Magic spell for PIOS wifi point.

How about one of these?

No I've not actually tried them, I've been fitting ZigBee without 'smart- life' /tuya cloud & bulbs that won't pair.

Have fun

Avpx

In message <10k06pm$3qvn9$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, The Natural Philosopher snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

Not a direct answer to your question, but ...

I started looking at doing something similar to this a couple of years ago (using the Pi as a WiFi access point in a location beyond the range of my router's WiFi). I didn't complete the task for various reasons, but one thing that was clear, was that if I were to do it again, I would do the initial configuration of the Pi locally (keyboard etc. plugged in) rather than across the network (ssh session) as at each step of the way, it seemed that the Pi was inaccessible for something like 20-30 minutes whilst it sorted out what to do with each configuration change (of which there were several needed).

Good Luck

Adrian

Start with a recipe for a wireless access point?

that will have a built-in bridge that the wireless clients will appear on, DHCP etc, and will connect to the pi's physical NIC

Then you'll need to add a virtual NIC to this, for your TV software and connect that also to the bridge, via some local firewall rules.

(theoretically handwaving here, I've done the above in the OS of a carboot sale cheepie 50p speedtouch router, not linux)

If I've understood correctly, turning the RPi into an access point would do half of what you want. I installed OpenWRT on an RPi4 a few weeks ago, and it was very successful as an AP, although the need for it didn't last long (my son installed a new mesh network, which gave whole house coverage). Note that the RPi4 only does one wifi band; I don't know the RPi5.

I'm not an expert on OpenWRT, so you'll need to web search for information.

As for the other half of what you want, there might be enough processing power left over. You haven't given us any detail of what you want to do in that regard.

David

That one is replacing the DNS server and acting as a router. I jsut want a bridge.

Ah. That all rings a bell. Adding an interface called 'wifibridge' type 'ethernet' to the wifi interface may just do the trick

That doesnt look up to date.

Many thanks for good advice. I have a 4B available to test all this on with a scream and keybored, and I have been through all this myself with headless servers and IP changes. :-)

That is all I need. The tv doesnt need to be on the LAN at all post that and indeed could use the wifi anyway IIRC.

The problem is how that is to be accomplished

That isn't particularly helpful.

I am already where I want to be at that moment. The TV will be taken off the net anyway. Or connect via wifi. Or I will add a teensy two port swichth somewhere.

It is the use of teh pi as a bridge that I am after.

No need to segregate. Originally I had a wifi equipped router set up as a bridge but I want to move that functionality to a PI.

Yes., it would.

I dont want to go that far and replace existing DHCP allocation etc.

That is why I don't want to start with opemwrt. Its too intrusive.

Further to this I right clicked on the network icon on my desktop to select 'edit connections' and got the option to add an interface, and type 'bridge' was one of the options.

It looks like a Gui interface may allow everything I want.

I think if I add Ethernet and Wlan interfaces to a bridge device I get most of what I want, but I don't understand which interface gets the one and only IP address. Perhaps it doesn't matter...

You would set it up as an access point, not as a router. It would not need to have DHCP running. DCHP traffic would go to and from your existing router; the RasPi AP would just pass it through in both directions.

David

The Raspberry Pi 3B+, 4 and 5 have both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wifi bands, the Zero W, Zero 2W and older Pi's only have 2.4GHz

---druck

Sigh, eggs, grandmother.

That is why one of the solutions posted was rejected. It didnt do that.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. It only does one band at once. There is only one radio.

David

Does that preclude 2 band operation?

I may be wrong and sometimes am but I thought all you needed to add was edit /etc/sysctl.conf and ensure it contains "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1", save and reboot. Mine came with the line in there but commented out.

You need to allocate IP for ethernet and the TV manually and maybe play with routing.

I have it running on a PI somewhere, I'll dig it out.

You can always add another USB WiFi dongle if you want to act as an access point on both bands simultaneously.

---druck

That would be kind

I saw something (hostapd) that implies it can in fact do both...

Well in due course I will find out.

Set that line in /etc/sysctl.conf, and also do it manually this one time, just to save a reboot.