Upgrading my current setup with Raspberry Pi

[elwood_]

I'm looking to upgrade my current setup of Cradlepoint MBR-95, Pantec UML-295, with a Wilson 314411 antenna. This has been running a Verizon gUDP for almost 7 years now with little issue. Closest towers with decent LoS: 2, 4, 5, 13, 66 on one, only 16 on the other.

Trying to keep costs around $250 or under, i'm thinking about using the Raspberry Pi B3 i have sitting unused.
Anyone have experience with a similar setup, will it work? Should i do anything different?

My current shopping list:
A second Wilson 314411
LMR400 cable
EP06-A or EM7565
2x antenna adapters between the modem/LMR400/Antenna
RPi Hat
Case for the RPi & Hat

[Didneywhorl]

The raspberry pi is a cool project to play with. I personally would only build a router out of it if you are a linux fan and love playing with the pi.

If you are wanting to simply keep on a budget. I would go with a NEXQ6GO from thewirelesshaven.com. The EP06A drops right in.
For the EP06A and the router you would be in under $200. IF you wanted the EM7565 you would only need to swap out the twp antenna pigtails for MHF4 to SMA female bulkhead 5" pigtails and a mini-PCIe to M.2 adapter to get the M.2 modem installed into the router, since it is an M.2 instead of mPCIe like the EP06.

[Didneywhorl]

Good call to mirror your antennas. I always recommend matched pairs, and always 2 where 2 can be afforded and used. 4 if you get all fancy with a high end modem.

[elwood_]

Thanks for the responses. Now that i think about it, i really don't have the luxury to tinker around a bunch to get the RPi setup going since my girlfriend works from home. It just needs to work.

That said, i'm thinking about going with the WE1326 and remove my Netgear R7000 from the mix. Would the included power adapter be enough to handle the EM7565 or should i add the 2.5a upgrade from thewirelesshaven.com?

[Adm1jtg]

Thanks for the responses. Now that i think about it, i really don't have the luxury to tinker around a bunch to get the RPi setup going since my girlfriend works from home. It just needs to work.

That said, i'm thinking about going with the WE1326 and remove my Netgear R7000 from the mix. Would the included power adapter be enough to handle the EM7565 or should i add the 2.5a upgrade from thewirelesshaven.com?

If I recall correctly you cannot use external antennas with this unit UNLESS you drill holes in the case and add extra pigtails. Also many on here have stated that the included wifi on most of these units is subpar compared to a dedicated dual band router, and thus disable the wifi and connect a dedicated router for wifi via the ethernet ports.

If you like the we1326 but dont feel like grabbing the drill the wg3526 is basically the same specs but with a meta case and ports for external antenna usage.

[mtl26637]

I wouldn't underestimate what the pi is capable of, especially the pi4. The pi4 has gigabit lan and usb 3.0 and there is firmware for all versions of the pi floating around. It was even powerful enough to run OMR which I had used to bond 4 separate providers and use as my main home router. Only downfall with the pi4 was its single ethernet port but even at that it didn't skip a beat with 4 providers running on their own vlan. You can also use cheap usb to ethernet adapters rather than setting up vlans. Really my only complaint is having to use a modified usb cable to supply the modem with more juice which is probably not a bad idea on any setup since newer modems are power hungry.

[poodad]

I wouldn't underestimate what the pi is capable of, especially the pi4. The pi4 has gigabit lan and usb 3.0 and there is firmware for all versions of the pi floating around. It was even powerful enough to run OMR which I had used to bond 4 separate providers and use as my main home router. Only downfall with the pi4 was its single ethernet port but even at that it didn't skip a beat with 4 providers running on their own vlan. You can also use cheap usb to ethernet adapters rather than setting up vlans. Really my only complaint is having to use a modified usb cable to supply the modem with more juice which is probably not a bad idea on any setup since newer modems are power hungry.

Be forewarned that there is no production ready LTE router/firewall software for the RPi4. There is a daily snapshot of OpenWRT which is pretty limited, and a community build which is fairly complete, but still a work in progress.

[R1250GSA]

So if you do want to buy a new Raspberry Pi...
Go for the new RPi4B 8GB model. Even if you start out with 32bit, in future when you go 64bit OS, the extra memory can be used for RAM DISK space, to either save the IO life of the SD Card, or to increase performance.