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From what I can find, the internal Wi-Fi chip on the pi 3 is a custom Broadcom BCM43438.

Is it capable of operating in AP mode?

Darth Vader
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John Mee
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  • I am hoping to get direct confirmation from someone who actually has one in hand and has successfully got it to work in this capacity. – John Mee Apr 11 '16 at 23:27
  • how is the link I shared not confirmation? The author "directly confirms" they have it working, and walks through how to do it. Are you simply looking for someone to post "yes, I have done it" as an answer? That would provide no additional confirmation than what the post already says. – dimo414 Apr 12 '16 at 15:52
  • An answer posted here saying "Yes I did it" would be no more a primary source than the blog post (though technically both are primary sources). There's nothing special about Stack Exchange contributors, they're "random people" just as much as the blog author is. Have you tried installing hostapd and dnsmasq? It should be fairly straightforward for you to verify yourself. – dimo414 Apr 13 '16 at 01:22

2 Answers2

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According to this article yes you can:

One of my first thoughts was, can I use it as a SoftAP for some ESP8266 sensor nodes? As it turns out, you can, and it's not that difficult, as the BCM43438 chip is supported by the open-source brcmfmac driver!

You'll need to install two packages, hostapd and dnsmasq, to get a basic setup running (which the article walks you through), or isc-dhcp-server and bind9 to get a more powerful and flexible setup.

dimo414
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    Welcome to Raspberry Pi! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. – Steve Robillard Mar 31 '16 at 05:11
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    @SteveRobillard what part of the question did I miss? It's simply asking if it's possible. I said it is, and provided a citation. – dimo414 Mar 31 '16 at 06:48
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    Good answers go beyond the sometimes simple question to the underlying question. Ask yourself this what is the users next question likely to be. Second, a link is subject to link rot, and hence your answer is only as good as the link. – Steve Robillard Mar 31 '16 at 07:05
  • Whilst your link may answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the linked page here, as well as providing the link for citation. As such, this is a link only answer, and links tend to die over time, which will drastically reduce the usefulness of your answer. Please see the stack exchange policy on link only answers: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/225370/your-answer-is-in-another-castle-when-is-an-answer-not-an-answer. If you could edit your answer to include the relevant information, then that would be great. – Greenonline Mar 31 '16 at 11:06
  • @SteveRobillard I've added a quote; thoughts? – dimo414 Mar 31 '16 at 13:13
  • That is better but again, once the OP installs the package what if any configuration needs to be done? Or does it just work autiomatically. – Steve Robillard Mar 31 '16 at 14:02
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    @SteveRobillard It seemed inappropriate to simply copy the instructions from the linked article. – dimo414 Mar 31 '16 at 14:09
  • you can summaries and attribute the source, just like you would do in a paper for school. – Steve Robillard Mar 31 '16 at 14:10
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    You may even be able to improve on it (e.g. pointing out potential pitfalls or security issues, changes that would make it easier). – Steve Robillard Mar 31 '16 at 14:16
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You can see the full command line process of setting up the pi3 in a gist here https://gist.github.com/Lewiscowles1986/fecd4de0b45b2029c390

It does seem to have problems if the Pi3 is booted with other wlan attached on boot, so what I do is plug them in after boot (would love a solution to that problem)