router

201 Articles

How The Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro Violates The First Rule Of OpenWRT Club

May 22, 2026 by 8 Comments

As fun as ARM and RISC-V single-board computers (SBCs) are, all too often getting the most out of the hardware requires the use of an unofficial firmware image. So too with the Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro router SBC that has been out for a while, as OpenWRT support for it still very much unofficial. This is where [Interfacing Linux] goes on a bit of a rant while assembling one of these puppies into a sleek metal enclosure.

The first rule of OpenWRT Club is of course that you never run an unofficial image on any hardware that’s part of any network you care about. This is somewhat upsetting, as the testing shown in the video below reveals that performance is great when running it.

Currently OpenWRT support is painfully working its way through development, per the OpenWRT PR thread, so there’s hope that official support will appear at some point. As with all of such SBCs the question is always whether official support appears before the hardware has been rendered firmly obsolete. Until then the community Debian 13 image might actually be safer.

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Running DOOM On A Travel Router With Touch Screen

May 1, 2026 by 11 Comments

Continuing his quest to put DOOM on literally everything that has a capable enough processor and a screen, [Aaron Christophel]’s most recent target is a Slate 7 Pro travel router. With a generous 2.8″ touch screen and a lot of onboard processing power to handle all the advertised networking and routing features via its WAN and (W)LAN interfaces, it should be able to run the game really quite well. As usual the main question is how to get the game to run on it first.

The port of choice is fbdoom, with instructions on how to run it on this router provided on the GitHub project page. The reason for the touch screen is so that you can see the status of interfaces and interact with it without having to open the web interface. Boringly, this router has an SSH daemon ready to connect to, giving you full root access to the Linux-based firmware.

It’s just your typical AArch64 ARM-based system, with the gl_screen process running for the touch screen display. From there it was easy enough to deduce the settings to jot into fbdoom so that it too could use the same screen and touch inputs. After copying the compiled binary with SCP over to the router, it can then be started like any application. With touch inputs somewhat awkwardly mapped to certain areas of the touch screen, it’d be nice to see the USB 2.0 port used for USB HID inputs, but it does show how easy things can be when it runs something like Linux and you got full root access.

Incidentally this also heavily blurs the lines between something like a Valve Steamdeck and a router, with the latter just missing some gamepad controls on the side to do some on-the-go gaming when you’re not using it for routing network traffic.

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Trying To Build Your Own Consumer-Grade Router In 2026

April 16, 2026 by 49 Comments

Although we have many types of networking equipment with many unique names, at their core they can usually be reduced to just a computer with some specific peripherals. This is especially the case for something like a router, a device found in just about any home these days. Certain consumer-grade routers may contain something special like a VDSL modem, but most of them just have a WAN Ethernet jack on one end and one or more LAN-facing Ethernet ports.

All further functionality is implemented in software, including any firewall, routing and DHCP features. What this means is that any old PC with at least two Ethernet ports or equivalent can be a router as long as you install the appropriate software.

In this article we’ll be taking a look at what consumer-level options there exist here today, ideally something so simple that the average home user could set it up with a bit of coaching.

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Anything Can Be A Router, If You Try Hard Enough

April 2, 2026 by 17 Comments

If you’re an American and you use the Internet at home, it seems probable that routers are going to be in short supply. The US government recently mandated all such devices be home grown for security reasons, which would be fine were it not that the US has next-to-no consumer-grade router manufacturing industry.

So if you’re in the US and you need a router, what can you do? [Noah Bailey] is here from Canada to point out that almost anything (within reason) in computer terms can be made to perform as a router.

The piece is really a guide to setting up a Linux router, which he does on a small form factor PC and a hacked-together assembly of old laptop, PCI-express extender, and scrap network kit. In its most basic form a router doesn’t need the latest and greatest hardware, so there exists we’re guessing almost two decades of old PCs just waiting to be pressed into service. Perhaps it won’t help the non-technical Man In The Street much, but maybe it’ll inspire a few people to save themselves a hefty bill when they need to connect.

You can read our coverage of the ban here.

How To Make Big Cabinets On A Small CNC Router

November 30, 2025 by 18 Comments

It’s easy to build big wooden furniture if you have a massive industrial CNC router, but few of us are so lucky. However, you can still build sizable stuff with a smaller router if you know what you’re doing. [Aribabox] shares some useful tricks and techniques for building large workshop cabinets on smaller machines.

The key to doing this well is modularity. [Aribabox] shows off how to build excellent workshop drawers in pieces using a stackable design. Rather than having to cut out one huge side panel to cover the whole stack of drawers, each drawer can have its own side panel that easily fits on a smaller router. They can then be stacked into a stout assembly that still does its job perfectly well. Assuming your CNC router is trued up properly, you can whip up a lot of furniture quickly, just assembling everything with screws.  You’ll still be able to work faster and make bigger things easier on a big machine, but a small machine can do a lot more than you think.

[Aribabox] supplies design files for a cost if you’re eager to replicate their work. If that doesn’t suit you, you can always just use the video as inspiration to work on your own modular furniture designs instead. We’ve featured other modular furniture designs before, too, that rely on 3D printed and lasercut components.

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Tiny UPS Keeps WiFi Online

October 24, 2025 by 29 Comments

For any mission-critical computer system, it’s a good idea to think about how the system will handle power outages. At the very least it’s a good idea to give the computer enough time to gracefully shut down if the power outage will last for an indefinite time. But for extremely critical infrastructure, like our home Wi-Fi, we might consider a more long-term battery backup that can let us get through the longest of power outages.

Part of why this project from [Next Builder] works so well is that most off-the-shelf routers don’t actually use that much energy. Keeping that and a modem online when the power is out only requires a few lithium batteries. To that end, three lithium ion cells are arranged in series to provide the router with between 9 and 12 volts, complete with a battery management system (BMS) to ensure they aren’t over- or under-charged and that they are balanced. The router plugs directly into a barrel jack, eliminating any switching losses from having to use an inverter during battery operation.

While [Next Builder] is a student who lives in an area with frequent interruptions to the electricity supply, this does a good job of keeping him online. If you’re planning for worse or longer outages, a design like this is easily adapted for more batteries provided the correct BMS is used to keep the cells safely charged and regulated. You can also adapt much larger UPS systems to power more of your home’s electrical system, provided you can find enough batteries.

3D Printed Spirograph Makes Art Out Of Walnut

May 2, 2025 by 9 Comments

Who else remembers Spirograph? When making elaborate spiral doodles, did you ever wish for a much, much bigger version? [Fortress Fine Woodworks] had that thought, and “slapped a router onto it” to create a gorgeous walnut table.

Hands holding a 3d printed sanding block, shaped to fit the grooves routed in the table which is visible in the background.
This printed sanding block was a nice touch.

The video covers not only 3D printing the giant Spirograph, which is the part most of us can easily relate to, but all the woodworking magic that goes into creating a large hardwood table. Assembling the table out of choice lumber from the “rustic” pile is an obvious money-saving move, but there were a lot of other trips and tricks in this video that we were happy to learn from a pro. The 3D printed sanding block he designed was a particularly nice detail; it’s hard to imagine getting all those grooves smoothed out without it.

Certainly this pattern could have been carved with a CNC machine, but there is a certain old school charm in seeing it done (more or less) by hand with the Spirograph jig. [Fortress Fine Woodworks] would have missed out on quite the workout if he’d been using a CNC machine, too, which may or may not be a plus to this method depending on your perspective. Regardless, the finished product is a work of art and worth checking out in the video below.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone use a Spirograph to mill things. It’s not the first giant-scale Spirograph we’ve highlighted, either. To our knowledge, it’s the first time someone has combined them with an artful walnut table.

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