I made a Pi VPN WiFi Router that you can manage from any smartphone

VPN
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I made a Pi VPN WiFi Router that you can manage from any smartphone

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I’ve been working on this Raspberry Pi router project for all year so really wanted to share it!

I always found OpenWRT a bit tricky and even after spending weeks getting everything working the way I wanted, things like switching Wireguard server was another wiki article/20 minute job.

After looking at things like the glinet ax1800 for a simpler GUI (I didn’t like the idea of paying 150 for just for a better UI when Raspberry Pi had a better CPU for VPN) so I decided to make my own simpler to use version (basically a custom build of OpenWRT, a smartphone app and a decent WiFi USB adapter)

Features include:

  • Setup in under 2 minutes with PiFi smartphone app
  • WireGuard and OpenVPN Clients - Works with VPN providers (just upload config file) and get VPN on any device
  • AdGuard Home pre-loaded - Pihole-style ad and tracker blocking for every device
  • Network Storage - Use the SD Card inside the Pi, or a USB Flash Drive for network storage for videos, photos, files etc
  • OpenWRT so LuCI/SSH/Plug-ins still work
  • Driver support for AC1300Mbps USB wifi accessory with around 8x faster speeds than internal wireless radio on Pi 4

The firmware is free and open-source (see Github), and I’d love to hear your thoughts! If you’re interested in giving it a try on a Pi 4 or Pi 5 or sharing feedback, everything you need and instructions are available here

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This would be cool for in hotels where can use the internal Wi-Fi to connect to your laptop or device because it’s always a small place I mean normal hotels and apartments that you rent are pretty small and use the AC 1300 to connect to the shitty free Wi-Fi that hotels or bungalows give combine that with a VPN and the easy to use interface you have a hell of a device in your pocket or backpack or suitcase

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Woah that’s funny, I used my Pi as a router for a bit and I named the access point PiFi too

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Can the Pi use a second WiFi adapter to connect to a wireless hotspot? This looks killer for hotel use.

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Looks like Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 only at the time. Will support for Raspberry Pi 3B+ be added later, or is that a bust?

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Oh man. I’ve been looking for something like this! Thank you OP! Going to try this out today.

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The phone buzz in your video totally had me reaching for my real phone!

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Hi. Looks like an interesting project. I have a question.

For a little context, I’m in China. Most VPNs are not consistently reliable. I use Astrill which seems to put a fair amount of effort into maintaining uptime. I didn’t see anything in the documentation after booting the pi and connecting to it via the app. Is it compatible with Astrill? If so what the procedure?

Sorry if these questions either too simplistic or not otherwise not appropriate.

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Really intriguing, and good work. Exactly what functionality does the app have? I see it manages VPN connections but it looks like there was a menu at the beginning.

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I would like to try it and give feedback but there is no EU warehouse and I can’t buy it from Romania.

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So this looks amazing and I can’t wait to try it but I have some suggestions… now I assume you are not looking for people to contribute to it right now but even still as someone who is very interested in the project I’d love to be able to browse the code on GitHub, as of right now you have a 1 repo which contains the source code as a ZIP and the images. I suggest you put the source code in its own repo and possibly use GitHub releases or another file storage platform for the images. This would make it a lot easer for someone like myself who likes to look through the source code before downloading/installing to do so and also it would allow the community to contribute to the code itself which yes I do believe is important in the long run

Another thing that would be really cool is allowing it to be part of a tailscale network, not just routing all traffic through it but say I have a hotspot device I connect my PiFi to and want all devices connected to that Pi to be able to access say for example connect to my home JellyFin server without routing all internet traffic through my home network

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You should be awarded the open source Nobel Prize for this. :clap:

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I would also like to have WiFi sharing feature, so that I can buy WiFi on an airplane using the router and then share it to my and family phones.

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Saved for later. This is neat!

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Really interested in something like this to block out ads like pihole but most of this is jargon I don’t understand though. I develop websites in javascript for my work so pi feels really different but I want to learn. Like what is a VPN config and where am I uploading this?

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Oh man if you could build a carrier board for a compute module with a slim profile and some extra features it could be SO sick! Does OpenWRT support M.2 based WiFi modules? All that packaged together in a slim enclosure with built in antennas (or an option for physical one) and the option for a battery would be great. I’m sure it’d be very popular.

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Amazing! I will try this out. I built a wifi / vpn router out of a rpi myself but it was very manual process to enable it, etc. Also it had issues all the time and I never really followed it up. I can’t wait to see how this works.

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Have a spare 2gb Pi4 that I been dwelling on for ages as to what to do with it and only other day thought of looking up a way to turn it into a network device of some sort, was considering PiHole etc…

This is literally the perfect project for me, great idea. Will definitely be giving it a go

So just to clarify the project functions perfectly on its own without the extra USB wifi dongle? The recommended dongle is just to improve the project?

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Excellent project. i am using surfshark wireguard profiles. it says connecting all the time… but wont connect