How to Set up a USB Wi-Fi Adapter on a Raspberry Pi

This guide explains how to set up a USB Wi-Fi Adapter on a Raspberry Pi, with clear steps, practical tips, and important checks before you begin.

Things to prepare

Here's everything you need to complete this tutorial:

• USB Wi-Fi adapter Edimax EW-7811
• Raspberry Pi

How to set up Edimax USB Wi-Fi Adapter on Raspberry Pi

1. Connect the Edimax Wi-Fi adapter and Ethernet cable

Before starting up the Pi, plug in the USB Wi-Fi adapter as well as the Ethernet cable.

2. Start Pi

To start the Pi, simply plug in the power cable.

3. Enable SSH on the Pi

By default, the Raspberry Pi uses the hostname "raspberrypi". So you can enable SSH using:

ssh pi@raspberrypi

The default username is pi and the default password is raspberry. Refer to the tutorial: How to enable SSH on Raspberry Pi for more details.

If you're having trouble with the hostname, follow this guide to find the IP address for your Raspberry Pi.

4. Make sure the Pi recognizes the device and the drivers are loaded

Once you are logged into the Pi, check to see if the Pi recognizes the USB device using the following command:

lsusb

You should see the following:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 7392:7811 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS] Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Note the first line.

Now you will check to see if the device driver has loaded. To list kernel modules use:

lsmod

You should see the following:

Module Size Used by cfg80211 rfkill 8192cu bcm2835_gpiomem .

8192cu is what you were looking for and it looks like it is installed.

To check one last time, run:

iwconfig

And you'll see the wireless adapter here:

wlan0 unassociated Nickname:"" Mode: Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 20:3D:66:44: C6:70 Bit Rate:72.2 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

5. Configure wpa_supplicant using Wi-Fi credentials

Now, open the following file to add the network credentials.

sudo vim /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

For Raspbian Jessie:

network={ ssid="SSID" proto=RSN key_mgmt=WPA-PSK pairwise=CCMP TKIP group=CCMP TKIP psk="PASSWORD" }

For Raspbian Stretch:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev network={ ssid="SSID" proto=RSN key_mgmt=WPA-PSK pairwise=CCMP TKIP group=CCMP TKIP psk="PASSWORD" }

Of course, you will need to replace your SSID and password.

6. Reboot

Remove the Ethernet cable and reboot with the following command:

reboot

You should now be able to connect over Wi-Fi.