Hello,
I’m beginning with balena and I try to configure my Raspberry Pi 3 model b+ as a Wi-Fi extender, following this tuto: Turn a Raspberry Pi into a Wi-Fi access point or repeater
I could deploy the OS but I’m stuck right after pushing the code from GitHub. You can find attached the logs related to the command balena push appName.
I see lots of warnings and errors regarding npm and python but I couldn’t solve them or even identified them as the source of my problem.
On the balena dashboard, the service “wifi-repeater” is installing but the bug appears when it has to start it. After that, I found any other solution than reflashing the SD card using BalenaEtcher on my computer running Windows 10.
Has anyone any idea of the source of my issue ?
Thank you in advance for your help !
Logs.txt (17.9 KB)
Hi there, I see the issues you are referring to in the build log, but, it does look like it completes. In the balenaCloud dashboard, what are the errors you are receiving there? Can you send a screenshot?
Also, have you set the needed Environment Variables in the balenaCloud dashboard? Those are documented in the blog post and GitHub repo, but, those are needed for the project to work, so make you have set those network credentials properly.
Hello, thank you for your reply. In the dashboard, everything was freezed right after attempting to activate the wifi-repeater service.
I finally find out why it wasn’t working as it should. I didn’t read carefully that an Ethernet cable was mandatory… But now it works 
Unfortunately, I’m facing another issue, this time with my WiFi USB dongle. It’s a Ralink that shoud work with the mt7601U driver. But it seems that either the driver is not installer, or it doesn’t work properly.
The USB device is recognized but here is what I found on the file /sys/kernel/debug/usb/devices:
T: Bus=01 Lev=02 Prnt=02 Port=01 Cnt=02 Dev#= 4 Spd=480 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 2.01 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=148f ProdID=7601 Rev= 0.00
S: Manufacturer=MediaTek
S: Product=802.11 n WLAN
S: SerialNumber=1.0
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=160mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 8 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=(none)
I search for many different solutions but I couldn’t solve this issue.
As I want to use my Raspberry as a repeater, ideally without Ethernet cable, I would be more than glad if it works.
Any idea ?
Hey there,
It seems like the drivers needed for this wifi chipset are not included in balenaOS. You can find a list of supported wifi adapters
I think there are 2 options here
- the easiest - try a dongle that comes with a supported chipset
- Perhaps you can try to install the driver manually in another container alongside your application. We have an example on how to build an external kernel module which is usually how this is approached. Note, you will need to have the driver sources. GitHub - balena-os/kernel-module-build: Example project for building an OOT kernel module in balena
Hope this is helpful