Connect your Linux board to the internet through a cellular data

It is almost imperative to have web access for DIYs now – they can do so much more with web and the maker can interact with them with much more ease. Well, here’s a DIY that allows the same for your gadget. This one’s made out of Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black. The idea is to provide internet using cellular phone data network – the 2G, the 3G, the 4G, the GPRS. With Adafruit’s FONA the internet is accessed via GPRS.

Fona or ‘Adafruit FONA MiniGSM’ is a cellular phone platform that lets a user send voice mails or text or SMS. It is based out of a GSM cellular module, SIM800, which is the size of a postage stamp. To connect it to the gadget, ensure that a) you’ve verified FONA for serial connection and b) that you’ve installed the PPPD software and configured it. Internet connection will be required to download and configure the software. If you are using BeagleBone Black, you’ll have to enable a serial UART in the device tree.

Wiring up is not that difficult. But a word of caution while testing GPRS. Disconnect beforehand any wired or wireless networking connections that the hardware may already be using and restart the device. This is important to make sure that are no crossovers or confusions between accessing the PPP protocol interface and those of other network interfaces.