I'm working on putting together a piratebox on a Raspberry Pi. It's not gone too badly, but I've encountered a few problems:
1. The hostname 'piratebox.lan' - Android really doesn't like it at all. My tablet wouldn't even consider it a valid name. I changed a few things to go by IP instead, and it worked.
2. I'm using rt5370 USB adaptor and hostapd. It works. It's stable. It's also slow: Of my two cards, one doesn't want to go over 5.5Mb/s connection and the other will sometimes go higher, but doesn't seem to actually transfer data any faster. I'm ordering some alternatives to try off ebay, after a whole day of fiddling with hostapd.conf settings proved fruitless.
3. I put together a little program that randomises the wireless interface MAC address before hostapd starts. Sneaky. As some of the uses for pirateboxes may involve some covert operation, it seems a good idea: It'd make it harder to track which events a given device pops up at, and it makes pinning ownership on someone harder too.
4. The webpage and chat function seem a little script-heavy. I'm not sure what I can do about that, but I intend to have a go.
1. The hostname 'piratebox.lan' - Android really doesn't like it at all. My tablet wouldn't even consider it a valid name. I changed a few things to go by IP instead, and it worked.
2. I'm using rt5370 USB adaptor and hostapd. It works. It's stable. It's also slow: Of my two cards, one doesn't want to go over 5.5Mb/s connection and the other will sometimes go higher, but doesn't seem to actually transfer data any faster. I'm ordering some alternatives to try off ebay, after a whole day of fiddling with hostapd.conf settings proved fruitless.
3. I put together a little program that randomises the wireless interface MAC address before hostapd starts. Sneaky. As some of the uses for pirateboxes may involve some covert operation, it seems a good idea: It'd make it harder to track which events a given device pops up at, and it makes pinning ownership on someone harder too.
4. The webpage and chat function seem a little script-heavy. I'm not sure what I can do about that, but I intend to have a go.