Developer Paul McGinley is seeking to make it simpler for individuals to remain safe on-line, with a software program bundle that ties collectively a spread of open supply tasks to show a Raspberry Pi single-board laptop right into a Wi-Fi router with ad-blocking and digital personal community (VPN) capabilities: PiFi.
“I’ve been engaged on this Raspberry Pi router mission for all 12 months so actually wished to share it,” McGinley explains. “I at all times discovered OpenWRT a bit tough and even after spending weeks getting all the pieces working the best way I wished, issues like switching Wireguard server was one other wiki article/20 minute job. So I made a decision to make my very own easier to make use of model — mainly a customized construct of OpenWRT, a smartphone app, and an honest Wi-Fi USB adapter.”
An non-obligatory USB 3.0 Wi-Fi dongle unlocks “journey router” mode and sooner throughput. (📷: Paul McGinley)
As McGinley says, the PiFi mission stands on the shoulders of giants: the routing is dealt with by the well-established OpenWRT, ad-blocking by AdGuard, and digital personal networking by the consumer’s selection of WireGuard or OpenVPN. What McGinley provides is simplicity: all of the software program is obtainable as an SD Card picture, prepared to be used with any Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B or Raspberry Pi 5 single-board laptop, whereas a companion smartphone app eases configuration and monitoring.
For these searching for peak efficiency, McGinley has pre-loaded drivers for an non-obligatory USB 3.0 Wi-Fi adapter — delivering, he claims, eight occasions the sustained throughput of the on-board Wi-Fi of a Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B. These including the USB dongle may also unlock “journey router” mode — permitting the Raspberry Pi to make use of one Wi-Fi adapter as a consumer and the opposite as an entry level, routing between the 2 as required.
Extra info is obtainable on the PiFi web site and on McGinley’s Hackaday.io web page; the mission’s photos are downloadable from GitHub beneath the GNU Common Public License 2. McGinley can also be promoting a equipment, which features a 32GB microSD card with PiFi pre-installed and the USB 3.0 Wi-Fi adapter, plus a gigabit Ethernet cable, for £34.99 (round $46) — and pledges consumers will obtain “early entry to future software program updates and unique in-app options.”