Setting up wifi on Raspberry Pi

I recently bought a "NETGEAR wifi dongle" fo my Raspberry Pi so free it from the wired ethernet connections. The details of the wifi dongle is as follows:

$lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0846:9041 NetGear, Inc. WNA1000M 802.11bgn [Realtek RTL8188CUS]

To configure it to the local wifi network:

modify /etc/network/interfaces as follows
For example if my wifi network's name is "~Jaguar~" and password is "Password123"

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
allow-hotplug wlan0
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid "~Jaguar~"
        wpa-psk "Password123"

Softreboot the system and wifi should be working.

$ sudo shutdown "now" -r

To re-confirm

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:27:eb:ae:b2:aa  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:95 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:84 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:9356 (9.1 KiB)  TX bytes:13962 (13.6 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:6402 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6402 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:19282157 (18.3 MiB)  TX bytes:19282157 (18.3 MiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 84:1b:5e:92:bf:e8  
          inet addr:192.168.1.8  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2182 errors:0 dropped:2359 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2001 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:289214 (282.4 KiB)  TX bytes:1055742 (1.0 MiB)

and

 pi@raspberrypi ~ $ iwconfig  
lo        no wireless extensions. 
 
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"~Jaguar~"  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 80:A1:D7:8D:A3:24   
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Sensitivity:0/0  
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=100/100  Signal level=100/100  Noise level=0/100
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0  
 
eth0      no wireless extensions.  

For Internet to work: use
$ sudo /sbin/route add -net 0.0.0.0 -gw 192.168.1.1 wlan0
where 192.168.1.1 is gateway of my router.

Hope this post helps. :-)

Remote Desktop of Raspberry Pi onto Ubuntu/Android/Windows

I recently bought a Raspberry Pi board from crazypi.com. Raspberry is a low cost chipset from Broadcom which can host linux and many other OS. It just costs 3K INR if you buy it in India. It is an awesome lowcost chipset with 2 USB ports, one ethernet port, one HDMI port, one TV out and one audio jack port. It also has a micro-USB power input and SD card, from where the OS boots.

Now I am gonna explain how to setup remote desktop from Raspberry Pi to Linux or Windows PC. VNC and RDP protocols are famous for desktop sharing. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. However I prefer RDP over VNC, because VNC often gets stuck while using Desktop sharing. I am gonna explain setting up of both the protocols on Raspberry Pi:

1. Using VNC protocol
Server Configurations on Raspberry Pi:
- Install tightvncserver on the Raspberry

$ sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

- Enter passwords if prompted.

- start the vncserver with the following command

$ vncserver :1 -geometry 800x600 -depth 32 -pixelformat rgb565

   
- Now you are ready to connect to Raspberry Pi remotely from any VNC client either on Ubuntu or Android.

Client Configurations:
On Ubuntu: install vncviewer, to connect remotely, install necesarry packages when prompted.

$ vncviewer 192.168.1.3:5901

   

On Android: Download VNC client app from Android market. I downloaded "androidVNC" app from market, works well on my Galaxy Nexus.

Nickname: raspberry:1

password: <type in the view password set while installing vncserver on Raspberry Pi>

Address: <enter ip address of RPi; ex: 192.168.1.3>

Port: 5901

- To kill the server

$ vncserver -kill :1

However I was unable to browse comfortable using VNC so I decided to use RDP protocol. RDP is faster and preferred over VNC and it performs better.

2. Using RDP protocol
Server Configurations on Raspberry Pi:
- Install the xrdp package on Raspberry Pi

$ sudo apt -get install xrdp

- Thats it, the server is ready on RPi. Restart if required.

Client Configurations:
On Ubuntu: Applications > internet > Terminal server Client

Computer: 192.168.1.3
Protocol: RDPv5
User name: pi
Password: raspberry

Alternatively you can use the rdesktop command from the shell as follows:

$ rdesktop -u pi -p raspberry 192.168.1.3 

On Android: Install a RDP client, I used "AccessToGo Remote Desktop/RDP" and "Ahope RDP Client"from Android market. plugin the details as required.

This is really coooooooooool.

Using Rapberry Pi Command Prompt on other devices:
In addition, to access Raspberry Pi in command shell
On ubuntu: 

$ ssh pi@192.168.1.3 

On android: Download "ConnectBot" app from the Android market. Plugin the details and you are ready to go. :-)

You can expect some more stuff on Raspberry Pi sooner.

See you...