Pro Grade Piratebox?

Hi I'm new to Pirateboxes. I'm considering a build with Raspberry Pi but maybe I need something bigger...

Anyways I'd like to have a self contained unit fitting in a water-proof Peli/Pelican case, range of 500 metres connectable on Apple and Linux devices only, battery life of 8 hours is ideal but at least more than 2.5, capable of hosting a multiboard imageboard, forum, chatroom, email, file sharing/storage, and maybe some archived websites, and allow maybe 10 to 20 users be connected and using the Piratebox at the same time.

Can it be done? I have a budget of say $2000 USD.

Basically I want a portable 'internet' that can be used in a local area as a sort of free speech anything goes place with limited spying and no censorship.

Hi,
yes why not. $2000 is plenty amount of money. RPi has quite amount of power, and with some effort I do not see why it won't work.
But before going big, get in touch with the software and find out if it is what you expect.

best regards Matthias

>..."connectable on Apple and Linux devices only"
Does this mean block all Windows devices? Or that OP will only be using Apple and Linux devices?

What do you think about pairing a Raspberry Pi a Ubiquiti Unifi Wireless Access Point (Long Range Version)? Point the WAP at the Raspberry Pi (the router) and follow the instructions on the Mods page [piratebox.cc] Follow the instructions under 'Switch used wifi adapter'. *Except instead of entering `Wlan0` or `Wlan1` you would enter `Eth0` because you would be connecting via the ethernet port.

I think that the Ubiquiti Unifi AP would need to be configured separately using the UniFi controller software and a different computer prior to connecting to the Pi. Note: The UniFi controller software can be installed on the RPi with a Debian/Ubuntu (although I can't seem to get it working). However, it looks like the images for the RPi PirateBox are Arch Linux so that wouldn't work.

PirateBox scripts do also work on Debian based systems.