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Speedify Node

Steps

Prepared Raspberry PI

Using the Raspberry Pi Imager, I used the 64-bit Rasbpian Lite image. I changed the host name, login/password, and the preset wifi to log in to. I decided to have it log into the main wifi, although, I changed this later.

Once the Pi was booted, I logged in via SSH and started realizing that I should have set up the wifi differently. I hadn't thought ahead of time how I would use the device. Should I connect to the device via wifi or via ethernet? Once I got it all working, I decided that, for the near term, connecting to its wifi would be easier for anyone that wanted to use it.

I hooked up an ethernet cable, reconnected via SSH using the new ethernet IP, and updated the wifi login details to instead log in to my Verizon hotspot. sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Install Speedify

Mostly just followed the Speedify install doc.

  1. Installed Speedify using curl and install url
  • bash -c "$(curl -sL https://get.speedify.com)"
  1. I logged in to Speedify using speedify_cli tool: /usr/share/speedify/speedify_cli login {username} {password} and connected: /usr/share/speedify/speedify_cli connect
  2. I set up auto connect while I was at it: /usr/share/speedify/speedify_cli startupconnect on
  3. I updated speedify conf to share connection over built in eth (I'll change this to use wlan1 later):
  • By default, device is set to "speed" bonding mode and has wlan set to secondary and eth as "always" which I think is primary.
  1. Restarted speedify and speedify shared. sudo service speedify restart and sudo service speedify-sharing restart. Not sure if I needed to restart speedify but I did it anyway.
  2. Connected a second WIFI USB adapter but didn't set it up.
  3. Installed USB handler (usbmuxd) so I can connect USB modems (like cell phones) - but didn't test it.

Testing

This is by far one of the easiest Raspberry Pi projects I've done. Everything just worked. It's nice when that happens. The biggest concern is the throughput - it is pretty slow. Also, the lack of UI. Speed mode isn't great when Starlink just drops so I like to switch to Redundant when I'm on a zoom call but, without a UI, I'm unable to do that.

Todos:

  • Create a web service that I can monitor, basically a http service that mimics the Speedify app
    • Create a script that runs gets info from the Speedify CLI tool
    • Create a script that runs specific CLI commands for speedify (like changing mode to "redundant" or changing the priority of an adapter)
    • Create a web service that displays, polls, and executes speedify information

Future upgrades

  • RPi 4 with 4Gb ram (the USB 3 ports would be nice) with Dual NIC and POE
    • Or a cheap tiny i3 machine that can handle higher throughput (RPi is limited to 100's of megabits because of some encryption package)
  • WIFI radio with antenna connections (would like to connect to the external antennas for better campground reception)