Paul McGinley's PiFi Delivers a Quick-Start OpenWRT Routing Platform for Raspberry Pi 4 and 5

Developer Paul McGinley is looking to make it easier for people to stay secure online, with a software bundle that ties together a range of open source projects to turn a Raspberry Pi single-board computer into a Wi-Fi router with ad-blocking and virtual private network (VPN) capabilities: PiFi.

"I’ve been working on this Raspberry Pi router project for all year so really wanted to share it," McGinley explains. "I always found OpenWRT a bit tricky and even after spending weeks getting everything working the way I wanted, things like switching Wireguard server was another wiki article/20 minute job. So I decided to make my own simpler to use version — basically a custom build of OpenWRT, a smartphone app, and a decent Wi-Fi USB adapter."

As McGinley says, the PiFi project stands on the shoulders of giants: the routing is handled by the well-established OpenWRT, ad-blocking by AdGuard, and virtual private networking by the user's choice of WireGuard or OpenVPN. What McGinley adds is simplicity: all the software is available as an SD card image, ready for use with any Raspberry Pi 4 Model B or Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer, while a companion smartphone app eases configuration and monitoring.

For those looking for peak performance, McGinley has pre-loaded drivers for an optional USB 3.0 Wi-Fi adapter — delivering, he claims, eight times the sustained throughput of the on-board Wi-Fi of a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. Those adding the USB dongle will also unlock "travel router" mode — allowing the Raspberry Pi to use one Wi-Fi adapter as a client and the other as an access point, routing between the two as required.

More information is available on the PiFi website and on McGinley's Hackaday.io page; the project's images are downloadable from GitHub under the GNU General Public License 2. McGinley is also selling a kit, which includes a 32GB microSD card with PiFi pre-installed and the USB 3.0 Wi-Fi adapter, plus a gigabit Ethernet cable, for £34.99 (around $46) — and pledges buyers will receive "early access to future software updates and exclusive in-app features."