Following on my project to develop a Bee monitoring tool dubbed ‘Bee Safe’.
The next part of my project is to provide the remote raspberry pi with access to the internet via a USB 3G dongle.
Fortunately in the world we live in now; finding old / used 3G dongles is very easy to do. The one I’m using was purchased from Cex for the pricey sum of £6.
Newly purchased 3G Dongle
While cellular data speeds and modems have vastly improved over the recent years this project only requires sending small snippets of text with the occasional photo so high speed isn’t a priority on this project.
To pair a USB dongle with a Raspberry Pi (the computer used to power Bee Safe) you need to download and install some packages; PPPD & sakis3g
To start with download PPPD via APT-GET:
sudo apt-get install ppp
Then download sakis3g:
wget "http://www.sakis3g.org/versions/latest/armv4t/sakis3g.gz"
Unpack and make the file executable:
gunzip sakis3g.gz
chmod +x sakis3g
Then execute the script which will run with a basic GUI within terminal:
sudo ./sakis3g --interactive
Sakis has a fairly comprehensive list of connections available.
Once you have been through the setup guide the modem *fingers crossed* should be online and operational. You can now exit sakis. You will stay connected.
You can check your connection and details with this command:
sudo ./sakis3g connect info
This post was pulled together from various sources, the main two being:
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/07/3g-internet-on-raspberry-pi-success/
and