in the OpenWrt stable & snapshot package repo you'll find the travelmate package, a wlan connection manager for travel router.
Main Features
STA interfaces operating in an "always off" mode, to make sure that the AP is always accessible
Easy setup within normal OpenWrt environment
Strong LuCI-Support with builtin interface wizard and wireless connection manager
Fast uplink connections
Support all kinds of uplinks, incl. hidden and enterprise uplinks
WPA3 support
includes a vpn hook with support for 'wireguard' or 'openvpn' client setups to handle VPN (re-) connections automatically
includes an email hook to 'msmtp' to send notification e-mails after every succesful uplink connect
continuously checks the existing uplink connection (quality), e.g. for conditional uplink (dis-) connections
captive portal detection with internet online check and a 'heartbeat' function to keep the uplink connection up & running
automatically add open uplinks to your wireless config, e.g. hotel captive portals (disabled by default)
captive portal auto-login hook (configured via uci/LuCI), you could reference an external script for captive portal auto-logins
treats a missing internet availability as an error (optional, disabled by default)
proactively scan and switch to a higher prioritized uplink, despite of an already existing connection
opt-out/temp. stores faulty uplinks in a 'Faulty Stations' list
automatically resets the 'Faulty Stations' list after n minutes, default is '0' which means no expiry (default behaviour)
support devices with multiple radios in any order
procd init and hotplug support
runtime information available via LuCI & via 'status' init command
status & debug logging to syslog
optional: the LuCI frontend shows the WiFi QR codes from all configured Access Points. It allows you to connect your Android or iOS devices to your router’s WiFi using the QR code
For Luci screenshots see following post.
My plans are to use it on NEXX WT3020 (MT7620n), A5-V11 (RT5350F) and potentially, some RT5350F-based audio streaming endpoints. Oh, it will probably come in handy on my ZSun Card reader too (AR9331).
Not sure when I'll actually get around to trying it out. I have a bunch of other projects competing for my time.
The Xiaomi MiWiFi Mini has some characteristics that make it very usable for my use case, and it is very cheap, only 22 Euro, including shipping from China. I use this router as a travelrouter on a small ship to connect to the WiFi in harbors I visit. It is standing behind the windscreen, mostly in direct sunlight, so the white color prevents it from overheating.
It is a dualband router with external antennas. The range is very good (on 2.4 GHz). The 5 GHz is used for the local network. I alse have a guest network, but that is mainly for showing off .
My first experience with travelmate (version 0.4.x) was with a GL-inet GL-AR150-Ext. It worked like a charm and was much more stable than with the software from GL-inet. I then switched to the Xiaomi MiWiFi Mini, because I wanted a little bit more reach (the GL-inet GL-AR150 has only about 63 mW).
Travelmate didn't work the way I was expecting with 2 radio's. I contacted Dirk and 3 days (!) later Dirk send me a version that was able to have the AP en the station at different radio's.
After that there was only one thing missing in the LuCI-GUI of travelmate: an easy way of adding and editing stations. Before I could contact Dirk about this, version 0.9.0 was released.
Update: I have one more wish
Is it possible to make disabling of misconfigured uplinks optional?
Yesterday I left the harbor with my ship, that had an active link with the Wifi in the harbor. At some point the Wifi of the harbor is still visible, but it is no longer posible to maintain the connection. Travelmate renames the uplink to SSID_err. When I return to the harbor travelmate does not reconize the uplink anymore. After renaming the uplink to SSID everything is working again.
Hi Freek,
it's always a pleasure ... ... I think it should be sufficient to raise the Connection Limit (trm_maxretry to 10 or 20). Anyway, in travelmate 0.9.3 you could set the above parameter to '0' which means unlimited retries.
I failed to get my RE450 working as a repeater via the wiki (relayd), so I just tried this. I installed travelmate and luci-app-travelmate, but I cannot find the wizard and wireless station manager that is shown in the screenshots and mentioned in the recommended setup in the readme. All I have is:
Is the wizard I'm looking for hiding somewhere other than Services>Travelmate?
EDIT: The manual setup worked perfectly, and I'm very happy. I'm just curious about the wizard. Thank you for this simple to configure, functional tool!
Hi, you've installed the old/ancient "stable" release ... to get the wizard and all the advanced LuCI stuff use the download links referenced in the first post of this thread and install it manually via opkg package manager.
Anyway, nice to hear that the old version still works for you ...
I compile travelmate in openwrt
Compile successful however travelmate is not working
Kindly anybody help me what's wrong?
attached screen short logfile
internal server error in wireless station section
/usr/lib/lua/luci/dispatcher.lua:433: Failed to execute template dispatcher target for entry '/admin/services/travelmate/stations'.
The called action terminated with an exception:
/usr/lib/lua/luci/template.lua:97: Failed to execute template 'travelmate/stations'.
A runtime error occured: [string "/usr/lib/lua/luci/view/travelmate/stations...."]:24: attempt to call global 'url' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
[C]: in function 'assert'
/usr/lib/lua/luci/dispatcher.lua:433: in function 'dispatch'
/usr/lib/lua/luci/dispatcher.lua:168: in function
.
... I think it should be sufficient to raise the Connection Limit (trm_maxretry to 10 or 20). Anyway, in travelmate 0.9.3 you could set the above parameter to '0' which means unlimited retries.
