ELI5 how to use my pi3 model b as access point?

Question

I have no clue about networking in general so need a little help.

Here's my problem (very First World): I want to be able to use my house wifi whilst sitting in my garden but the signal is really too weak to be of much use. The wifi router is in a cupboard about 20ft from the doors to the garden and can't really be moved from there.

However, the house is cabled such that I have an ethernet point right next to the patio doors which lead to the garden. So ... I want to plug one of my pi3's into the ethernet port next to the patio doors in the hope I can use it as an access point (if that's the correct phrase) to my wifi whilst I'm in my garden.

I've tried a couple of tutorials I've found but none of them seem to work - after following them, whenever I search for the network I think I've just set up on the pi, they don't show up.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Possible duplicate of Setting up a Raspberry Pi as an access point - the easy way — Ingo, May 03 '19 at 16:25
Unless you have a spare PI or want to do something special, a cheap WLAN access point would be easier and cheaper. Even if you want to do something special, a router with OpenWRT may still be easier and cheaper. — RalfFriedl, May 03 '19 at 17:06
I've got three spare pi's so wanted to see if I could use one or two to extend the wifi. If it's too tricky I'd consider a WLAN access point ... which would you recommend? — user1106252, May 03 '19 at 18:04
This one is only $24 and has an average rating of about 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. — user96931, May 03 '19 at 18:15
Yeah, that is 40 quid and 3.5 stars, think i'll pass on that — user1106252, May 03 '19 at 22:26

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 03 '19 at 23:18

0

The Foundation tutorial explains how to setup an Access Point

The Pi makes a rather poor router, due to the internal networking bottleneck, and a cheap router would work much better.

answered May 03 '19 at 23:18

Milliways

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Thanks, I'll have a go at that. – user1106252 May 04 '19 at 10:53
@user1106252 Please accept the answer with a click on the tick on its left side. Only this will finish the question and it will not pop up again year for year. – Ingo Feb 01 '20 at 12:25

ELI5 how to use my pi3 model b as access point?

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