Way back in the autumn of 2012, I was getting all excited about my Raspberry Pi. I even hacked around to get it working over Wi-Fi but never got around to publishing the post!  So, a year and a bit later, here are a few notes based on some links I recorded at the time. Your mileage may vary (the Raspberry Pi has come a long way since then and I was running Debian Squeeze rather than Raspbian) but if you’re having difficulties getting RasPi Wi-Fi to work, hopefully some of this will help.

The Wi-Fi adapter that I used was an Edimax EW-7811Un nano USB adapter which I seem to recall I originally purchased from Maplin before returning it when I realised it was much less expensive online.  There are some good notes on the Raspberry Pi verified peripherals list that may help (much better than when I was working on this in 2012).

Tomasz Miklas’ post provided a ton of information on configuring the operating system to work with the adapter, as did this guide on elinux.org.  If you have trouble with the Realtek drivers, there’s a post that may help – you might want to read it in conjunction with these notes on the Raspberry Pi forums.  I also found that I had to use the sudo bash scriptname.sh command, rather than just sudo scriptname.sh. The final resource I found in my notes was Mr Engman’s “idiots guide” to RTL8188CUS Wi-Fi setup.

So, there you have it – ingredients but no method, I’m afraid.  I also found that the WiFi reliability depended on which other peripherals were plugged in to the RasPi (for example I use a cheap mini wireless keyboard and mouse set from Maplin) and I had some success with a powered USB hub (a Logik LT4HUB10).  Since then, I’ve switched over to a 1500mA power supply from The Pi Hut but am not sure it’s made much difference.