Ubiquiti NanoStation + Pi(rate) Box - has anyone tested this?

Basically I want to setup a secure community sharing service across a part of town. Has anyone tried to do something large scale like this with larger antenas such as Ubiquiti's NanoStation? If so, could you share any pointers or suggestions you might have. I love the idea being able to take my piratebox with me and share whereever I am, but I would much prefer to foster a more permanent community.

Thanks for any advice.

BUMP for interest. You can run OpenWRT on most of the Ubiquiti Unifi hardware. These things are amazing hardware.

I'm planning to do this, but with a twist... Piratebox can be modified to use any access point when you load it on a raspberry pi. So my plan is to run a pi and ubiquity router off a solar panel/charge controller. That way the signal can be beamed out point to point long haul, to another receiving dish, and sector antennas. You could literally cover a city sized area with an offline network that when joined, provided direct access to the piratebox, no matter which router you connected to. Similar things have already been done to spread wifi out across large areas that are "off the grid"

Hi Guys,

I'm keen to build a wider scale captive portal using a nano M5 and pi - did you get anywhere with this? I would just put piratebox on the nano, but it only has a small amount of storage and I'd want to potentially host video/audio on the captive portal...

Any tips would be appreciated - I'm looking into this myself now! will post back if I figure it out...

Best,

Dave

Sorry, this old thread confuses me. Can somebody take some time to explain to me what she/he want to achieve?

Thank you,
best regards Matthias

Hi Matthias,

I didn't realise it was over a year old! I wouldn't have revived it had I noticed.

What it looks like we're trying to do is hook up a ubiquiti nano station m5 router to a pi box to extend the reach of the signal. I'm doing a captive portal art project at a train station and the platforms are quite long, so wanted to boost it somehow. Obviously I could just try to install openwrt to the ubiquiti router but it doesn't have much storage on it, or a usb input, and I want to host audio and video on the pirate box, so was wondering about connecting the ubiquiti router and the pi....

Does that make sense? Any ideas?

best wishes (and happy new year!)

Dave

Hi,
Ok. This make sense. I assumed that this was the idea behind the first post, but it was not 100% clear.

Yes, it is possible to use the ubiquiti device as a WiFi AP and run all needed network services on a RPi, but you need to do some modifications in the image configuration. Are you running the official image PirateBox image or something else?

I wrote a Modification - HowTo a long while ago, but I am not sure if it is still valid... so if you are not afraid of fixing a wrong network configuration with keyboard and monitors or starting from the beginning, you can give that one a try.

In the case of a local art installation, i recommend to reduce the lease time from 12h to 30m (as well in PirateBox.conf)

Best regards Matthias

Hi Matthias,

Wow, that's great, thanks! I have a new pi3 and sd card so will be starting from scratch. I'll have a go and see how I get on.

Thanks also for the tip about the lease time - will change that.

Best wishes,

Dave

Ps - I will be running the official piratebox image, I tried writing my own but pirate box is much better!

One first hint, the default IP on RPi is 192.168.77.1


Looking forward hearing back from you

Hi Matthias,

Just an update - things have moved forwards a tiny, tiny bit in that I can now use the nano station as an access point - but cannot access the pi through it when it is connected. I updated the piratebox.conf as suggested.

Do I need to set the nanostation a static ip to stop it from messing with dns?

Hmm. I will continue to explore.

Best,

Dave

Hi,
in the modification howto from above, the AP should not give away IPs to the client.
The AP should be set to 192.168.77.2 as a static IP (that you can reach the WebUI) and the ethernet port should not run as a WAN port (like routing to the internet). It should be configured as wifi bridge or something that sounds alike ;-)

best regards Matthias

I disabled DHCP on the ap

I changed the 192.168.1.2

Then altered the piratebox.conf file.

I can see the ap but not connect...

Here's the answers to the questiosn on the mod page you sent:


How am I connected? - Wireless - can connect to the nano station ap via 192.168.1.1

Which IP address receives my client device? Is it in the same range then the PirateBox? Not sure about this.

Get I access to the AP? - Yes it I can get to the ubiquiti airOS site but not the pi.

Does the name resolution work? (ping piratebox.lan , ping 192.168.1.1 ) - I can ping 192.168.1.1

What details do my Interface have? Is it all pointing to 192.168.1.1 and having a 192.168.1.x address? - when I ifconfig the pi eth0 has the inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

Any ideas? I will continue...

Dave

Hi Matthias,

Thanks a million for your help, as always. I just needed to set the nanostation up as a bridge then set the static ip as you suggest and hey presto - it worked. I'm keen to see what sort of range I can get now for my project!

Best wishes,

Dave

Obviously now I can't get back into the ap web interface - even at the ip address you suggest. I have this though. I can figure it out....

D.

If your Pi is using the IP 192.168.1.x range and you set the AP to 192.168.77.2 , then your ip ranges do not match.
Set your client to a static IP 192.168.77.3 netmask 255.255.255.0, then you can connect back to your AP's webinterface.

Best regards Matthias

Hi Again Matthias,

Jus anotehr quick ques. The AP, a nano station m5, was WAY too powerful ans the 5ghz signal was no good in the environment I was broadcasting to so I've stepped it down to a 2.4Ghz M2, set up is the same. I was just wondering, when you say the ip ranges do not match - is that the Pi and AP? Is the client you mention the PI, should that be in the same range as the AP:

So AP 192.168.77.2
then PI 192.168.77.3

?

Sorry - nearly there I think.
Dave

hey - i think I figured it - the pi is 192.168.77.1 the AP is 192.168.77.2 and my pc is 192.168.77.3 (if I want to get into the ap interface) - sound right?

D

Yes correct. You can also use the dhcp given address to connect to the AP, but I recommend using a static IP to have a fixed and stable setup for doing your configuration work.

I eventually got all of this working fine - thanks so much for your help Matthias.

I wrote a blog post about it here for anyone searching how to extend the range of a piratebox using a nano station, it's also got some stuff about running it on solar power too.

D.

As per my experience Piratebox can be modified to use any access point when you load it on a raspberry pi. So my plan is to run a pi and ubiquity router off a solar panel/charge controller. That way the signal can be beamed out point to point long haul, to another receiving dish, and sector antennas.