Setting up WiFi Dongle as an AP with Raspberry Pi as the end-point

Question

I'm trying to create a bit of a custom gateway with a Raspberry Pi 4B which consists of a LoRaWAN gateway module and a wifi dongle to connect/debug/configure the pi.

The LoRaWAN gateway (from RAK wireless) runs on their pre-configured software, which uses the on-board WiFi module to connect to the internet and relay device data.

What I'd like to do is add a secondary wifi dongle, to enable me to also set the Pi up as an access point so that I am able to connect to it directly and alter the configuration rather than having to know its IP on another network. I don't necessarily need this access point to route any data via the on-board wifi adapter, since it's just for local configuration.

I've found a few guides on how to set up wifi adapters as APs but they very quickly veer off to talk about setting up a bridge, which isn't really something I need. I know as much as I need hostapd and dnsmasq installed. I've checked they are installed and up to date, and also that my dongle is recognised (wlan1) alongside the on-board wifi (wlan0).

Basically I've not had much luck following other guides and getting a local access point set up, since they are mostly step-by-step copy-paste and don't actually explain the implications of various files or lines in config files.

Can anyone help me out?

Answer 1

You can try to use systemd-networkd to do all tasks without additional helper programs. You will find an example at Setting up a Raspberry Pi as an access point - the easy way with a link on section General Setup to an explanation how systemd-networkd works. I hope you can follow then the example until the section Setting up a stand alone access point. That is the first step and does have a simple setup. If you run into problems with it just ask a new question about it and give me a comment here on this answer.