use raspberry-pi zero & wifi dongle as access point

Question

what I want to do : use Raspi zero & wifi dongle to build a access point, so that other device like smart phone or PC can access to rasperry pi directly. image in my mind is like this : internet >> wifi router >> raspberry pi zero >> other device

what I used:

• raspberry pi zero
• WIFI dongle buffalo wli-uc-gnm2 ( http://buffalo.jp/product/wireless-lan/client/wli-uc-gnm2 )

I follow these processes:

• use rasp-pi 3 as access point
• use rasp-pi 2 and 2 wifi dongles as a router ( http://qiita.com/mt08/items/4247894833bd4dcb27e2#_reference-27aa37c4be7f602667ff )

In the 2 instrument, with 2 dongles raspi can link to the wifi router, at the same time be an access point. My question is can I use 1 wifi dongle to do the same thing, since buffalo wifi dongle has the ability to be AP and like to wifi router at the same time, but I cant find the instrument their site, the driver is only for windows PC.

any advice for linux environment todo that ??

Answer 1

I don't know if it's possible to achieve this with only 1 wifi dongle and I'm not even sure if it's possible with 2 since the only way I am aware of to set up a Pi as an AP is to connect it to your router via Ethernet and connect devices to your Pi via Wifi. But either way, isn't it possible to use a usb-hub on the Pi zero and then use 2 Wifi dongles or 1 Wifi dongle + Usb to Ethernet?

And to set up things I'd recommend: https://www.maketecheasier.com/set-up-raspberry-pi-as-wireless-access-point/