How to set it up as a repeater, with an external wifi adapter and without a LAN cable?

General
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The first time I turned it on, I didn’t see the 2.4 GHz network, so I had to connect from my smartphone. This is very inconvenient.
How do I log in via the web interface, why do I have to download an app to set the password?
I don’t want to connect pifi router with Ethernet cable, but I have an external WiFi adapter ralink RT3070 drivers for which are available for a huge number of devices (even in the iron), and PiFI persistently offers me to connect Ethernet cable. I do not fully understand the logic, nevertheless I would like to configure PiFI as a wifi signal repeater/extender, what do I need an Ethernet cable for?
I really apologize if I was too harsh. But this project seemed to me worthy of respect, so I hope the respected community can help me in these questions. Thanks in advance.

2

There’s never any offence taken to genuine feedback so please don’t worry about that — however, PiFi is designed to provide a simple plug and play experience that is managed by an app so there is logic behind the design decisions

  • It’s a 5Ghz network it broadcast by default - it’s based on OpenWrt but has various differences (I’ll add an article to our docs tomorrow that compare it to OpenWrt and go into more detail about the points you’ve mentioned)

  • You need to set a password because PiFi, by default, broadcasts a wireless network and it’s considered better security not to broadcast a wireless network with unrooted access, your root password should be set during initial setup. OpenWrt handles this a different way - unrooted i.e no password BUT no network broadcasts by default so you have to plug it into a laptop and configure an access point before there’s a network you can connect to

  • PiFi is primarily designed to work via the app - so to start the experience with no access point and requiring a laptop/PC to get going wasn’t an experience I found acceptable so setting the password during first-time setup was the decision I felt more comfortable with

  • The web interface is available at 192.168.3.14 - you can configure any adapter you like and if there are drivers available even for your iron you’ll have no issue at all with configuring this in LuCI. It’s totally fine to configure it as a signal repeater/extender - it runs OpenWrt and there’s no limitation in doing so

  • Even with driver support - there are issues with certain USB dongles on OpenWrt misconfiguring etc and there is work to be done on handling third-party adapters via the app. There is an official PiFi adapter that’s supported - and other adapters are currently supported via LuCI. Over time, a more native app experience will be added for third-party adapters too

Please don’t worry about being harsh - all feedback is taken in good spirits as I’m sure it’s intended :slightly_smiling_face:

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As a shorter reply — to set it up as a repeater (there’s no LAN cable needed):

  1. Connect to PiFi in WiFi Settings and use the app to set your admin/system password.

  2. Next, I would actually recommend in the app going to Setting > Network Setting and changing the port to LAN for your specific setup so that it’s recoverable should something be misconfigured

  3. Next, go to 192.168.3.14 and login with the password you set in the app

  4. In LuCI, go to Network > Wireless (my advice is first to configure your adapter as an access point)

  5. Once you can see an access point broadcasting from your adapter, then you can change the radio0 (which by default broadcasts PiFi 4 Setup or PiFi 5 Setup to instead ‘scan’ for the network you wish to repeat)

Only the official PiFi adapter works natively just by plugging it because a bunch of optimisation was added for that which took time

At the moment third-party adapters fall back to more traditional OpenWrt to configure it - this is not an intentional limitation, it’s just that to add support for other usb adapters (even the few that have in-kernel support) takes work - most adapters don’t just broadcast when you plug them in, they can be prone to being misconfigured and there’s quite a bit of work to have native support for any hardware that’s plugged in (more will be added gradually). So for now, LuCI is the answer for any adapters that aren’t yet natively supported

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