"Portable" Wireless router (Project)

[dylandylandylan]

Hey guys,

I was wondering what would be the best router to use that is under $40 (I'm not talking about brand new) that can be flashed with open WRT?

I'm essentially going to be building a portable router that operates on a battery pack.

Also if I have the voltages/amp draw correct will it matter if I cut the power adapter end off (the jack) and use that with my battery pack?

If so, what problems will I be facing other than working out current draw etc.

Thanks guys.

 

[rufee]

You can just slice the power cord and hook up a 12v or whatever power the device is and it will work just fine. You can buy one of those small lead batteries that can offer ~1.5A of current which is more than enough. The device will take as much as it needs, but never more than its power supply was rated for unless you have a short somewhere so don't worry about the current draw. Typically a normal router will draw 9W so that works out for about 0.75A of current at 12V, more voltage = less current draw.

However unless the router has dual radio you will only have a LAN unless you plan to use wired ports for access and Wi-Fi as a bridge. Tethering could work if OpenWRT supports it.

[dylandylandylan]

You can just slice the power cord and hook up a 12v or whatever power the device is and it will work just fine. You can buy one of those small lead batteries that can offer ~1.5A of current which is more than enough. The device will take as much as it needs, but never more than its power supply was rated for unless you have a short somewhere so don't worry about the current draw. Typically a normal router will draw 9W so that works out for about 0.75A of current at 12V, more voltage = less current draw.

However unless the router has dual radio you will only have a LAN unless you plan to use wired ports for access and Wi-Fi as a bridge. Tethering could work if OpenWRT supports it.

 

I was hoping to use it as an AP and direct traffic to a page that will be hosted on an apache server on my laptop which will be connected via ethernet in my bag. People see free wifi - > connect - > IP resolver sends all traffic to this one landing page, regardless of if they've typed facebook.com/LinusTechTips.com .. etc. It's just a lab project, and I saw something similar years ago I believe on hak5 of all places haha.

 

Also thank you for shedding light on the electronics side of it, I'm definitely not new to computers, but electronics is a different story, luckily I'm highly enjoying working on these multiple projects that cross between CompSci and Electronics. It's interesting. 

 

I was also wondering if you could install OpenWRT on a Raspberry Pi and use that as an AP maybe? 

[rufee]

Oh so you want to play around with people, then OpenWRT is what you need. It has its own small web server which you can use for the fake pages so that you would not need the laptop.

Raspberry can do a lot of stuff, OpenWRT is Linux based so you should be able to find all the same or similar packages without the need for installing owrt on the Pi.

[dylandylandylan]

Oh so you want to play around with people, then OpenWRT is what you need. It has its own small web server which you can use for the fake pages so that you would not need the laptop.

Raspberry can do a lot of stuff, OpenWRT is Linux based so you should be able to find all the same or similar packages without the need for installing owrt on the Pi.

 

Yep that's what I was planning on using but didn't realize that that OpenWRT had that feature built in! Thanks heaps for confirming and I'll be posting a build/tutorial updates when I go through it

[tom564]

Look at the alfa hornet boards. http://www.data-alliance.net/servlet/-strse-640/Alfa-Hornet-dsh-UB-Atheros-AR9331/Detail They are available with enclosures and run on 5-12v. Those are the boards that they use for the mk 4 pineapples over at hak 5 and you can flash them yourself. 

 

EDIT: see https://forums.hak5.org/index.php?/topic/26066-flash-a-hornet/

[dylandylandylan]

Look at the alfa hornet boards. http://www.data-alliance.net/servlet/-strse-640/Alfa-Hornet-dsh-UB-Atheros-AR9331/Detail They are available with enclosures and run on 5-12v. Those are the boards that they use for the mk 4 pineapples over at hak 5 and you can flash them yourself. 

 

EDIT: see https://forums.hak5.org/index.php?/topic/26066-flash-a-hornet/

 

Thanks for that info, I'm starting off with one of these : 

http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/?model=TL-WR702N

Just because they're cheap, highly portable, and can run open WRT.

I will then be looking into importing one of those alfa boards once I become more confident with electronics. 

Thanks for the tip

[dylandylandylan]

I'm having issues trying to get files my index.html files onto the device, I'm using putty (because I'm currently using a windows OS) and I just can't transfer files, anyone want to shed any light on the issue?  

 

[rufee]

You need to get openwrt installed first.

[dylandylandylan]

You need to get openwrt installed first.

 

It is installed and running as usual, can access it through the webgui, and SSH from terminal, I should have stated that in my last post haha, It was surprisingly easy to set up, just flashed the firmware as you would when upgrading from the manufacturer.

 

[dylandylandylan]

I got OpenWRT working sweet as, I've bricked and de-bricked this router so many times haha,

I had to re-flash it via a ramdisk config through a webserver hosted on my PC, was a good learning experience.

I'm now trying to flash and configure piratebox, it's fun!

 

Also, now fully portable!

 

[dylandylandylan]

So I've installed PirateBox, it has a chat client, and a file share client built in, so people connect to this router, get re-directed to the main page (PirateBox) and can chat, choose their username, share files, browse the shared files etc. I'm getting about 2 days worth of battery out of the 4 AA batteries. It isn't connected to the outside internet at all, so nothing is tracked either by the device, or by cookies etc.

This was an awesome project and if anyone wants to know more, let me know

 

[dylandylandylan]

I have now got a small php forum set up and running on it, also an imageboard akin to that of 4chans, It works very well, transfer rate is pretty slow though, It could be because it is writing to USB, not sure.

I'm building a raspberry pi version as we speak, inside a gameboy original! so this should be fun