Want to boost your home Wi-Fi without buying an expensive repeater? Turn your Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 into a powerful Wi-Fi extender with this detailed tutorial! Learn the prerequisites, how to set up a second subnet, and configure your Pi with an extra Wi-Fi adapter for better coverage. Perfect for tech enthusiasts who love DIY projects and want to save cash while improving their network. Follow along to download the Raspberry Pi OS, prep your SD card, and get started. Subscribe for more tech tips! #RaspberryPi #WiFiRepeater #DIYTutorial
Introduction to Wi-Fi Repeater 00:00:00
Disclaimer and Cost Comparison 00:00:17
Raspberry Pi Hardware 00:00:33
Prerequisites for Setup 00:01:00
Need for Extra Wi-Fi Adapter 00:01:17
Network Diagram Explanation 00:01:45
Current Network Issues 00:01:56
Solution with Pi Repeater 00:02:36
Creating a Second Subnet 00:02:48
IP Address Planning 00:03:16
Choosing Subnet for Repeater 00:07:00
Assigning IP Addresses 00:08:28
Downloading Raspberry Pi OS 00:10:00
Preparing SD Card 00:13:30
Writing Image to SD Card 00:16:27
Conclusion and Call to Action 00:19:08
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Hey there, let’s talk about using your Raspberry Pi as a Wi-Fi repeater, Wi-Fi extender, just
to help make the Wi-Fi signals a lot better in your home.
So for starters, I just want to make a disclaimer. It’s actually a lot cheaper and easier to just go
to the store and buy a Wi-Fi repeater. But if you’re like me, and you like to do everything
and fun why bother driving down to the store when you can stay inside all day long and do it yourself
so uh uh i’m using an old raspberry pi that i found in a drawer this is like a raspberry pi
4 it’s not really that old um after i do this video i’m going to do the same thing with the
raspberry pi 3 which i think should probably also work um and i was about to throw this pi 4 away
and then i realized i could turn it into a repeater so it actually did save me money in the
let me just talk about your your prerequisites real fast what you
actually need you obviously need a Pi you know in like the power and all that
stuff you need an SD card so that you can write an operating system to the Pi
hopefully if you’re watching this video you already know that but the the major
thing that you actually need that you probably don’t have yet is you need an
extra radio you need an extra Wi-Fi adapter for your Pi because the Pi by
radio antenna, you know, Wi-Fi adapter, Wi-Fi card. But you need two because one is going to
connect to your existing router, your existing Wi-Fi access point. And then the second one is
going to become its own access point so other clients can connect to it. Let me kind of show
you a plan of what I’m talking about here. I made a crappy diagram. I hope you like it. I’m not very
good at these things. But if you kind of look on the screen right now, you can see that this is
This is the situation before you add some sort of a Wi-Fi repeater or the Pi repeater.
So this was what was happening to me.
Spoiler, I already did this.
So I kind of remember how to get this working pretty quick.
So I have like a wireless router here and it’s also the regular router
and it’s connected to the modem and stuff.
And the devices that are close to the router get lots of fast, good connection.
But the devices that are kind of far away, like way over here in the back,
here in the back maybe like a server a printer another laptop a phone whatever they lose
connection they they have slow speeds they’re spotty they’re frustrating right i think probably
most of you deal with this um so the the wireless repeater or the pi that we’re going to do right
now is going to solve the problem at least hopefully or mostly i don’t know so i’m going
to show you a diagram of what it’ll be like when we’re finished we’re actually going to create a
a second network. Notice how on the first slide, oh, I already lost it. Let me do it.
Notice how on the first slide, we just had one network here. For my personal network,
this is just 192.168.1.something. And then that slash 24 means the last number is able to change.
We usually call this a subnet. Honestly, this is not smart to have a standard subnet in your
home network, but I’m kind of lazy. Maybe I should change that soon. You should know in advance,
in advance this is part of your preparation and research you should know what is the ip address
of your router your existing router you should know the existing subnet that you’re running on
if you don’t this is going to be extremely hard for you to do most people though if you just get
a router and install it it’s either going to be a one right here or a zero right here very rarely
will i see people with like a 10 0.0 dot something and if they do somebody else in their family or
or business set it up for them already so we start off with only one subnet one network all
only one subnet one network all the devices can talk to each other without
all the LAN devices can talk to each other without routing when we’re done
we’ll end up having two networks so just notice real fast again this is the
initial network you know this is the thing that we had before 192.168.1.
something and then these close devices they’re still going to connect to the
router notice how you know this green line right here it’s not or sorry this
well no it doesn’t I’m totally lying oh no no I am not lying I lied about lying
basically the router is connected still to the original devices that were fast
on the router so there’s no reason to move devices that didn’t have a problem
but notice here instead of having one long blue line going all the way to the
devices in the back this this this blue like connection squiggly you know image
the internal radio of the Raspberry Pi.
And then the Raspberry Pi will have a second antenna
that’s going to be, you know, one of these things.
I’ll show you how to install this and all that stuff in another video.
I’ll talk about it.
That second radio is going to connect and be an access point
to all the other devices that are far away.
And if we’re lucky, what will happen is the signal won’t get too bad
by the time it hits the Pi.
It’ll probably be like, you know, hopefully okay.
okay, kind of fast, not too spotty, at least, you know, not as spotty and bad as it was going all
the way to the devices in the back. And then because this is digital, the Pi is going to
actually repeat the signal out on the second antenna from, from scratch. Like it’s going to
give a fresh signal. It’s going to be the same data, but it’ll be, you know, renewed, repowered.
So if you think about it, that’s kind of like having the wireless router a lot closer to the
lucky then the devices in the back will have a much easier time connecting so and and getting
speed and being reliable and all that stuff the only thing that we really need to deal with though
is in order to do this we have to create a second subnet so at the very end of this video we’ll
talk about routing and we’ll just we’ll just do a couple of commands to make sure that um
the devices in the regular part of your lan network can actually reach and connect to and
end. We’ll add a static route to make sure that these two subnets can talk because by default,
they wouldn’t be able to talk to each other. If you don’t really need them to talk, like let’s say,
I don’t know, maybe these devices in the back, maybe they’re just like your phone or
a computer that you only surf on or something like that. Then you don’t really need a route
if you’re not going to connect to one of those devices in the back as a server or something.
So, but you know, that’s what I like to do. So we’re going to do that also.
the first step, let’s see. I think the first step, oh, before we get the pie started,
we need to talk about your plan. So what is your plan? We’re going to, what happened there?
I lost, there we go. Okay. We’re going to plan what IP addresses the pie will have when we’re
totally done. You have to do this in advance, right? So we already talked about, you have to
might not be the same as mine and then we have to identify or not identify we have to choose what
the repeater subnet is going to be you don’t have more than one subnet if you don’t even know what
I’m talking about you could probably just choose any number you want for me I chose 192.168.5.0
keep in mind you probably want to have the first two numbers the same unless you’re in some sort
of a special setup you know there are numbers that you can use that are not that but this is
change that third number from a one to a five indicating there’s like a now now a dot five
something subnet uh remember that this slash 24 means that only the last number can change
for communication to work without routing so that means i don’t really want to interfere with my
existing subnet if i did you would probably mysteriously continually lose connection
while you’re trying to set this up and then later when it’s working so just
take it from me it’s more trouble than it’s worth so just come up with a new subnet
just come up with a new subnet if you’re thinking about doing bridge networking you can’t really do
that with a wireless radio that is connected in client mode I already tried that it didn’t work
so I mean for me I just had to make another subnet so write down whatever you decide as your
as your other subnet walk around and make sure that it doesn’t exist look in your router this
is the IP for my router at least right now and you should determine what your router IP is and then
And then you have to come up with three IP addresses for the new Raspberry Pi setup.
So the first IP address is going to be, what are we going to assign to the Ethernet port?
I said originally, this is just going to be, you know, a Wi-Fi repeater.
So we’re not really going to use Ethernet, except at the beginning, when we’re setting everything up,
it’s going to be much more convenient to be able to connect to the Pi.
Me, when I was practicing this yesterday, I kept screwing up the wireless settings.
And if I had not set up the Ethernet port in advance, I would have been locked out of the Pi.
I would have been locked out of the Pi. I would have had to like restart it and then hope for the best or maybe rewrite the whole card.
So, you know, once you get the Ethernet port working and you know, you can connect to it,
it makes things a little bit easier if you should screw up the wireless.
So then come up with an IP address for the built-in radio, the one that’s going to connect as a client to your existing network.
For me, I chose 147 and then obviously for the Ethernet 123.
Then you have to come up with an IP address for the second radio on your Pi.
you know, the antenna that’s going to become an access point, it should be on the new subnet.
So whatever you choose up here, you know, 5.0 slash 24, that means 5.something is valid.
I just chose 5.1 because it’s kind of a common thing that the gateway that is sort of like
handling traffic for other machines, which is what the antenna is going to do, is it ends in a 1.
So I’m just going to choose, you know, 5.1 because that’s kind of a standard gateway thing.
address is ready, I’m going to start installing the Pi. So the first thing that you want to do
to get ready to install the Pi, 12 minutes, that’s not too bad. I tend to talk a lot.
I got to chill, you know, I got to chill.
Is you probably want to go to the Raspberry Pi website. So I’m going to go raspberrypi.com.
What is this new stuff? I got to set up Firefox. Raspberry Pi, the foundation has got like an
and a com I think org is like more for community stuff so go to raspberrypi.com
click on software and let’s see so you could use the imager if you want to I’m
not going to show you how in this video I like to do everything manually what
we’re gonna do is download an image of the Raspberry Pi operating system and
then burn that to the SD card for the Raspberry Pi so again you know if you
if you don’t want to do it this way you can do it whatever way you know how you
the OS basically. If you’re interested leave a comment I am thinking about
making future videos where I explain how to do this from Windows but I’m in
Linux right now so I’m just gonna use Linux to do it. I’m on the Raspberry Pi
4 which supports the 64-bit operating system you should use that if your Pi
supports it. On my Pi 3 I’m only 70% sure that it supports the 64-bit
operating system I haven’t like fully explored it yet although it did run I
run. I don’t know if anything was broken, but I’m just going to click on the 64-bit operating
system. So you click that. Then you have, you know, choices like not flavors, but like levels
of stuff that comes pre-installed. So the 64-bit, double check that. Raspberry Pi OS, double check
that. Yeah. With a desktop, we don’t need a desktop for our repeater. Desktop with recommended
software, we don’t need that. We need the light version. That’s the leanest, meanest version.
that is the easiest and fastest to download install so click that download
button and what will happen is you’ll end up with an XZ let me copy that link
real fast you’ll end up with an XZ extension when you download it notice
how it says you know arm 64 light image XZ that just means the image is zipped
up so that’s that it’s faster to download if you had something that was
had something that was like that ended in a gzip extension then on the command line you would say
g unzip and then you would do you know the file name dot gzip or whatever it was since we’re using
uh xz i think it’s uh un xz as far as i recall let me open up a terminal real fast and i’m going to
go into my downloads and then another disclaimer i’m not really going to show you the basics of
about that in other videos um definitely uh command line basics i think maybe soon i’m going
to post um an ssh tutorial so if you’re like on windows and you want to be able to connect or do
command line stuff just basically see my other videos by the time you find this one uh you’ll
probably there’ll probably be a lot others that are up so i’m going to go into downloads here
and go into my iso folder i just like to keep things organized so
Yeah, that’s what I originally did.
So that’s the command to unzip an XZ zipped image file.
So now I just have regular dot image.
I don’t need to unzip it is what I’m saying.
So I would have done, if you don’t have XZ,
you can do apt search XZ on your computer.
It’s in here somewhere.
Yeah, I think it’s a XZ utils that’ll allow you to unzip.
So anyway, the next thing that I really need to do now
that I have the image is I need to burn it to an SD card.
it to an SD card and then I need to modify it for first boot which I think I will do in in another
video that I’ll link here or or mention here so again what am I doing I have like an SD card
it’s like a really you know small micro SD card for the Raspberry Pi and then I have a little
SD card reader and writer so I’m just gonna this is the first time I’ve used this one I have a
really cheap one behind me that sucks and I’m hoping this will be faster so I’m just gonna
stick it in and then so now the card is on USB so then I’m just gonna go plug
this in and oh hang on before you plug it in I almost forgot you don’t have to
do this but it’s kind of a good idea it makes it more convenient I’m gonna use a
program called parted to see what like disks and partitions and drives and
things I have available in the system so sudo parted if you don’t have that
it’s sudo apt install parted. I’m gonna say print devices and notice how it just
shows only one disk. This is a virtual disk because I’m actually in a VM right
now. So now that I know what disks are currently in the machine it’ll be easier
to see what disk just got added. So I’m gonna like push this in here. I saw a
spark! No that was a light. I’m gonna wait a second and then I’m just gonna very
machine to give that usb device to the machine that you’re looking at right now so you don’t
have to worry about doing this um genesis logic reader and writer the cheapest thing i could
possibly find i don’t know it seems okay though it was a it was a choice on the shopping website
that i went to okay so i mean this this proves that it worked i get annoying pop-ups uh because
basically i have like another operating system already on that card so if you get these pop-ups
you had something on the card before you probably want to unmount the card before you continue so
we know now that the card is uh showing up as dev sdb got to remember that and uh before i continue
i’m gonna unmount so you want to go mount this is linux again by the way and i’m gonna oops well
mount and pattern match it by sdb and those are the two mounts that i have so i’m gonna just
rid of that because if you try to modify a card that is currently mounted or a
partition or a drive or something that’s currently mounted you’ll probably end up
corrupting a bunch of data so you don’t want to do that mount pattern matching
against SDV so now it’s unmounted I don’t know if this is 100% safe at this
point but this is what I do so hopefully it’s okay just print the devices again
to make sure it didn’t disappear if it did disappear you probably have to like
unplug it and replug it or maybe reboot the computer because you use the wrong
because you use the wrong command or you click the eject button or something.
So now I’m going to write that image directly to the cart.
So I’m going to say sudo dd.
So this is the program that I use for writing images to disks and cards
and copying files and stuff like that.
It’s really cool and fast and versatile,
but be very careful because you could actually destroy your entire computer with this command.
So what am I talking about?
talking about so you have to specify the in file and that’s pretty easy uh if you get it wrong it
doesn’t really matter so i’m specifying the in file as that image that i just downloaded
then i’m going to specify the out file and this is where it gets super dangerous
you have to double and triple check that you’re typing the correct device and you’re typing the
device correctly so i’m literally going to look at it like five times i go out file dev sdb
devsdb has the right size that’s a 64 gigabyte sd card there’s nothing else except for my okay
you got to be paranoid because i i’ve done this one time in my life i used the wrong out file
and i basically watched my computer destroy itself in front of my face
and a little tear went down my cheek slowly anyway so then the other thing that i usually
like to put on here is conv fsync i don’t know if this is required for sd cards but it’s usually a
It’ll basically force syncing of the file.
Because like, for example, if you have a USB thumb drive
and you use DD to write data to the file,
the thumb drive sometimes lies to you
and tells you that data is written
even though it hasn’t been written
because the thumb drive is trying to appear
faster than it really is.
So if you just kind of notice that the command is finished
and you pull out the thumb drive,
you might have corrupted data
because it didn’t actually finish writing.
So I use conv fsync to try to avoid that.
And then I’m going to do status equals progress.
progress. So I can just kind of see what’s going on. Okay, so let’s see, double check FSDB and then
it’s all plugged in. Everything’s good. Okay, wish me luck. Then again, this is why I’m in a virtual
machine. If this gets destroyed, I don’t really care as much. Okay, it’s going incredibly slowly.
Just as slow as my old slow card reader. That sucks. Maybe the problem is my hypervisor then,
from this host machine to my virtual machine.
Okay, anyway, so I’m going to cut the video for a second here.
And hopefully you’ve gotten this far with me
and you’re ready to go to the next step.
Just maybe pause the video while yours is riding to the Pi.
And I’ll turn off my video now.
I’ll come back as soon as it’s finished.
And then we’ll continue.
We’ll do first boot on the Raspberry Pi.
Be right back.
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