Cody Tolene's Pico Portal Turns a Raspberry Pi Pico W Into a Portable Wi-Fi Captive Portal

Software engineer Cody Tolene has designed a tool to convert a Raspberry Pi Pico W — and, potentially, the as-yet unannounced Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W — into a Wi-Fi captive portal, with dedicated display for live feedback.

"Turn your Raspberry Pi Pico W into a portable, powerful Wi-Fi access point with this lightweight captive portal software," Tolene writes of his creation. "Whether you're testing networks, showcasing web projects, or exploring IoT [Internet of Things], this tool gives you the flexibility to do it all. It’s easily adaptable for various purposes — serve web applications, demo single-page apps (SPAs), or set up captive portals for network security testing."

The firmware for the project is written in MicroPython, and sets the Raspberry Pi Pico W's Wi-Fi radio up in access point mode — allowing other devices to connect to it. Attempts to browse the web will redirect the connected device to the software's own landing page, written with Node.js — the "captive" part of "captive portal."

The Pico Portal is more than just a software project, though: Tolene has designed it around two display boards from Sheffield, UK-based Pimoroni — the compact Pico Display Pack and the larger Pico Display Pack 2.0 — to provide live feedback on connected devices. These are paired with a suitable lithium-polymer battery in a 3D-printed housing, allowing for on-the-go operation.

"[You can] serve web content/pages and display real-time connection info directly on the onboard Pimoroni screen," Tolene explains. "Log all the connection details for later debugging and use! I spent a long time working on this project and plan to support it long term. Really hoping the community joins in and helps me improve it from here."

The source code for the project is available on GitHub, along with a bill of materials for building your own Pico Portal Mini or Pico Portal XL, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License; Tolene has indicated plans to release the case design files for sale on his store, Lambda Guru — though at the time of writing only fully-assembled devices were listed for sale, priced at $99.99 for the Pico Portal Mini and $119.99 for the Pico Portal XL.