♨️Hotspot Mode
Effortlessly spin-up a 'portable AP' by turning your WLAN Pi in to a test AP
Overview
The WLAN Pi platform may be switched between a number of "modes" to change the operational personality of the WLAN Pi. Modes available include: "Server Mode", "Wireless Console Mode" and the mode we're exploring in this lab: "Hotspot Mode".
The WLAN Pi Hotspot mode has been created to provide a quick and dirty wireless AP for tasks such as wall attenuation measurements. It will also provide a temporary wireless connection when you'd like to hook up to a switch ethernet port and extend the network connection out to a wireless client. Finally, it can be used to provide wireless access to the WLAN Pi itself if other connection methods such as Bluetooth or Ethernet are not available.
The Hotspot mode package was originally created using the information in François Vergès blog article: WLAN Pi - Setup a Wi-Fi Hotspot. This has been maintained and improved in the current WLAN Pi platform.
Hotspot mode can be activated and deactivated using the WLAN Pi front panel menu system. When switching to Hotspot mode and back to the original "Classic" mode, the WLAN Pi will reboot to reset all networking operations on the WLAN Pi for each mode.
In this lab, we'll look at how to switch into Hotspot mode, some of its features and how to re-configure it if required.
If you'd like more details about Hotspot, please checkout the package software documentation at:
What You'll Need For This Lab
To complete this lab you'll need the following items:
A Windows laptop or Mac to browse to the WLAN Pi M4 and access Terminal
A WLAN Pi M4
A client device to join the AP (e.g. your smartphone)
Connectivity
For this lab, you'll need the WLAN Pi hooked up to a lab switch to obtain PoE power and Internet connectivity. In addition, you'll need an IP connection (provided by the lab wireless network) between your laptop/Mac and the WLAN Pi. This will provide access to the Terminal utility to execute CLI commands that form part of this lab.
In addition, when the WLAN Pi has been switched into Hotspot mode, a client device such as a smartphone will be needed to join the SSID provided by the WLAN Pi. The client device will have Internet access once associated to the SSID.
Lab Instructions
By default, when your WLAN Pi switches from Classic to Hotspot mode, it will use channel 6 in the 2.4GHz band to broadcast its SSID. In our deep-dive lab environment this will not be a great experience if everyone fires up their WLAN Pi on the same channel. Therefore before switching to AP mode, we need to edit the Hotspot configuration to change the channel used.
Hotspot mode may be configured to use any 2.4 GHz channel, or one of the non-DFS 5 GHz channels. The 5GHz channels will usually be 36, 40, 48, 52, 149, 153, 157, 161 & 165 in many regulatory domains, but check your local domain restrictions.
To set the Hotspot channel, we'll need to edit the configuration file as follows:
Open the Terminal utility to access the CLI of your WLAN Pi and change to the configuration directory as follows:
We need to edit the file called "hostapd.conf" in this folder. We'll be using an editor called "nano" to modify the file. Nano is quite easy to use: simply use your keyboard arrow keys to move around the file. Add characters where required, and use your usual delete key to remove characters. When you've completed your updates, hit "Ctrl-X" to exit the editor (hit "Y" when prompted to save your changes):
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