Add-on: Create a Wi-Fi access point with Hass.io Access Point

flibustier · January 25, 2022, 10:10am

also i see
“Add Mediatek MT7601U support (#1520) (#1526) @agners”
in Home Assistant OS Release-7 build 0 (RC1)

But i updated HA to 7.2 and get in log anyway
Line 43: invalid/unknown driver 'mt7601u'
by the way lsmod seems ok

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
xfrm_user              40960  1
mt7601u               122880  0
mac80211              806912  1 mt7601u
cfg80211              802816  2 mt7601u,mac80211
ch341                  16384  1
libarc4                16384  1 mac80211
virtio_console         36864  1
virtio_balloon         24576  0

idk why it dosnt work

tonline2 · January 26, 2022, 3:43pm

I used hass plugin to access terminal, and then, ran the command:
ip route add 192.168.99.0/24 via 0.0.0.0 wlan0

this made it possible to access the hass interface of my android

flibustier · January 26, 2022, 9:30pm

seems the addon has problems with accessing to parental drivers.
default nl80211 driver is standart and works in most cases, but not all.
So i moved to supervised version, that is all. Hotspot is working well with default nl80211 driver with embedded realtek pci wifi card. But it was impossible to pass this device through proxmox because my cpu j1900 dosn’t support necessary VT instructions, anyway this adapter didnt work too even on full hass os node. So this mean hass OS has extremely limited set of drivers and its hard to make 2 wifi networks: 1 ordinary and 1 IOT.

stegno · January 29, 2022, 11:12am

Hello guys! Is there the way to make this bridged access point with main raspberry ethernet interface? I want to used my main router and its dhcp for clients internet access.

Thank you.

lymbada · January 30, 2022, 10:43pm

@flibustier
(sorry for the delayed reply),
Download the file you have linked to there. You should be able to find a compiled bin file:

./DPO_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130913/mcu/bin/MT7601.bin

Side note: I am using a Pi-0W for this instance, which isn’t officially supported with Hassio anymore (as of v7), and my install was actually 4.12 (because I followed an older link. I do plan on testing out 6.6, which I think the latest supporting the older arm32 hardware in that model Pi.

ledhed · May 14, 2022, 5:05pm

2022.5.x ‘S6-Overlay 3.x update’ breaks this add-on, so if you depend on this add-on you might want to hold off updating beyond 2022.4.7.

You’ll get this error in the logs:
s6-overlay-suexec: fatal: can only run as pid 1

I opened an issue for this on github.

PetervF · June 1, 2022, 5:25pm

@mattlongman
Dear Matt, dear all
Great add-on, thank you!

Have you got a recommendation for me to enable routing between lan and wlan without enabling client internet access?

My current configuration:

pc-alfa eth0  192.168.0.5  <---lan---> 192.168.0.10 HA with Hass.io Access Point on ...
       eth0:1 192.168.99.2                          ... 192.168.99.1 <==wlan==> 192.168.99.80 IoT-beta

routing on pc-alfa:

peter@alfa:~$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 enp0s25
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     1000   0        0 enp0s25
192.168.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     100    0        0 enp0s25
192.168.99.0    192.168.0.10     255.255.255.0   UG    0      0        0 enp0s25

from alfa ping the wlan interface on HA works fine:

peter@alfa:~$ ping 192.168.99.1
PING 192.168.99.1 (192.168.99.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.99.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.362 ms

From alfa ping the IoT-beta does not work (and this is what I want to get working):

peter@alfa:~$ ping 192.168.99.80
PING 192.168.99.80 (192.168.99.80) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.0.5 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable

As soon as i will turn on client_internet_access=1 the routing / connection between alfa and beta works. However I do not want to expose the IoT wlan (192.168.99.0) to internet.
the routing table on the container hassio-access-point looks good:

bash-5.1# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 eth0
172.17.0.0      0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 docker0
172.30.32.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.254.0   U     0      0        0 hassio
192.168.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     100    0        0 eth0
192.168.99.0    0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 wlan0

and the forwarding is enabled:

bash-5.1# sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

So actually the routing can work without involving iptables, or I’m wrong?
Any idea how to modify the routing table?

… any idea from your side would be very much welcome!
KR, Peter

My plugin Hass.io Access Point config:
Current version: 0.4.1

ssid: iot01
wpa_passphrase: **************
channel: '6'
address: 192.168.99.1
netmask: 255.255.255.0
broadcast: 192.168.99.255
interface: wlan0
hide_ssid: '0'
dhcp: '1'
dhcp_start_addr: 192.168.99.64
dhcp_end_addr: 192.168.99.128
allow_mac_addresses: []
deny_mac_addresses: []
debug: 0
hostapd_config_override: []
client_internet_access: 0
client_dns_override: []

Config on:

Home Assistant Core 2022.5.4
Home Assistant Supervisor 2022.05.3
Home Assistant OS 8.0
Kernel version 5.15.32-v8

PetervF · June 2, 2022, 9:36pm

@mattlongman

Answering my own question and simultaneously asking you to add a new feature to you plugin.

The simple solution to enable the routing between LAN and WLAN is to add these two commands:

iptables -I DOCKER-USER -i wlan0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I DOCKER-USER -i eth0 -o wlan0 -j ACCEPT

Could you add another option e.g.:
router=1|0
to the config to enable|disable routing between the lan and wlan interfaces?

Longer explanation:

According to docker doc: Packet filtering and firewalls | Docker Docs

Docker on a router
Docker also sets the policy for the FORWARD chain to DROP. If your Docker host also acts as a router, this will result in that router not forwarding any traffic anymore. If you want your system to continue functioning as a router, you can add explicit ACCEPT rules to the DOCKER-USER chain to allow it:

 iptables -I DOCKER-USER -i src_if -o dst_if -j ACCEPT

So even if the net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1 iptables with your current setup on your docker will drop all routing connection and you have to explicitly re-enable the forwarding feature.

Craft · October 4, 2022, 10:30pm

Is there a way to automatically open an AP when the WiFi connection gots unavailable?

Jat · October 19, 2022, 9:01am

thought I would share a few tips here to help anyone walking down same journey as me.

Am on Raspberry Pi4 using HASS OS, I had problem that I didnt know which USB WiFi adaptor is compatible. I started with ordering a number of adaptors from Amazon and returning what didnt work. Eventually I found the Git repository for the OS and found where some of the drivers are: operating-system/buildroot-external/package at dev · home-assistant/operating-system · GitHub

Currently (OS v9.2) there are two chipsets listed rtl8821cu and rtl88x2bu. The latter is used by the latest USB Wifi adaptor with a long whip antenna TP-Link Archer T3U Plus (you want the long whip antenna to give you a bit more coverage given the ESP/Tuya devices often have small radio circuits). I bought one of those and it worked plug and play for me.

There are probably other drivers compiled into the kernel I have no idea how to work out which drivers are in-built.

One other thing is there is another Add-On that works similarly to this one. Unfortunately neither offers fixed DHCP allocations which would be very handy for Tuya integration: hassio-addons/hassio-hotspot at master · joaofl/hassio-addons · GitHub

PetervF · October 19, 2022, 9:59am

You can have a fixed ip with dnsmasq_config_override, here is a working example:

ssid: HAWIFI
wpa_passphrase: password
channel: "6"
address: 192.168.99.1
netmask: 255.255.255.0
broadcast: 192.168.99.255
interface: wlan0
hide_ssid: "0"
dhcp: "1"
dhcp_start_addr: 192.168.99.64
dhcp_end_addr: 192.168.99.128
allow_mac_addresses: []
deny_mac_addresses: []
debug: 0
hostapd_config_override: []
client_internet_access: 0
client_dns_override: []
dnsmasq_config_override:
  - dhcp-host=3c:61:99:99:99:99,RFLink32,192.168.99.20

And by the way why to use external wifi dongle if you have an internal one?
You can attached an external antenna, if you like and still use built in wifi interface.
Attention by modifying the antenna you may violate your local radio-rules. RPI was note tested with your modification.

Enclosed two pics, how I did:

Jat · October 20, 2022, 8:21am

thank you for the tip about fixed IP - have to try that soon!

PapaSierra82 · November 29, 2022, 1:19pm

Hi,

thanks for sharing this add-on. I installed it on a fresh HA installation running on RPi 4 and it worked right away. I can connect to the AP wifi and DHCP works fine too but I cannot ping or access HA interface on http://192.168.99.1:8123.

I’m not a Linux or a networking expert. How do I get that fixed? I’m trying to run a stand-alone HA instance which will have a number of nearby EspHome devices connected to it.

pierrehenry · December 17, 2022, 12:43pm

Hello
I managed to install and connect to the AP, but I cannot get internet access through it.
I use a USB dongle to get the Internet from the router and I use the onboard Wifi of the RP4 as access point.
Any idea (I flipped the toggle to allow internet to flow through) is welcme…

thanks

FreakZAR · December 23, 2022, 10:07am

Also wanting to do this, I have a Unify setup that I want to use and manage everything.

timmy.vercruysse · January 24, 2023, 6:27pm

Hey, great plugin, so far i love it.

What is the lease time for the DHCP server and is this something that can be adjusted?
That would be useful if you have some iot things that are not always on.

zakarumit · February 4, 2023, 2:05pm

Hello, anyone can share how to setup the plugin when I want to share internet over Wifi from my Intel NUC with HA OS which is connected with its cable to LAN?
No matter what I tried, I cannot see internet on the WiFi. With some settings I lose access to my HA network interface Some fool-proof step-by-step instruction would be welcome.

PetervF · February 5, 2023, 1:41pm

@zakarumit
This works out of the box, by modifying this param: client_internet_access in your setup.
If it doesn’t in your case we need to troubleshoot it your plugin config, config of a client and some network logs.Does the client connect to your NUC, does it receive ip, can you ping from client nuc, can you ping ip on internet can you ping any domain (e.g. google.com). Send trace route logs, etc. the more & the detailed the easier will be to check and advice

zakarumit · February 6, 2023, 5:44pm

I will go ahead and post the same thing as on the github developer page in issues:

Running newest HA OS on dedicated Intel NUC. The computer is connected to local network via its ethernet adapter and running on IP 192.168.0.167. I have installed the addon and would like to create wifi coverage this way in my house (phones etc - internet access). I can connect to the wifi, but I cannot access internet. Here is the log:

s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner: starting
s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner successfully started
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: starting
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: starting
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started
Starting Hass.io Access Point Addon

Setup interface:

Add to /etc/network/interfaces: iface wlp0s20f3 inet static
Run command: nmcli dev set wlp0s20f3 managed no
Run command: ip link set wlp0s20f3 down
Add to /etc/network/interfaces: address 192.168.99.1
Add to /etc/network/interfaces: netmask 255.255.255.0
Add to /etc/network/interfaces: broadcast 192.168.99.255
Run command: ip link set wlp0s20f3 up

Setup hostapd:

Add to hostapd.conf: ssid=Wifi HA
Add to hostapd.conf: wpa_passphrase=********
Add to hostapd.conf: channel=6
Add to hostapd.conf: ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
Add to hostapd.conf: macaddr_acl=0
Add to hostapd.conf: interface=wlp0s20f3

DHCP not enabled. Skipping dnsmasq

Starting hostapd daemon

rfkill: Cannot open RFKILL control device
wlp0s20f3: interface state UNINITIALIZED->ENABLED
wlp0s20f3: AP-ENABLED
wlp0s20f3: STA 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f IEEE 802.11: authenticated
wlp0s20f3: STA 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
wlp0s20f3: AP-STA-CONNECTED 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f
wlp0s20f3: STA 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f RADIUS: starting accounting session 2CD3868FAA2AD46C
wlp0s20f3: STA 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN)
wlp0s20f3: EAPOL-4WAY-HS-COMPLETED 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f
wlp0s20f3: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 7c:03:ab:e9:8c:2f

I think I might be having problems understanding what should I enter into the “address” field in configuration. Can you please advice? Thank you very much

EDIT: I have tried entering the address of the Intel NUC HA is running on (192.168.0.167) and also a random free IP from my network (192.168.0.111) - both led to losing access to the HA web interface, so probably wrong ideas…

PetervF · February 7, 2023, 12:26am

Still missing your configuration, please share the Hass.io Access Point yaml file.
Have you configured client_internet_access: 1 ?

I can connect to the wifi, but I cannot access internet.

So the above mentioned parameter shall solve your issue.

I think I might be having problems understanding what should I enter into the “address” field in configuration. Can you please advice?

192.168.99.1
See my post Add-on: Create a Wi-Fi access point with Hass.io Access Point - #30 by PetervF with an example of the config file. You have to change one client_internet_access: to 1.

And by the way creating an access point for a regular home wifi access via this add on is IMHO a bad idea. Any simple access point for a few bugs gives you more security as this add-on. You should rather not enable an access to internet on this add-on. But it is of course up to you!