Pocket Wi-Fi with RPi 3B+

Hi there,

I’ve had my RPi 3B+ on my home Wi-Fi with no issue. I’ve just tried to connect it to a pocket Wi-Fi router, and I’m having no luck. Are there any limitations to be aware of in connecting up Wi-Fi? E.g., can I connect to either 2.4GHz and 5GHz?

Thanks kindly,
Kirk.

Hi Kirk,

From memory the 3B+ has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Is your pocket WiFi broadcasting its SSID, and can you see it with the Pi?

i had my rpi-4 hooked into my tp-link router @ 2.4 gig no problems from mem…so if the chip-set is the same as the rpi-4 in the wi-fi txmitter then i don’t see why not…and should not be restricted to any wifi bridging …in any case afterall in any of the rpi-series boards…look for the wi-fi in the bridging page on your router to find it it should be in a listing of found devices…

Hi @Oliver33,

One thing I found was that it never seemed to want to connect to my 5GHz band. That is always my preference when setting up new devices, but the RPi never connected, so I always assumed it must be set to only work on the 2.4GHz band - which always worked.

So today, I picked up a pocked Wi-Fi, making certain that it was dual-band, but for some reason it doesn’t want to connect. I followed various online suggestions such as:

  • sudo iwlist wlan0 scan - I can see both the 2.4 and 5GHz ESSID in the list when I run this command.
  • Of course the first thing I did was to add it via the Wi-Fi option at the top-right of the GUI.
  • I even did the sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and found that it was already in the file.
  • I then rebooted the RPi.

Still nothing. I will attempt to connect it to the 5GHz - that was one thing I did not try as I ‘assumed’ it would not work. It shouldn’t matter if there are dashes (not underscores) in my SSID should it?

try using “ifconfig” and type
ifconfig

im confused your rpi wont see your router…i

Thanks @brian86770. Not sure what I’m looking for, but I seem to have many lines of text for eth0, lo and wlan0. Was there something I should be looking for specifically?

Also, just a more ‘general question’: what is the preferred mechanism to remote into your RPi when it’s on a completely different network? I tried VNC Viewer because it came pre-installed. Is that okay, or are there better applications?

hmm vnc can be very versatile …hmm now your trying to ssh into it… im getting really confused now,
if you tell me your exact problem i can tell you how to fix it in most cases,??

The intent is that when I connect it to the pocket Wi-Fi, then it won’t be anywhere near my office and therefore not on my office Wi-Fi. So the RPi and the pocket Wi-Fi will be in a completely different building, and I’d like to remote into it from time to time to see how things are going (as it won’t be connected to a screen or keyboard either).

I’ve tried VNC and it seemed okay, so thought to pose the question.

Cheers.

use what works best 4 you…!!!

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Hey Kirk,

Excellent question, what you’re looking for is a process called Port Forwarding, essentially poking holes in the incoming and outgoing connections that your router can provide, of course, this will create a vulnerability in your network so be careful when setting this up (I’ve linked a few tutorials for you below). After configuring port forwarding on the appropriate port for VNC viewer (Usually ~5800), secure shell (SSH on 22), or for some other form of remote access you should be able to remote into your Pi from just about anywhere on the wider internet using any application you’ve setup. All the best with your project!

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handy reading there

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Further on this,

I’ve added a full mini-tutorial of ways to access the Pi headless, you should be able to find all the details you need to rig it up from the link below.

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