There are three versions of the Raspberry Pi available to date, the A, B, and B+. While there are many small changes, for the purpose of this post I thought I'd highlight the USB ports. The model A has one, the B has two, and the B+ has 4. Since I have a USB mouse and a USB keyboard attached, I've found a workaround for getting wifi on the Raspberry Pi model B. If you came here for help with the model A, I'm sorry, your only hope is a powered USB hub or to be accessing it remotely via SSH. The model B+ has four ports, so just plug your wifi dongle in and follow the last few steps of this tutorial.
What you'll need:
- Raspberry Pi - model B or B+
- Ethernet cable to modem
- USB WiFi dongle (something like this)
Keyboard
To free up one USB port we're going to remove the keyboard (not yet though!). To do this we need to install a virtual keyboard, so that we can use the mouse to type as well. With an ethernet cable connected, open the LXTerminal prompt (or any terminal/command prompt for that matter). in the prompt type:
sudo apt-get install matchbox
To find out more about the Matchbox Virtual Keyboard, visit
here.
WiFi
Once you've installed this keyboard, turn off the RPi. Disconnect the keyboard and add the WiFi USB dongle. Restart the RPi. Once the RPi is rebooted, start the WiFi Config application.
You should be confronted with this window.
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| Photo by Adafruit |
Click on the
Scan button, and double click your WiFi network when you see it.
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| Photo by Adafruit |
Finally, enter your WiFi network password where it says PSK, and click connect.
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| Photo by Adafruit |
You're done! I would suggest opening the browser and doing a quick search to make sure that it's working correctly. If you want to connect your WiFi via the command line instead, Adafruit has a great tutorial
here.
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