guysoft / HotSpotOS

Raspberry Pi OS that starts a hotspot, if no wifi was found to conenct to

HotSpotOS

A Raspberry Pi distribution that makes a Raspberrypi start a hotspot, if no wifi was found to conenct to. It also bridges internet comming in from ethernet. This repository contains the source script to generate the distribution out of an existing RaspberryPi OS distro image. You can download a built image here

The hotspot scripts are based on the scripts by roboberry . And have been improved. They are part of the auto-hotspot module of CustomPiOS. HotSpotOS is based on CustomPiOS

Where to get it?

You can use the pi-imager commuity raspberrypi imager here, unofficial section.

Or download directly form the official mirror here

How to use it?

1. Unzip the image and install it to an SD card like any other Raspberry Pi image
2. If used as a wifi client, configure your WiFi by editing hotspotos-wpa-supplicant.txt on the root of the flashed card when using it like a flash drive
3. Boot the Pi from the SD card
4. If the image has found wifi then it will work like any RaspberryPi OS image. If it fails, or wifi is not set, it will start a wifi hotspot called "hotspot" which you can conncte to. Moreover, if an ethernet port is connected, it will bridge wifi and ethernet letting you connect to the internet.
5. If needed Log into your Pi via SSH (it is located at hotspot.lan if your computer supports bonjour or the IP address assigned by your router), default username is "pi", default password is "raspberry", change the password using the passwd command and expand the filesystem of the SD card through the corresponding option when running sudo raspi-config.

Note: Local hostnames have the .lan domain ending. eg hotspot.lan

Requirements

• Raspberrypi 3 and newser or device running Armbian, Older Rasperry Pis are not currently supported. See Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi.
• 2A power supply

Features

• Fails to connect to wifi, it will start a wifi hotspot named hotspot, password raspberry.
• Bridges between Ethernet and hotspot, which means if you connect the Pi to ethernet and set no wifi you will get a wifi hotspot to that ethernet network.
• IPv6 support with prefix delegation.
• Wifi settings can be done headless in hotspotos-wpa-supplicant.txt
• Pi is avilable over the hotspot at IP hostname hotspot.lan, on IPv4 192.168.50.1.
• Supports Raspberry 3, 3B+ RaspberryPi Zero W.

Developing

Requirements

1. qemu-arm-static
2. CustomPiOS
3. Downloaded Raspbian image.
4. root privileges for chroot
5. Bash
6. realpath
7. sudo (the script itself calls it, running as root without sudo won't work)

Build HotSpotOS From within Raspbian / Debian / Ubuntu

HotSpot can be built from Debian, Ubuntu, Raspbian. Build requires about 2.5 GB of free space available. You can build it by issuing the following commands:

sudo apt-get install realpath p7zip-full qemu-user-static

git clone https://github.com/guysoft/CustomPiOS.git
git clone https://github.com/guysoft/HotSpotOS.git
cd HotSpotOS/src/image
wget -c --trust-server-names 'https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite_latest'
cd ..
../../CustomPiOS/src/update-custompios-paths
sudo modprobe loop
sudo bash -x ./build_dist

Building HotSpotOS Variants

CustomPiOS supports building variants, which are builds with changes from the main release build. An example and other variants are available in the folder src/variants/example.

To build a variant use:

sudo bash -x ./build_dist [Variant]

Building Using Vagrant

There is a vagrant machine configuration to let build HotSpotOS in case your build environment behaves differently. Unless you do extra configuration, vagrant must run as root to have nfs folder sync working.

To use it:

sudo apt-get install vagrant nfs-kernel-server
sudo vagrant plugin install vagrant-nfs_guest
sudo modprobe nfs
cd HotSpotOS/src/vagrant
sudo vagrant up

After provisioning the machine, its also possible to run a nightly build which updates from devel using:

cd HotSpotOS/src/vagrant
run_vagrant_build.sh

To build a variant on the machine simply run:

cd HotSpotOS/src/vagrant
run_vagrant_build.sh [Variant]

Usage

1. If needed, override existing config settings by creating a new file src/config.local. You can override all settings found in src/config. If you need to override the path to the Raspbian image to use for building OctoPi, override the path to be used in ZIP_IMG. By default, the most recent file matching *-raspbian.zip found in src/image will be used.
2. Run src/build_dist as root.
3. The final image will be created in src/workspace

Code contribution would be appreciated!

Attribution

The logo of HotSpotOS is a mix from the following icons: 1. https://icon-icons.com/icon/tech-ethernet/156953 (Dennis Suitters) MIT License 2. https://icon-icons.com/icon/internet-ethernet/103772 Jeremiah CC Atribution 3. https://pixabay.com/vectors/wireless-lan-ethernet-broadcast-304994/ Pixabay License (https://pixabay.com/service/license/)