Set up wifi dongle on pi 3 with recalbox

Question

I have a pi 3, but my metal case is blocking the wifi signal. I bought a wifi dongle, which I'm not sure is compatible.

I'm using Recalbox, which I think is based on Raspbian, but there is no apt-get.

I have tried to deactivate the onboard wifi :

> more /boot/config.txt
# disable onboard wifi & bt
dtoverlay=sdhost
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt-overlay

I have checked that the dongle is detected; I seem to have 2 wifi interfaces but I don't know which one is the dongle, and it seems that the onboard wifi is not in fact disabled:

> ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr B8:27:EB:2A:03:3A  
          inet addr:192.168.1.20  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::ba27:ebff:fe2a:33a%1995107028/64 Scope:Link
          inet6 addr: 2a01:cb04:57e:4800:ba27:ebff:fe2a:33a%1995107028/64 Scope:Global
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:3396 errors:0 dropped:162 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1834 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1358952 (1.2 MiB)  TX bytes:275274 (268.8 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1%1995107028/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr B8:27:EB:7F:56:6F  
          inet6 addr: fe80::ba27:ebff:fe7f:566f%1995107028/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:3036 (2.9 KiB)

wlan1     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:EF:6B:30:0B  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

I have also tried to configure the wlan interface (I have tried both wlan0 and wlan1):

>nano /etc/network/interfaces
# Configure Loopback
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet dhcp
#auto eth0

#allow-hotplug wlan0
#auto wlan0
#iface wlan0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan1
auto wlan1
iface wlan1 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

But when trying to get the wlan interfaces up (either 0 or 1) it fails:

> ifup wlan1
udhcpc (v1.24.1) started
Sending discover...
Sending discover...
Sending discover...
No lease, failing

One precision : I am doing that over ssh with an ethernet cable plugged in, because I don't have a USB keyboard. Maybe I should find a keyboard and remove the ethernet cable ?

I am not very well versed in linux so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

How can I check if my wifi dongle is properly detected ?
How can I make sure my onboard wifi is disabled ?
Obviously, how can I make my dongle work ?

The first six hex digits of HWaddr (MAC) show the Manufacturer, so wlan0 is the internal one, having the same 6 digits (B8:27:EB) as eth0. wlan1 is (00:13:EF) Kingjon Digital Technology Co.,Ltd. wlan1 hasn't an ip address assigned. Don't know anything about recalbox and RasPi integration. — LotPings, Mar 17 '17 at 22:39

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

0

I have never heard of Recalbox, but if it lacks apt-get is seems unlikely it is based on Raspbian, or any other Debian distribution.

On Raspbian to turn off wifi, rfkill block wifi; to turn it on, rfkill unblock wifi. For Bluetooth, rfkill block bluetooth and rfkill unblock bluetooth.

Your /etc/network/interfaces is inconsistent, and is not allocating IP addresses to wlan. See How do I set up networking/WiFi/Static IP, although this is for Raspbian. There are many different networking systems used on other distributions.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

Community

1

answered Mar 18 '17 at 00:34

Milliways

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Does the rfkill command just turns off the onboard wifi ? Thanks, if I can't make it work on recalbox I'll try it on raspbian, just to check if the dongle is compatible with the pi. – thomasb Mar 18 '17 at 08:55
I have not used it myself, it is a standard Linux tool to manage the kernel service. man rfkill should provide more detail, and should enable control of specific interfaces. – Milliways Mar 18 '17 at 09:56

Set up wifi dongle on pi 3 with recalbox

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