How to setup a USB wlan connection on a Raspberry Pi

A little while ago I got myself a Raspberry Pi to tinker around. I didn’t know anything about Linux / Debian / Wheezy but I was inspired by the many different kind of applications of the Raspberry Pi that I read about on the internet.

In the meantime I’ve managed to turn the Raspberry into an Airpi. It took me some time to figure everything out, but I finally got there.

Every time I want to change/add some functionality I find myself spending lots of time Google-ing for the right solution. The solutions that work I’ll share on this blog so you can save some time achieving the same.

Today I figured out how to setup and enable the USB wlan connection on the Raspberry Pi and make it connect to my wireless network.

update, I’ve also posted an alternative solution: How to setup a USB wlan connection on a Raspberry Pi – alternative method

I got two usb wlan adapters which I both tested and seemed to work with this method:

Edimax WLAN Hi-Speed USB 2.0 EW-7811Un Nano

WLAN 11n USB Micro Stick US300EX Lite

First you need to configure the network adapter interface

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

#———————————————-

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system

# and how to activate them.

# The loopback network interface

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

# the LAN network interface

auto eth0

iface eth0 inet dhcp

# the WLAN network interface

auto wlan0

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet manual

wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

iface default inet dhcp

#———————————————-

Then you need to set the wlan parameters

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

#———————————————-

network={

ssid=”put your SSID here”

proto=RSN

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

pairwise=CCMP TKIP

group=CCMP TKIP

auth_alg=OPEN

psk=”put your psk here”

}

#———————————————-

Then you need to reboot

sudo reboot