Opinions on cellular boosters?

[tetranz]

I know that "cell boosters" are not a popular topic here but I wonder how well, or not, they really work.

Firstly, here's the new cellular connection for my RV that I put together last week.

rpi 10.18.01 PM.jpg

That's a Raspberry Pi 4 running Wireguard and EasyTether to an Android phone. I'm quite pleased with how it's working. I might write it up as a "how to" blog post. I like the idea that unless I go crazy with the amount of data, it seems unlikely to raise any flags at the carrier compared to doing dubious things with SIMs and modems.

I've been using it all this week for work with Slack and Zoom etc and it's working great. Of course I'm in a good signal area.

I'm thinking of getting a booster for the RV. Such things are quite popular in the RV community although they seem to have mixed reviews on Amazon etc. Has anyone got good or bad experiences with booster to report? I'm aware of the feedback issue. I think we'd use it mostly while stationary at a campground.

I like the idea of those with a cradle for the phone. I guess they're designed for a car dashboard but the advantage is low power for the "inside transmitter" which reduces the possible feedback problem. It's essentially a complicated way to attach an external antenna to the phone. The phone will be pretty much dedicated to this. I'm more interested in providing a good signal to this one phone than generally providing a better cellular signal throughout the coach.

[R1250GSA]

Boosters are normally for the last effort to get some kind of signal.
They are an arrow in your RV data quiver but limit your data performance.
They squash/collapse the spatial multiplexing which is where the newer phones and modems get their higher data rates.

https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/
This site may also help.

[Thanatos2185]

How did you get your Pi to recognize EasyTether USB mode? Downloaded it on my android, installed the package in raspbian, attempted restarting network services, doesnt recognize it. If I want to tether without easytether it picks it up automatically. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[tetranz]

I'm writing a detailed blog post about the project. I'll probably have if done tomorrow and will post a link here.

That said, I'm not writing much about the EasyTether on the phone. That mostly "just worked" for me. I assume you've stepped though the EasyTether wizard on the phone. Do you have the normal tethering option on the phone turned off? It needs to be off because it's not really "tethering" in the official sense. It's just an app that talks to the USB port.

[Thanatos2185]

Yeah, the phone part isn't the problem. I feel it's a configuration issue between Raspbian something easy tether does. If I choose to tether it normally it just works. When I turn off standard tethering and then turn on easy tether it doesn't recognize the connection. On the app, it says connection established, and I can ping the phone, however, I don't have internet access.

For example when I ran the wizard after allowing USB debugging. It asked if I wanted to allow it once I plugged it in. I said yes.
ran sudo easytether-usb
interface tun-easytether is used by another process (hotplug?) was the response from that command.

So I did the following:
sudo systemctl restart systemd-networkd to restart the network devices

attempted to run easytether again and get the interface tun response as above.

I've googled the response numerous times in order to try and find a solution, but I'm at a loss at this point. Still searching through google though.

was just trying to see if you ran into any similar issues. (Note I am not a networking professional either, and a beginner/intermediate Linux user.)

What OS are you using on your Pi? Raspbian, or did you load a different distro such as Ubuntu?

[tetranz]

I'm running the latest Raspberry Pi OS (previously known as Raspbian), "buster" on a Pi 4.

I messed around a lot getting it working but I don't recall those problems. I basically plug in the phone and route -n shows tun-easytether at 192.168.117.0. I don't need to run easytether-usb. I think that happens when I plug in the phone. Come to think of it now, I vaguely do remember seeing the port in use by another process message early on. I think it's because the phone connection is already running so you don't need to run it again.

An important gotcha when testing is that EasyTether doesn't do ICMP so ping doesn't work. I think it only passes TCP and UDP. The nice thing then is that Wireguard only uses UDP. With Wireguard running, everything works nicely, including ping.

I reset and reloaded it back to factory defaults last weekend and did it all again so I could take notes for the blog post. I'll try to get it written tonight or tomorrow.

[Thanatos2185]

Awesome! I am eagerly awaiting your blog. This post is no joke the only reason I signed up for this forum lol

[Thanatos2185]

Hahaha, restarted the network manager again, and bam it works. Typing this reply from my PI right now! Now I just need to configure my Ethernet port to forward the signal to my router, and then script it so that it auto connects on startup! I am still looking forward to your blog to see if there's enhancements that I can do! funny thing is that it doesn't show network connectivity in the upper right hand corner. Hmm oh-well!

[tetranz]

Hahaha, restarted the network manager again, and bam it works. Typing this reply from my PI right now! Now I just need to configure my Ethernet port to forward the signal to my router, and then script it so that it auto connects on startup! I am still looking forward to your blog to see if there's enhancements that I can do! funny thing is that it doesn't show network connectivity in the upper right hand corner. Hmm oh-well!

That's good news. Well here's my blog post.
https://databurst.medium.com/running-ea ... 04a2bc9447

I address some of what you mentioned there.

[Thanatos2185]

Well thought I had it. Once the screen went dark it lost its connection and now won't reestablish one.

Great blog by the way!

I'm definitely missing something though to enable this to work.

[tetranz]

Well thought I had it. Once the screen went dark it lost its connection and now won't reestablish one.

Great blog by the way!

I'm definitely missing something though to enable this to work.

Thanks!
Well ... good luck. I'm happy to answer questions or check something to compare if it helps.