Turn a regular PC into a PiRogue

This recipe is dedicated to intrepid users 😎

Requirements#

To follow this recipe we need:

• a PC with one Ethernet interface, one wireless interface and Debian 12 freshly installed
• the wireless interface has to support the AP mode (access-point mode)
• the PC is connected to our local network via its Ethernet adapter
• the PC has an Internet connection

Prepare the system#

We will do everything by command line so, we connect to our PC and run the following command to upgrade it:

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Then install iw to check if the wireless interface supports the AP mode:

sudo apt install iw

run iw listand scroll through its output to check if the wireless interface supports the AP mode. If so, it should look like

Install the PiRogue packages#

Next, we have to add the PTS PPA (repository containing all PiRogue packages) by running

sudo wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pirogue.list https://pts-project.org/debian-12/pirogue.list
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pirogue.gpg   https://pts-project.org/debian-12/pirogue.gpg
sudo apt update

Finally install the PiRogue features:

sudo apt install pirogue-base

Check if everything runs properly#

To check how healthy our PiRogue is, run

pirogue-ctl status 

If we see everything in a mix of purple and green, congrats! If not, join the Discord channel to get help.