Final Project Video

Overview

This page provides an overview of Pranav Shastry's contribution to the AESD Final Project Embedded Linux based Wi-Fi Captive Portal Gateway

Drive Link: Note: Video is in 1080p 60fps. Please download for the best viewing experience.

The video demonstrates:

Booting the Raspberry Pi based gateway and bringing up the guest Wi-Fi network
Connecting a client device to the guest SSID
Automatic captive portal popup behavior on supported devices
Logging into the captive portal using guest user account credentials
Successful internet access after authentication
Accessing the admin portal from the management interface
Device monitoring through authenticated, unauthenticated, online, and offline device views
User account management, including creation, modification, disabling, and deletion
Permanent allow and permanent block handling using MAC address based control
Wireless configuration and portal customization through the admin interface
GitHub repository overview a note from Pranav Shastry on how this can be used

My most difficult challenges when implementing this project were:

Getting the onboard Raspberry Pi Broadcom Wi-Fi driver working reliably with hostapd in the Buildroot environment
Integrating shell scripts, CGI handlers, firewall rules, and the web interface into one working system
Debugging captive portal behavior across different client platforms, especially Apple and Android devices
Managing different access flows for authenticated users, permanently allowed devices, and permanently blocked devices
Designing a working admin portal with persistent configuration and runtime device/account state

The most important topics I learned from this project were:

How to build and customize an embedded Linux system using Buildroot for a real networking application
How hostapd, dnsmasq, iptables, lighttpd, and CGI scripts interact in a captive portal gateway design
How per-device access control can be implemented using IP and MAC based rule management
How captive portal detection differs across operating systems and why redirection behavior is harder than standard web development
How to design a management interface that connects backend state, firewall policy, and user-facing controls into one integrated embedded system