Connecting Wifi Pineapples Together. Internet Sharing

[AJR]

The Pineapple Stand Project

 

This is a project I would like help on if I'm being honest more like a need help on.

Please excuse any grammatical or spelling errors. Grammar and spelling are not my best area and I am only 14.

A bit of background:

I got the WIFI adapter sold from the hak5 shop and it works great for a person or two, but I needed something faster. So, I started watching some hak5 videos and saw WIFI adapters were amazing. The hak5 videos that got me thinking if you could do that with a wifi adapter not built for hacking what could you do with one that was. I began to have the seedlings of an idea to use the pineapple for this purpose. Then I saw the wifi cactus (for those of you that don't know what it is here are a few links https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/08/02/wificactus-when-you-need-to-know-about-hackers-wearablewednesday/ and https://youtu.be/fX_XH-09YeQ) and the idea crystalized to use a pineapple as a wifi adapter that you could control with the web interface. Sounds crazy right until you consider that basically what the wifi pineapple is already (I mean no offense hak5 I know that that is an oversimplification seriously love you guys) the wifi part is obvious but the adapter is not so obvious the adapter is the web interface more specifically when the web interface sends something to the pineapple then the pineapple changes that into something that it can recognize then sends it to the controller inside of the pineapple which is the traditional adapter being controlled by the web interface and the pineapple is sending information to the web interface is the second part of the wifi adapter. Then I remembered how this idea started which is how the idea of hoking pineapples together and controlling one pineapple with another and having them be able to exchange data (also in part due to the wifi cactus).

This is what I want.

Basically, for the Tetra I want to hook two of them up together through the eth0 port to the eth0 port but have one of them to give internet connection to the other. More than that, however, I want to be able to control the one wifi pineapple with the other making it into a wifi adapter and have both of them working together. Now before you click off because you don't have 2 wifi pineapple tetra this should work whether it be the tetra with a nano plugged into it, a nano plugged into a nano or a tetra to a tetra. (with some minor deviations).

Now that that's all out of the way let's get to how you could do this.

For simplicity, I will be referring to the pineapple that that controls the other pineapple as the host and the other pineapple as the tether.

Idea 1:

My first idea was to use client mode on one pineapple to connect to the management SSID on the other pineapple. This would, in theory, allow me to control both pineapples while I was connected to one wifi network. The first problem with this was that you have to browse to the same web address to control both pineapples because of the addresses being the same and that the request would have to go to the first pineapple to get to the second the request wouldn't make it. The solution was to change the web address you need to browse to for the second pineapple. Pretty simple. This still did not achieve the end result I was hoping for. For one I could not use PineAP and get a real wifi connection. I considered this a start it showed that is was possible to control 2 wifi pineapples with one internet connection.

Breaking down my first idea and why it was only a partial success. My first idea was only a partial success because I could not use PineAP and get a real wifi connection the reason I could not use PineAp and get a real internet connection was that one wan1 being used for client mode to connect to the management SSID of the other pineapple and in order for me to get a real internet connection without using the eth ports I would need the wan1 of the other pineapple leaving no wan1 open for PineAP. Using the one wan1 is unavoidable because you need it for client mode the tether has to do this if you want real internet. But in order to fix the problem, we need to find a way to eliminate the need for the other wan1 that is being used to connect to the management SSID. The potential solution I came up with is to is to connect the 2 pineapples tetras eth0 to eth0 port. This would, in theory, remove the need for the other wan1. The problem is the pineapples eth0 ports are configured to be inputs and I need one to be an output (the tether) and the other to be an input (the host) in order for this to work. So if one of you that is better at coding then I am can figure out a solution to this problem please share it with me. Or if this is not possible please share that with me. If there is another way to do this, please share that with me.

 

 

Assuming that there is a solution to that problem. I would like to develop a module for this actually 2 modules one for the host and one for the tether and Host would appreciate if anyone wanted to help develop the modules, in other words, have to code the modules while I fail at helping you code (I am a little past hello world in java but can copy and past with the best of them :) and tell you what I think it should do. Please contact me alexriniker5510@gmail.com if you have any ideas, suggestions, want to help, want to crush my dreams and tell me it's not possible, or ideally want to do this entire project for me ; ).

PS. the bootup loop in my case was caused by a short in the pineapple that meant that it was not getting enough power, so it could get through the first part of the bootup but when it came to turning on the wifi which sucked away the little power it was running on, to begin with making it shut down then attempt to boot up again. I was able to figure this out by pumping more and more electricity into it until I was able to see the short I would not recommend this for attempting to find the short however because I was lucky, and it was a fairly large short but there's a fine line between enough electricity to see the short and enough to permanently damage the circuits in the pineapple. I felt obligated to you guy to find the causes of the bootup loop after you sent me another wifi pineapple.

sincerely,

Alex

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