“Have you ever faced the problem of the WiFi not being able to reach to room? I have been there and that is why I built this WiFi extender.
Story
My mum has a portable WiFi device which is most time in her room, so the WiFi doesn’t get to the living room and that’s a problem but I love to solve problems so I did some googling and I found a GitHub repository for an ESP8266 repeater by martin-ger, the repo had a binary file for the repeater so I just flashed it into my esp8266 using esptool and it worked like magic. Click here to access the repository; however, there were some problems I had with this repeater(extender):
- The web UI interface can’t scan for WiFi networks so I don’t know when I am in the range of the router unless I use the serial interface.
- The web UI interface can’t scan for WiFi networks so I don’t know when I am in the range of the router unless I use the serial interface.
- Debugging can be carried out by noting the rate at which the led is blinking, but there is a catch, the led state when it is connected to the router and when my phone connects to it as an access point is the same, so I get confused because I can’t tell if is connected to the router or if my phone is connected to it.
Due to this, I decided to build mine and fortunately, Arduino had an example for a WiFi range extender, so I Just added a WiFi manager and viola you have a WiFi range extender. Here is some features of my WiFi range extender:
- Scan for networks
- WiFi manger via web ui
- led indicator for debugging
- Reset button to return to factory setting
Yup! that’s all there is to it. I built this extender to meet my own need and I hope it is able to meet your needs for this reason I can’t say my WiFi extender is better than martin-ger esp-repeater which is packed with features such as auto mesh, MQTT, web config interface, CLI, WPA2 Enterprise Config, TCP/IP Config etc.”