Introduction: Connect the Raspberry Pi to the NetGear G54/N150

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About: My name is DJ and I previously made electronic whatsits, 3D-printed thingamabobs, and laser-cut kajiggers for the Instructables Design Studio; now I build and repair puzzles for Particle Industries.

This is a brief guide for configuring the Raspberry Pi to connect the internet with the NetGear G54/N150 WNA1000M. Supposedly the module should work out-of-the-box, however I found this to not be the case. After hours of searching, I was finally able to find all the necessary steps to get this little guy running. Hopefully this saves fellow Pi users the trouble of having to scour the internet!

Step 1: Set Up

This Instructable is specifically for the the configuration of the Netgear Wi-Fi adapter. Before we can do any of this, we'll need to have a properly set up Raspberry Pi with an internet connection. There are many articles for configuring the Pi. I highly recommend Scottkildall's Ultimate Raspberry Pi Configuration Guide to get started. The following steps require Raspian or Wheezy to work properly.

Step 2: Install Drivers

Once you've established an internet connection, enter the following commands into the terminal:

wget - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1663660/scripts/install-rtl8188cus.sh

sudo chown root:root install-rtl8188cus.sh

sudo chmod 755 install-rtl8188cus.sh

sudo ./install-rtl8188cus.sh

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo shutdown -h now

These will take a while to download. Enjoy a snack while the Pi fetches the packages to install. The Pi will ask you to confirm the downloads a few times. This will install the necessary driver for the Netgear Wi-Fi module. The script is from a very helpful gent named Paul. His blog post is here.

Step 3: Network Configuration

Plug in the Netgear adapter and boot the Pi back up.

Type in:

iwconfig

If you properly entered your network credentials, you should see the wlan connection details pop up. If not, then you may need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file to double check your information and possibly change from wlan0 to wlan1. Save the updated file and reboot with:

sudo reboot

Enjoy your rock-solid Wi-Fi connection.