Connecting the Pi3 automatically to Wifi

Question

My new Raspberry Pi 3 is great, but I am facing one difficulty: my router is in the lounge (one floor down), and my laptop has no Ethernet port. Since I am using SSH to control the Pi, I always have to connect it to the router via an Ethernet cable. Also, I can't use the GPIO pins from my room as I have to be close to the router.

Is there any way to automatically connect my Pi to wifi right after booting up? In other words, I want to power up the Pi without any network connection, and it should automatically connect to the wifi.

One thing I tried was to edit the /etc/wpa-supplicant/wpa-supplicant.conf file to include only the SSID and PSK of my home's wifi connection. This did not make the Pi connect automatically to wifi.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Add

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp 
wpa-ssid {ssid}
wpa-psk  {password}

To /etc/network/interfaces. then use the command sudo dhclient wlan0.

Or try option #2 from Here

Answer 2

It should connect automatically after you set up wifi on the pi's GUI. To do this you need to connect a monitor and keyboard to the pi then boot up on the pi(not over SSH). Type startx to enter the GUI, then there should be a icon for wifi. Click on it, find your network, and it should remember the network, even after you reboot.

Answer 3

I had a similar problem with Pi 3. For unknown reason wicd (gui that is used) did not work. After struggles - and I know it is not an ideal solution - I created a script:

!/bin/bash
for  (( i=0;i<999999999; i++)); do
 echo $i '.' test=============================================
 ME=`iwconfig wlan0 | grep ESSID | awk -F\" '{print $2}' `
 echo i ... I am in :  $ME

 A=`sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | grep  ESSID `
 echo $A
 echo $A | grep MyWifiAP >/dev/null

 if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
 if [ "$ME" != "MyWifiAP" ]; then
  echo ! ... seeing MyWifiAP ... killing previous
  sudo pkill wpa_supplicant
  echo W ... connecting to MyWifiAP
  sudo wpa_supplicant -Dnl80211 -iwlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/MyWifiAP.conf >/dev/null &
  sleep 1
  else
  echo i ... already in MyWifiAP
  sleep 1
  fi
 fi
done

Your AP is MyWifiAP and you must create file /etc/wpa_supplicant/MyWifiAP.conf that contains your access data.

The script resides wherever, it can be run on background from /etc/rc.local (nohup + &). VERIFY that it works with wpa_supplicant before you use it. A mistake in rc.local could lead to a necessity to edit your SD card to revert changes back.

I think this was some error in debian distribution or systemd...