A lot of stuff

Changed UI completely (I hate css, even tailwind css ), so it looks more useful, and there are even several channels!!! (this is kinda similar to discord or slack)

Also learned a lot of things about react (like hooks) and express. Btw, it is pretty fun!

Some stuff

Made accounts actually useful. Now, the username is shown before the message.

Yes, I spent 4 hours on just adding authors to the messages🥀

It took so long, because I was paranoid about the security of my app and couldn’t decide where to check for the user’s identity.

Law update

I added the Terms of Service page to withdraw any responsibility. I don’t want to go to jail if someone uses marten for some illegal stuff

Also, fixed some minor bugs in a client (like incorrect url for tcp connections)

A simple chat

I added the MongoDB part to my project, where I store my users (I mean, will store :ppp) and messages. Of course, nothing is encrypted for now (passwords are hashed though), but I will fix it soon.

Just Chat

I want to build some type of the chatting website (like telegram or discord) just to learn a bit more about MERN tech stack.

What I plan to add:

• Accounts
• Text, image messages
• Channels
• DMs

First implementation

As of right now, I have made a simple chat with socket.io, which works, but there is no chat history or even usernames.

Website update

Made the /status page actually useful, showing the time since the start and the number of active tunnels.

btw, this page helped me to detect a memory leak of the http listeners :p
Old listeners weren’t closed when their control connection dropped, so they would accumulate and crash the server.

Huge update

HTTPS is here!

From now on, all http connections are redirected from random subdomains. They are also secured with tls, thanks to cloudflare.

Updated website

Added /docs/ and /status/ pages on my website.

The final touches

It has been a long time since the last devlog, but I finally added some quality-of-life features.

The admin page

PiRouter serves an admin webpage on a standard ip 192.168.50.1 behind the auth (default password is Admin, but don’t tell anyone). It has a number of configurations for the wifi and proxy. It also has a theme switch, but i don’t think that anyone will ever use the light theme ;p

Other stuff

Fixed some bugs and added a bit more configurability during the installation process.

That’s it!

I think that this will be my last devlog, so thanks to anyone watching this. Bye!

Small update

Updated the README. Now it looks clean and much more informative than it was before

Now we have a mascot! (and a landing page)

Designed a polygonal vector logo that resembles a marten (what a coincidence)

What was made

Built a minimalistic landing page with the Astro framework. There’s
not much here for now, but just the basic info.

What’s next?

I want to add http support with random address assignment, so
websites can be served on port 443 with https.

Yay, it’s working

I’ve finally managed to finish the TCP tunnel part.

As always, I overengineered at least something. This time, it was the deployment. Now every push to main starts a GitHub Actions workflow that automatically builds and deploys the server. It was fun, but it took a pretty long time to
figure out CI/CD for the first time :D

What is Marten?

Marten is a free reverse tunnel (just like ngrok) that I’m building with Go. It’s my first project in Go, so it’s also a good way to learn the language itself :p

My TCP design and a first connection

Designed the connection process (for tcp only) and build a simple server and a client that can send messages to each other!

Big thanks to bore for inspiration on how to do this.

Virtual AP update

From now on, you don’t need an additional USB dongle for Pi Proxy Bridge to work!

Better interface

Updated the installer. It now starts by asking which mode you want (virtual interface or second adapter). Then, it asks configuration questions like

• Hotspot SSID
• Hotspot password
• Hotspot’s channel
• Whether to use 5GHz

README update

I also updated the README to better explain how my project works, as well as some setup tips.

Bulletproofing the install script

Spent two hours cooking my installer to perfection. But now we also have a logo!

What’s new

• Added several checks for sudo access, WiFi interfaces and required packages
• Added the uninstall script
• Made a video showcasing Pi Proxy Bridge at work

The time wasn’t logged, but I spent an hour trying to find free video editing software and blur out my ip address :p

Feature-full prototype + installation script 

Added Xray Core and the routing rules so everything works together. Checked it with ifconfig.me. Also, I decided to automate the whole configuration process and made a bash installation script, which seems to work.

Learned a bunch of cool little bash things along the way, like set -e (which stops the script if an error occurs) or the difference between > and &>. 

It works! (kinda) 

Installed and configured hostapd (a tool for creating a hotspot) 

Sounds simple but… 

After setting up an access point, my phone did not connect and was just saying “Obtaining IP address”. Turns out, I also needed to install a DHCP server (dnsmasq) so it assigns different IP addresses to devices on the network. 

But there’s no proxy right now, so…. more updates are to come

Architecture Sketch

Sketched out how my Pi Proxy Bridge works.

The Idea

Raspberry Pi (4B in my case) connects to my home wifi and shares its own hotspot at the same time. Anything on that hotspot gets routed through a proxy. My separate webcam (which needs a proxy to run, but can’t start one itself) connects to the hotspot and gets a proxied internet connection.
Profit.

Details

• Needs a dedicated USB wifi dongle
• No WireGuard or OpenVPN, because they often get blocked. Went with Xray-Core instead (vless, trojan, shadowsocks, etc.)