more capable WiFi module to be used.

1 Like
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Thanks for digging into this @TJvV

I was hoping that since the Fin 1.0 broke out the WiFi Module that it would have on-board resources to handle more than 10 stations, but you’re correct. I am moving away from WiFi as a whole for my devices but until I have eliminated all of them, I will have to use another dongle to service all the WiFi sensors that I have…

For anyone looking for a way to handle > 10+ WiFi stations on an AP, I have used this one on many occasions with full support on Balena’s images.