Easily Configure Wi-fi for the BeagleBone Black

This guide was built using Netgear’s G54/N150 “WNA1000M” micro USB adapter, which uses the RTL8188CUS chipset. If you use another adapter (or embedded Linux SBC!) please leave a comment so we can compile a list of all known adapters and embedded Linux boards that are compatible with this guide.

So you’ve updated your BeagleBone Black to the latest version of Debian (see my how-to guide for OSX and Windows users) and you’re ready to begin prototyping your next project with this embedded Linux board. But you’d really like that next project to be easy to move around. It really should have wi-fi.

You plug in your wi-fi adapter and … oh right, this is Linux. You’ll need to manually configure the adapter to automatically connect with your network.

How best to do that? Well, assuming, like me, you don’t have a KVM for your BeagleBone, you must instead rely on SSH to communicate with your board.

Looking around at a few guides I found the steps were either outdated or seemed unnecessarily complicated. As soon as a guide told me I had to apt-get any software I didn’t believe it. All the tools for configuring wi-fi are already built in to Linux. It should be easy.

I rebuilt Debian a few times, always with an eye to simplify the process. I eventually narrowed it down to these few steps, in what amounts to only five quick commands executed from Terminal or PuTTY.

In the images below you’ll also notice I’m using a USB hub. Plugging the wi-fi adapter directly into the BeagleBone Black will cause errors, due to the amount of current the wi-fi adapter draws. Thus I’m also using a power adapter that can supply the necessary current, and a USB hub to plug the wi-fi adapter into. I consider both of these components absolutely necessary for this project to work as designed.

Adapter/OS setup working with this guide	Debian for BeagleBone Black	Raspian
Netgear WNA1000M	✔	✔
Netgear WNA1100	✔
Netgear WNA3100	✔

Adapter/OS setup working with this guide	Debian 7.8 released 3/1/2015
Edimax EW-7811Un	✔, following these instructions to enable “hotplug”

14 Responses to Easily Configure Wi-fi for the BeagleBone Black

Nathaniel Johnson on August 12th, 2014 at 6:54 am said:

Great tutorial. I did not need to use a hub. Instead I powered the board via external power supply. The other thing I noticed is that the restart in step 6 was not needed and I was able to very quickly communicate with my board via my local network within 30 seconds.
jkridner on August 12th, 2014 at 1:29 pm said:

The configuration tool ‘wicd-client’ is another approach.
Juan David Bolanos Aguilar on August 24th, 2014 at 5:36 pm said:

Works fine with the TL-WN722N adapter. Only enable support for this chipset

https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k_htc
faddah on April 3rd, 2015 at 2:36 pm said:

hi,

i’m trying to do this with the newer 802.11ac 600 Mbps Netgear A6100 Wifi USB Mini Adapter (model number Netgear A6100-10000S). i’m stuck on the third step, “See Information About the Network.” when i do “# ifconfig -a” it never gives me a “wlan0” info on the beaglebone black board, only “eth0, lo & usb0.” i’m also plugging the Netgear A6100 directly into the USB port on the beaglebone black board, not through a hub (don’t need any other USB connections yet, i have a hub if necessary, but i don’t see why). consequently when i go through, make all the changes to the “/etc/network/interfaces” and reboot, “# ifconfig wlan0 up” does not work and returns, “wlan0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device.” also, “# ifup wlan0” returns:

“# ifup wlan0

wpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Cannot find device “wlan0″
Bind socket to interface: No such device

Failed to bring up wlan0.”

so that is failing also.

can you help me out with what needs to be done here? i would really appreciate it rather than returning this WiFI USB mini adapter. thank you in advance.
faddah on April 3rd, 2015 at 2:59 pm said:

i’m trying to do this with the newer 802.11ac 600 Mbps Netgear A6100 Wifi USB Mini Adapter (model number Netgear A6100-10000S). i’m stuck on the third step, “See Information About the Network.” when i do “# ifconfig -a” it never gives me a “wlan0” info on the beaglebone black board, only “eth0, lo & usb0.” i’m also plugging the Netgear A6100 directly into the USB port on the beaglebone black board, not through a hub (don’t need any other USB connections yet, i have a hub if necessary, but i don’t see why). consequently when i go through, make all the changes to the “/etc/network/interfaces” and reboot, “# ifconfig wlan0 up” does not work and returns, “wlan0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device.” also, “# ifup wlan0” returns:

“# ifup wlan0

wpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Cannot find device “wlan0″
Bind socket to interface: No such device

Failed to bring up wlan0.”

so that is failing also.

would you please help me out with what needs to be done here? i would really appreciate it rather than returning this WiFI USB mini adapter. thank you in advance.
Aprianto Nursetiawan on May 6th, 2015 at 6:46 am said:

Hello I got a question. When my BB is not connected to PC via USB and powered on using power adapter, it won’t connect by itself to Wi-Fi, why is that?
googcheng on May 23rd, 2015 at 9:03 pm said:

which 4-port USB hub to recommend when plug in two Edmax wireless adapters?
John Jairo Sanabria Sarmiento on July 14th, 2015 at 1:12 pm said:

do you know, how long or deep does the wifi using beagleboard works ?
i wanna use in an underwater rov for streaming a web cam into a webserver
John Jairo Sanabria Sarmiento on July 14th, 2015 at 1:20 pm said:

i found a working example without this information…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EhcxXXFYmk
Santosh on July 22nd, 2015 at 6:06 am said:

hi,
I am using Netgear WNA3100 adapter, but getting error.
Carlos Barros on August 6th, 2015 at 6:45 am said:

Tutorial with illustrative video:
http://blackboxlab.wix.com/home#!Conexão-Wifi-Beaglebone-Black/c17ar/55c0e0bd0cf2e37b76c13182
- Vinay Divakar on August 15th, 2017 at 7:23 pm said:
  
  https://deeplyembedded.org/set-up-wifi-beaglebone-black/
Arghya Nandi on July 11th, 2016 at 12:29 am said:

My wifi adapter showed ra0 in place of wlan0 in ifconfig -a. I followed all the steps exactly as instructed in this guide. Only, I changed wlan0 by ra0 everywhere. It worked perfectly.
Vinay Divakar on August 15th, 2017 at 7:15 pm said:

A couple days ago, I was able to setup Wifi on my BeagleBone using the Samsung-WIS12ABGNX Wifi USB adaptor. So, you can add it to the list. For more information on this, you can check out this post https://deeplyembedded.org/set-up-wifi-beaglebone-black/