Is it possible to do this using Raspberry Pi's......

Boxfreshchris · 2 Apr 2019 at 20:36

Headline, this is what I'm trying to do:

Connect several Pi's to the internet via USB dongles with a data sim inside, connect to each Pi from my desktop PC, either wirelessly or via ethernet.

Picture the scene:
I have my desktop PC, connected to my home router wirelessly. I have 5 Pi's running Linux, I have 5 Huawei USB dongles, each with a Three data sim inside. I want to connect a dongle to each Pi, I want each Pi to access the internet via its dongle, and I want to access each Pi (simultaneously) from my desktop PC. Each Pi needs internet access, but not from my home router, they each need their own connection and public IP address.

Can this be done? And how?

Thank you in advance!

Boxfreshchris · 4 Apr 2019 at 23:32

Well the PI turned up, Raspbian installed, and the dongle worked straight away. Plugged it on and fired up, so that's working.

Next task over the weekend is to enabled VNC server/viewer and see if I can access the PIs desktop from my PC via Ethernet

Boxfreshchris · 6 Apr 2019 at 16:45

Well I installed VNC server on the Pi and viewer on PC, typed in the IP address and it connected. Then when I connected the dongle it defaulted to the dongle for internet access. So now I have the Pi and desktop connected by my home wifi, and the Pi connected to the net using the dongle, spot on! However, everything ran very slowly. So, I want to try it via ethernet, incase firing the Pi desktop image back to my desktop PC over wifi is just proving too much for the Pi. Issue is, I can't get it to connect now. I've turned off wifi on the Pi, and I have a ethernet cable direct from the PC to the Pi, but when I try to connect via the Pi's IP address, computer says no.

Any ideas?

Boxfreshchris · 6 Apr 2019 at 17:07

Pi is showing a 169.254 IP, PC ethernet adapter is showing a 192

Boxfreshchris · 7 Apr 2019 at 20:17

Well I've finally got it working.

I'm now connected to the Pi via Ethernet direct from my desktop, and when I connect the dongle all internet traffic passes through that.

I had to set my Eth0 static IP in the DHCPCD.conf file.

Thank you everyone for your help