How to Build a Raspberry Pi Powered IRL Streaming Wi-Fi Hotspot with Failover Protection
Builders who want one reliable internet feed for a camera usually end up at the same place: a homemade Wi-Fi hotspot, meaning a small unit that hands internet to your GoPro, camera or phone. A Raspberry Pi does that cheaply.
What a Raspberry Pi cannot do alone is survive a cellular dead spot, which is where Speedify comes in: a software app that runs two or more internet connections at the same time, so if one cellular connection drops out the stream keeps flowing over the rest. With a single connection, Speedify works as an encrypted VPN and cannot stop that connection from dropping, so tether at least two phones or cellular adapters, ideally on different carriers. The build instructions here cover requirements, wiring and setup, ending with a hotspot you can walk with. Once it works, here is how to IRL stream on YouTube with it.
Speedify keeps your stream online while you move
The Goal: Uninterrupted Internet for IRL Streaming
Many will argue that IRL streaming can be done with just your smartphone on 4G/5G cellular, or by using your smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot for your GoPro or video camera. This is true in some cases, but certainly not in all of them.
Cellular coverage is not homogenous or ubiquitous, especially when you’re at the outskirts of a city, or in an area that’s prone to poor mobile signal, like an underground passage or inside a building. That’s why it’s important to get your Internet from at least 2 different cellular carriers. This way, if one’s network fails, you can use the other.
But there’s one more thing: suppose you have 2 internet sources with you. What will you do when one of them fails? Stop the IRL stream, set up the other connection and then resume it? Instead, you need a service that can combine BOTH sources into one stable connection. Speedify, a VPN that combines internet connections, does that on a Raspberry Pi and turns the connections from 2 smartphones into one IRL streaming hotspot.
Requirements for the Raspberry Pi IRL Streaming Hotspot
For uninterrupted IRL streaming, the build uses the following parts:
- Portable USB-C battery pack, to power the Raspberry Pi and, if needed, the smartphones you tether to it
- Raspberry Pi 4
- Smartphone or other Wi-Fi enabled camera to record (a GoPro, for example)
- Smartphones that you will tether to the Pi via USB
- Backpack to carry the devices
How to Build the Raspberry Pi IRL Streaming Hotspot
Here are the steps you need to follow:
- First, you’ll need to install Speedify on the Raspberry Pi. Speedify on Linux, including Raspberry Pi, needs a paid plan (there is no free tier on Linux).
- Ready to do some IRL streaming? Make the Pi portable and functional by plugging it into the battery pack.
- Next, connect as many smartphones or cellular adapters as you can to the Pi and enable tethering. Make sure you leave the Pi’s internal Wi-Fi card not connected so you can use it as a connection sharing interface.
- To start the Wi-Fi hotspot, turn on Speedify and enable sharing.
To share over a Wi-Fi hotspot, select wlan0 as the sharing interface. Set a custom SSID and password for your hotspot and restart Speedify to apply the changes. If you’re using Speedify on the Pi graphically, you should see the connections show up as connection bubbles on the Speedify dashboard. - Put everything into a backpack and connect to the hotspot on the device you plan to live stream with. If you’re using a smartphone as your streaming device, you can also run Speedify on it, so the phone uses the Raspberry Pi’s Wi-Fi hotspot and its own cellular connection at the same time.
The final result: the Speedify team used the Streamlabs app to customize the Twitch streaming settings. While connected to the hotspot, the team could IRL stream in HD on the go without worrying about weak signal. Check out the videos on the Connectify Twitch channel.
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