Connect to GoPiGo wirelessly without internet

Hi. I’m sorry if this question has been asked before. I suppose someone has thought about this. I’d like to bring my GoPiGo outdoors to explore things rather than restricting it inside my households. The problem is, there’s no internet outdoor and using a direct ethernet cable is a no no. Is it possible for the Raspberry Pi 3 to self-generate wifi signal so that my laptop can VNC on it wirelessly? I don’t want to 3G or 4G since the network in some areas is unstable. Thanks.

Hello @aerortsanh

Take a look at our Cinch OS. It will do exactly what you describe.

Cleo

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Thank you for the answer. From what I read and understand of Cinch OS, it seems like once you flash the OS onto the SD card, you can’t connect your raspberry pi to the wifi router anymore. Is that true? If it is, then how can I download and install packages on my raspberry? Download them to my computer first and then transfer them to the pi?

One more thing, how strong would the wifi signal emitted by the pi be? Strong enough to stream live video? And how far can I go with it? Can I use a touch screen tablet or smartphone to control the GoPiGo (ideally performing the Browser Streaming Robot example without the middle server)?

Running Cinch I got some pretty decent coverage. I could get it in other rooms, other levels, it was pretty good coverage. Yes you could use a smartphone or something to connect to it. You just would need to connect to the hostpot created by the Robot. In order to do updates you could plug it in to a router via ethernet. It should still connect.

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Hi @aerortsanh,

Just jumping in here to confirm the things @graykevinb said.
Facts about Cinch image on a Raspberry Pi 3:

  1. I got the Raspberry Pi's signal through 3 thick concrete walls - which is excellent.

  2. You can connect any Wi-Fi-enabled device (any BYOP device) to the Raspberry Pi's hotspot - then you can use SSH or VNC to operate it.

  3. You can connect the Raspberry Pi via Ethernet to your router/switch in order to have access to the internet.

Again, thank you @graykevinb .

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That’s better than my WiFi!