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💡 Software ideas to make Little Printer print again #26

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mungle opened this issue Jul 25, 2016 · 312 comments
Open

💡 Software ideas to make Little Printer print again #26

mungle opened this issue Jul 25, 2016 · 312 comments

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@mungle
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mungle commented Jul 25, 2016

Finally I get my LP working again...!!!
As I love it, I was wondering if it will be a way to make an "Open sirius" website like http://alpha.littleprinter.com where developers like us could add open source apps in a easy way improving the features of the site (actually limited to send only messages)! 🎉
To much? 😃
@benpawle
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Hi Mungle. I've been thinking about something similar via IFTTT.

My idea is that you could save am IFTTT phone number in your contacts as 'Little Printer' and send an SMS which would be sent via webhook to a server which would take the sms text and style as HTML and rendered into an image (via PIL or similar) that LP could print - like in the nice Poster script style. Even better if it could encompass images! The bridge already renders HTML I think but I'm no developer so haven't explored this fully...

The nice thing about this approach is you wouldn't need an internet connection to be able to send messages to your LP; I always thought Berg's method of having to load a webpage in a browser in order to configure a message was kind of clunky.

I'd be interested to see what you or other LP users/developers think of this.

@mungle
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mungle commented Jul 26, 2016

That's an awesome input I think... But I'm not interest to send messages only...
I'm more interest in other features like instagram photos from hashtag, tweets and news of the days... Dynamic content...! I think the way IFTTT works is great but I don't know from where to start developing something!

Anyway, all the dynamic content should be packed in a simple html and sent as a message to the printer... We just need to automate this process...

@pixelwiese
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I think you would like to rebuild the original Littleprinter website.
When we knew that littleprinter is shutting down, there were a lot of people who said they would like to give some money (monthly or annualy) for the littleprinter service.
It's nonsense to rebuild an existing Application (in my opionion). Maybe genmon would accept this idea.

@johndietrich
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I have no knowledge to back this up, but it always sounded like there might be some intellectual-property issues around the original back-end code that have made it impossible for genmon to make that available to anyone. (I'm making this up, but here's a hypothetical scenario -- you create a company, hire some developers to build code, end up liquidating the company and can't afford to pay off their full contract, so who owns the code? Or the codebase is one of the assets of the company and gets sold off to someone else, etc. Not at all saying that's the situation here -- but there are many ways that the code could no longer belong to genmon after shutting down BERG.)

That said, we are getting close to having a lot of cool things available to us again -- someone has posted a way to dither and print images, another person has a template for better-looking messages, someone else had an idea for IFTTT integration, and so on.

If we had someone with the right level of programming expertise, it wouldn't be too terribly hard to put together something fairly functional that could even recreate some of the original capabilities, like being able to select a weather forecast or a horoscope or stock quotes from XML feeds on the web and render those in a scheduled (cron, anyone?) process that runs every day (hour, half-day, whatever you choose).

@mungle
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mungle commented Aug 1, 2016

I was wondering the same about code copyright...

Anyway, there are a lot of people that love LP and it's a shame to let id die...

Anyway, unlikely I'm not an expert programmer, but I hope someone very cool will hear our voice and help us give a new life to the lovely LP.

I hope @awfk2long could give us an hint sharing his code that print a sudoku everyday... And if I could understand it, I hope to be able to share something interesting...

Actually we already understand that LP can print without problem an HTML also with images... We just need a code that can grab informations, format them in html (I can help for this) and send to our printer... @genmon , do you have any useful example to start with?

@mungle
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mungle commented Aug 12, 2016

Hei @awfk2long!
Do you have time to post your code to crawl some sudoku and print it everyday? I need to build a project but I need an hint to start with and your code could help me a lot I think!
Thank you! 😄

@awfk2long
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Hi @mungle , sorry for the delay, but I was travelling.
Here is the code: https://github.com/littleprinter/puzzle_str8t
it is not perfect, but was running perfectly before the server went down. I copied an old example (and did not care too much about documentation, sorry!)
I had it running in my dropbox and the little printer server pointed directly there.
Curious if you get it working. I still have not got my printer running again :(

@mungle
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mungle commented Aug 15, 2016

Thank you @awfk2long !
Actually your link pointed to a empty rep... Anyway, I tried to visit php or python version linked in the readme file but I'm not sure the code will run with sirius... I will try on these days and in the meantime @genmon could maybe know more about compatibility and better address us! 😜

@awfk2long
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sorry, @mungle , i think there went something wrong with the upload. please try again & let me know.

@mungle
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mungle commented Aug 29, 2016 •
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I've uploaded PHP version on my server but I can't find any way to address the script to my printer. The examples has been made for the old Berg Cloud "Appstore" not for this sirius version... My LP is getting dust... @genmon could you light us up?

At the moment I would love to find a way to print latest instagram pictures based on hashtag!

@awfk2long
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U are looking for a sirus version. Now it makes sense... ;) have not seen one, but would love to get my old sudoku running again :(

Am 29.08.2016 um 22:51 schrieb mungle [email protected]:

I've uploaded PHP version on my server but I can't find any way to address the script to my printer. The examples has been made for the old Berg Cloud "Appstore" not for this sirius version... My LP is getting dust... @genmon could you light us up?

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

@mungle mungle changed the title Open Sirius 💡 Software ideas to make Little Printer print again Sep 18, 2016
@mungle mungle mentioned this issue Sep 18, 2016
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@pixelwiese
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Is anything happening here or is the Littleprinter now dead forever? 😢

@mungle
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mungle commented Oct 29, 2017

I suppose it’s dead but I hope it’s not...

@dspalton
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dspalton commented Apr 3, 2018

Anything happening?

@nickehsmith
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nickehsmith commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@dspalton
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dspalton commented Apr 3, 2018

Yep the same here.

@nickehsmith
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nickehsmith commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@dspalton
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dspalton commented Apr 3, 2018

My bridge doesn’t seam to be booking up to the Ethernet :(

@johndietrich
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johndietrich commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@dspalton
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dspalton commented Apr 3, 2018

Full disclosure, I’ve not looked into this for two years or so.
Trying to catch up now as have a practical use to try get it working.
Got a spare Pi so that would be cool.
Anyone have the full guide some where to install?

Appreciate the help

@johndietrich
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johndietrich commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@benpawle
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benpawle commented Apr 3, 2018

Hi all,

Glad you're as keen as us to get your printers working. We're actually working on a platform for this as a side project in our studio. It's based on the Sirius backend by @genmon but with a few extra features. There will be an accompanying iOS app so you can message your printers with styled templates, as well as IFTTT integrations for other types of content you're into.

We're up and running with the few printers we have but we need to finish some last bits before we release. If you're interested in trying it out let us know! You'll still need to do Joe's firmware flash but everything else will be taken care of by our new platform.

Cheers,

Ben

@johndietrich
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johndietrich commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@nickehsmith
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nickehsmith commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@dspalton
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dspalton commented Apr 3, 2018

im in as well.
Not sure i can flash my bridge myself, bit lacking the skills to be honest' but based in the UK

Reason i want to get it going, basically going to be working away from home for 21days a month, so want it to send messages to the wife soppy bugger that i am

If you need any other testers or anything more than happy to help

@bentimms
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bentimms commented Apr 3, 2018 via email

@tom-hat
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tom-hat commented Apr 3, 2018

Hi guys, Tom here I work with @benpawle and @joerick - we've just been speaking about flashing peoples bridges as a service and we reckon it's definitely something we could do. As Ben mentioned earlier we've got an iOS app which is almost ready to roll out. The dev version we are playing around with works a treat. There's a bit of tidying up to do and we're fairly busy with projects at the moment so might not be ready to do this for a few months.

But yes without putting any firm dates down just yet would anyone be interested in paying £55 exc return postage to get your little printers up and running? We would do them in batches, most probably at the end of May / June. We're based in Hackney Wick, London and would be happy to do drop ins if anyone's local..

littleprint

@dspalton
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dspalton commented Apr 3, 2018

Looking amazing
Definitely interested

@javl
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javl commented Aug 27, 2020 via email

@gram-01
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gram-01 commented Aug 28, 2020

If you can't find anyone nearby you're also welcome to ship it over for me to flash.

That would be great! I'll drop you an email. Thank you 😃

@schuyuan
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Image from iOS

I thought I would never able to get it to work again but after 2 hours it is alive! amazing.

I completely forgotten what sort of paper does it use? what's the specifications? also Is it possible to change the face? remember in the olden days it has very cute random faces.

@gram-01
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gram-01 commented Sep 17, 2020

Huzzah!

image

@javl
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javl commented Sep 20, 2020

@gram-01 That's great! Happy to help.
Bridge #5 flashed successfully :)

@dieppon
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dieppon commented Dec 4, 2020

I just flashed mine!!!

@Dayvehillman
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@gram-01 That's great! Happy to help.
Bridge #5 flashed successfully :)

@gram-01 I don't suppose you would consider getting my little printer up and running too?

@javl
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javl commented Dec 19, 2020

@Dayvehillman I flashed that bridge for @gram-01. You're welcome to send yours this way (the Netherlands).

@dieppon
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dieppon commented Jan 11, 2021

if switch off the bridge do I need to ssh into it and mounted again after its been flashed? I haven't switch it off since I completed the process

@thatgraphicsguy
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Are you still offering to flash the bridges, @javl ? :) I'm based in Denmark, but I'll gladly ship it to you, since I have very little confidence I can make it work on my own.

@LemmaEOF
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LemmaEOF commented Mar 19, 2021 •
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Hmm, I'm going to be getting a DevTerm soon, and it comes with a thermal printer. I wonder how hard it would be to get the DevTerm to spoof being a bridge so I can use it as a Little Printer too. I'd need to figure out how the bridge/pinter actually goes from the websocket query to what it prints, though... never mind I found tinyprinter.club

@javl
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javl commented Mar 22, 2021

Are you still offering to flash the bridges, @javl ? :) I'm based in Denmark, but I'll gladly ship it to you, since I have very little confidence I can make it work on my own.

Sure, my website is in my bio, just add mail@ to send me a message so we can arrange something.

@code1202-ubik
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code1202-ubik commented Aug 30, 2021 •
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Hi all,

thx for this project and the instructions - as an unexperienced user i struggling a bit -> after doing 3.5 reboot i am entering mount -a - > getting an unknown command response

what am i doing wrong?

by the way - when doing the reboot i see a

Verifying Checksum ... Bad Data CRC
ERROR: can't get kernel image!

might this be the initial problem / and how to solve that?

Cheers

Michael

@yaserahmady
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yaserahmady commented Feb 4, 2022 •
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I collected 22 publications for your Little Printers on https://littleprinter.club/

6 are legacy BERG Little Printer publications I remade or found on GitHub and the other 16 are publications made by my students.

On the website you'll find those publications, each having a direct link to the printable image that you can use on IFTTT, in the Shortcuts app, in Tasker or your scripts.

There's also a REST API at https://publications.littleprinter.club/ if you'd rather have programmatic access.

@jeremyfranklin
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I have a working Little Printer, but I was never able to get current weather to it or know how to use those https://littleprinter.club/ apps above. Does anyone have a step by step guide or can reply below with some steps on how to enable these in IFTTT with the new Little Printer environment?

Thanks!

@jasoncookdotcom
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jasoncookdotcom commented Feb 26, 2023 •
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I successfully flashed and had my Little Printer working with the Nord app, but it stopped working sometime in 2021. Little Printer now says it can’t see the bridge if you press the print button; the bridge's lights show Power and Ethernet but no Upstream or Downstream.
Looks like I can still SSH into the bridge… does anybody have any suggestions on commands I could run to try and diagnose the problem? Or should I try and reflash the bridge? Thanks in advance!. Update: I should also add, what I previously saw on the printer was a red light. I pressed the "reset" button behind the paper roll on the LP, now the white status light is in the following loop - two fast blinks, pause, two fast blinks.

@joerick
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joerick commented Feb 26, 2023

does anybody have any suggestions on commands I could run to try and diagnose the problem

For debugging, if you can ssh in, I'd try disabling this init script : https://github.com/kpeeem/berg-bridge-dump/blob/master/etc/init.d/S99bergcloud_bridge and then run the oneshot_bergcloud_bridge script yourself, see what the logs print.

@jasoncookdotcom
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I'd try disabling this init script : https://github.com/kpeeem/berg-bridge-dump/blob/master/etc/init.d/S99bergcloud_bridge and then run the oneshot_bergcloud_bridge script yourself, see what the logs print.

Thanks for the fast reply, Joe. My unix knowledge is super-limited, so hope you can provide a bit more help. I know I can stop the script by going to /etc/init.d and typing "./S99bergcloud_bridge stop", and I see a "Terminated" response. I'm less clear on the next step, though. Do I just go to the /run directory and execute "oneshot_bergcloud_bridge"? Because when I do that, the shell basically just hangs on me, with no response. And where am I looking for logs, exactly? (in /var/logs/messages?).

Once again, thanks for the help!

@cmusy
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cmusy commented Jan 7, 2024

dear all - is there anybody around Bern / Switzerland who might help flash a LP-Bridge?

@Pogopooc
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Pogopooc commented Jan 7, 2024

Hey cmusy, i flashed my bridge years ago, I hope I can do it a second time. The cable I bought for it is still lying around here. How can i get in contact with you?

@cmusy
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cmusy commented Jan 8, 2024

You may reach me via my e-mail [email protected] - thx loads!

@blaine
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blaine commented Jan 14, 2024

Not sure if anyone is still playing with this, but worth a shot!

When I connect to the serial bus on my Little Printer Bridge, I get the following:

RomBOOT
Start AT91Bootstrap...

and then nothing. I'm guessing the firmware is corrupted. I suspect it's possible to re-flash with the JTAG, but I haven't seen any reference to doing that; maybe that's the service that @tom-hat and crew are offering? Posting to London is probably overkill, but I was wondering if maybe there's a different approach?

I have a few ESP32-C6 dev boards, which have zigbee and wifi on the SoC, and are really easy to program. I wonder if anyone has worked out/documented the protocol that the bridge speaks to the printer over zigbee? It seems like it should be straightforward; in https://github.com/nordprojects/berg-bridge-dump/blob/master/DECOMPILED it looks like it's just popping off commands from the cloud server and forwarding them to the appropriate zigbee device.

Before I go ahead and try to make it work (undoubtably this is more work than it seems..), I figured I should ask here in case anyone has already done it and I just haven't seen! Thanks for all your work so far!

@javl
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javl commented Jan 14, 2024

@blaine I've looked into a way to replace the bridge with my own device BUT know nothing about Zigbee so didn't manage to. I felt I didn't have enough information, but it could also just be me not understanding the protocol.

Replacing the bridge would still be one of the best options for keeping the LP working in the future as I've heard multiple people say their bridge got corrupted.

I've also been looking into replacing the LP guts altogether. There is some info on that on the tiny printer club discord if you're interested. Kind of on hold due to other work at the moment though.

@blaine
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blaine commented Jan 15, 2024

@javl thanks! Good to know I'm heading in the right direction; not a huge priority for me right now, but my hunch is that with the recent batch of SoCs that have zigbee integrated, the difficulty and cost to build a bridge replacement has come down a fair bit. The tp.c discord invite on the tinyprinter.club website is invalid – maybe I'm not looking in the right spot, though?

@javl
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javl commented Jan 15, 2024

@blaine Hm I can't create an invite (no permission). I've asked in the general chat to see if anyone knows how to invite people. The Discord name is littleprinter.club, not sure if that is helpfull?

I didn't have any zigbee devices at the time, but I actually have a Conbee II stick now, wonder if that would work somehow. No idea if you can sniff zigbee with a stick like that or how it works. Might be interesting to look in to.

My intention before was to replace not the bridge, but the internals of the printer. I understand the design philosophy behind their bridge at the time (one IOT device connecting to multiple other devices in the house) but don't think this division makes sense with the current tech. For example, a Raspberry Pi Zero W (with printer hat) would easily fit inside and allow you to connect over bluetooth or wifi without the need of the hub.

I was in touch with the company behind the thermal printers used about what controller chip to get (the one used in the LP is deprecated, but would still be perfect for this use-case), but after some initial interested emails (they actually met with the Berg team at the time) they stopped responding.

My dream would be a drop in replacement: open up the LP, detach the printer, replace the board with ours, plug in the printer, and close it up again. That would be something everyone can do.

@javl
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javl commented Jan 18, 2024 •
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@blaine Just confirmed I can sniff the Zigbee data between printer and bridge using a Conbee II stick, flashed using ZShark and set to channel 25. Don't know what the data means yet and how I can send my own though ;)

I wonder if the data is encrypted and if so, if the key is somewhere to be found in the bridge dump at https://github.com/nordprojects/berg-bridge-dump

edit: ok so i think the LP and bridge decide on a key to use when they first connect, instead of using some pre-programmed key, which makes sense. Maybe the key could be found by logging in to a running bridge over telnet, but I'm not sure.

@javl
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javl commented Jan 26, 2024

@blaine Try this invite link: https://discord.gg/KGdjqSm

@PimCoumans
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Hi Everyone

Thanks so much for your working bringing the printers back to life

I am trying to flash my bridge at the moment. I can get the bridge software to load. When I try and press any key to stop the autoboot, everything seems to stop. I never get the Uboot menu to load.

I am using a mac. Any ideas would be appreciated Screen Shot 2019-08-23 at 14 49 15

I’m running into a comparable issue, but only after running the boot command after changing the bootargs. It just hangs and never gives me any input. The PCB says ‘Bridge v1.4’ if that helps. Do I need to reset something to get it to work?

Thanks for the help!

@kpeeem
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kpeeem commented Feb 8, 2024 •
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Magic happened and everything was fixed 🥵

Hi guys
What am I doing wrong?
I entered the code and I see Internal Server Error after

(I masked the path and the code)

image image

500
Request URL: http://littleprinter.nordprojects.co/###/#####/claim
Request Method: POST
image

upd.

Seems I had this printer registered on another Twitter account
I logged into by my previous twi account, deleted it and claimed LP again,

BUT now my claim page hang and down by time out

image

@kpeeem
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kpeeem commented Feb 8, 2024

if you want to turn berg hub into a wireless hub with rpi zero

Little tutorial

image

Configure a static IP address for the Ethernet interface:

  • Open the dhcpcd configuration file with sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf.
  • Add the following lines to the end of the file, replacing eth0 with your Ethernet interface's name if different, and specify the desired IP address:
    interface eth0
    static ip_address=192.168.2.1/24

Set up a DHCP server on the Raspberry Pi:

This is necessary to automatically assign IP addresses to devices connected to the Raspberry Pi via Ethernet.

  • Install dnsmasq, which will act as a DHCP server, using sudo apt-get install dnsmasq.
  • Then, configure dnsmasq by editing its configuration file with sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf and adding the following lines:
    interface=eth0 # Use the Ethernet interface
    dhcp-range=192.168.2.2,192.168.2.30,255.255.255.0,24h
  • This sets up a DHCP range of IP addresses from 192.168.2.2 to 192.168.2.30 that will be automatically assigned to connected devices.

Enable IP forwarding and masquerading:

  • Edit the sysctl.conf file with sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment the line net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 to enable IP forwarding.
  • Apply the forwarding settings with sudo sysctl -p.
  • Set up masquerading so that devices can use a single IP address to access the internet with the following commands:
    sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE
    sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o eth0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
    sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o wlan0 -j ACCEPT
  • Save the iptables settings to apply them on boot:
    sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"
  • Add the following line to the /etc/rc.local file before the exit 0 line to restore iptables rules on boot:
    iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat
  • sudo reboot

And voila!

image

I used rpi zero one and these hats

https://www.waveshare.com/eth-usb-hub-hat.htm
https://www.waveshare.com/eth-usb-hub-hat-b.htm

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