eyJhb changed the topic of #nixos-on-your-router to: NixOS on your Router || https://logs.nix.samueldr.com/nixos-on-your-router
<matthewcroughan> Anybody found any good SBCs?
<matthewcroughan> I wanna set up a mesh network on a farm with someone, but am at a loss, since all the good boards are kinda out of stock.
<matthewcroughan> like the Nanopi m4
<hexa-> nanopi r2s?
<hexa-> also: wired or wireless mesh?
<matthewcroughan> hexa-: That doesn't do wireless.
<hexa-> yeah, mesh isn't strictly wireless :)
<hexa-> mesh is a topology
<matthewcroughan> Fair enough! Yeah, I should specify I want a batman-adv wireless mesh.
<hexa-> the wifi on most sbcs is shit fwiw
<hexa-> why? shitty linux drivers, shitty antennas, shitty radios
<hexa-> shittily connected to the soc
<hexa-> e.g. via sdio
<hexa-> if wifi isn't connected via pcie … run!
<matthewcroughan> Well actually, the orange pi 3 has a mpcie slow
<matthewcroughan> slot*
<matthewcroughan> ah.. msata rather
<hexa-> you're probably going to be better off using an actual wireless access point
<hexa-> and rolling openwrt on that
<matthewcroughan> I want it to run nixos quite badly though :D
<hexa-> rip
<matthewcroughan> I have a bunch of archer c7v2s which will work, but openwrt is a pain to configure
<matthewcroughan> can't run etcd on that
<matthewcroughan> might be alright if I could run etcd on it and configure the config amongst all nodes.
<hexa-> what would you need etcd for on a wireless mesh ap?
<hexa-> and what mesh protocol are you aiming for?
<hexa-> and would you like to have a separate radio for the mesh backhaul?
<hexa-> and would you also like 2.4 and 5 GHz client access at the same time?
<hexa-> that means you need three dedicated radios :D
<matthewcroughan> hexa-: batman-adv
<matthewcroughan> hexa-: maybe I could actually just get twenty orange pi 3's and put 10 of them on 2.4ghz and 10 on 5ghz
<hexa-> The batman-adv support on OpenWrt is excellent 😄
<matthewcroughan> yeah it is, but controlling 7 nodes isn't
<matthewcroughan> I want to use deploy-rs/flakes to control these things, not ansible and shonky shell scripts, sadly.
<hexa-> Except that solid WiFi rarely exists on anything but access points
<matthewcroughan> Yeah, this is an underserved market!
<matthewcroughan> Is there nothing available that works via USB?
<matthewcroughan> Is this a physical issue?
<matthewcroughan> signal, wire length, etc.
<hexa-> There arent really plausible WiFi Radios with USB support
<hexa-> There might be rtw88 idk
<hexa-> Select by radio
<hexa-> mt76, ath10k, ath9k
<hexa-> you can try if nixwrt works for you
<hexa-> but access points generally don't have the flash or ram for a full blown nixos
<hexa-> and they don't really need it during runtime
<hexa-> so, three more things
<hexa-> I manage my access points on openwrt using lua based upgrade scripts. https://git.darmstadt.ccc.de/hexa/openwrt-config-sample
<hexa-> there is nothing in there for mesh networks, but this is how I manage ~12 APs across three setups
<hexa-> which I am a maintainer of
<hexa-> I maintain a regional mesh network with ~700 nodes
<hexa-> (using batman-adv)
<hexa-> we have looked into SBCs and WLAN, and the situation is not great
<hexa-> adding USB based WLAN isn't great either, better than SDIO, but not quite PCIe
<hexa-> which you get on every access point for free
<hexa-> if you have questions, I'll be around tomorrow again :)
<hexa-> good night
<matthewcroughan> hexa-: I'm absolutely at your feet :D
<matthewcroughan> I just want the cheapest possible nixos router with good wifi, I don't want to use openwrt, I'm really convinced I want to use flakes to manage a network
<matthewcroughan> if you think that's silly, let me know why, happy to take criticism! :D
<hexa-> Look at nixwrt then
<matthewcroughan> Yeah Nixwrt is interesting, but I can't do OTA updates of OpenWRT devices.
<matthewcroughan> My desire would be for the devices themselves, to be polling a git repo every 5 mins to see if the flake has changed, if so, rebuild themselves.
<matthewcroughan> It's a different approach.
<hexa-> It feels silly, but i am Not Sold on nixwrt either
<matthewcroughan> Robotnix is something that is really complete enough to use.
<matthewcroughan> if you have see nit
<matthewcroughan> seen it*
<hexa-> I have Not, opened a Tab thougj
<matthewcroughan> nix build github:matthewcroughan/nixcfg#robotnixConfigurations.pyxis.img will get you a LineageOS 18.1 img to flash via TWRP.
<matthewcroughan> That's how cool it is :P
<matthewcroughan> tab complete all the other member attributes of pyxis,
<matthewcroughan> Get to sleep :)
<aleph-> matthewcroughan: Could maybe do an apu2. Think there's a way to get some wifi cards in there
<hexa-> yup, that is true
<hexa-> 2x minipcie, 1x msata
<hexa-> minipcie wifi cards you can get, though newer standards come on m.2
<hexa-> the bummer really is, that one wifi card is just one frequency band usually
<hexa-> so you can get only dualband wifi with an apu
<hexa-> and for proper meshing I'd really want to have 2x2:2 2.4/5 GHz client and 4x4:4 5 GHz backhaul
<hexa-> so three radios ideally
<hexa-> or more ideally … fiber to the barn!
<n0emis[m]> when you can run openwrt on such devices, would'nt it be possible to run nixos with the patched kernel from openwrt?
<hexa-> that is what nixwrt does
<hexa-> you'd need a more minimal userland though :)
<hexa-> and even then openwrt offers you a backported mac80211 stack
<hexa-> ubus patched into all components
<hexa-> band steering and roaming
<hexa-> (on top of the ubus stuff)
<hexa-> things you don't get with a stock hostapd really
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