How to add a mobile dashboard for your Pi-Star hotspot device

A Pi-Star can do a variety of tasks including being a single-mode hotspot giving access to a number of Digital Voice networks.

A Pi-Star is digital voice software for personal & low-power hotspots and repeaters. It handles various digital voice systems including D-STAR, DMR, P25, YSF, and other cross modes when you use it with a multi-mode digital voice modem that is compatible with these modes. The Pi-Star is constantly updated to ensure new developments are incorporated into the device. One of the things you can do on a Pi-Star hotspot device is adding a mobile dashboard.

To add a mobile dashboard to your Pi-Star hotspot, connect your Pi-Star hotspot to your wireless network and open a web browser on your PC, log in to the Pi-Star desktop dashboard and run a few commands. On your phone, open a web browser and access the Pi-Star mobile dashboard.

What is a Pi-Star mobile dashboard?

The mobile dashboard is an add-on that you install on the Pi-Star and acts as a dashboard specially designed for mobile devices. There are a lot of things you can view and do on a mobile dashboard. You can turn on and off the Pi-Star from your phone, view your hotspot device’s activities from the mobile dashboard, and monitor traffic and the activity on your hotspot device including the person that accessed it and the kind of activity they transmitted.

Besides, you can view the enabled modes on the hotspot, the radio card status, the Pi-Star version, and the mobile dashboard version. You can control the settings of your hotspot device and how it works from the mobile dashboard. If you have a wireless network connected to your Pi-Star, then you can view its status from your mobile dashboard on your phone, refresh the WiFi router, configure the WiFi router or configure its settings.

Adding the mobile dashboard

Adding a mobile dashboard for your Pi-Star is simple and fast. Firstly, connect the hotspot device to your home or office network, and on your PC, open a web browser. On the address bar, type in pi-star.local/admin/expert/ssh_access.php and press enter to visit the Pi-Star setup page. Log in to the page using your credentials. If you don’t have the credentials, then use the default username and password which are ‘pi-star’ and ‘raspberry’ respectively.

After successfully logging in, run the following commands in order. First, copy and paste ‘rpi-rw’ and run then copy and paste ‘sudowget -O /tmp/pi-star.mobile.install.sh’ and wait for it to finish running. Next, copy and paste ‘ https://www.w0otm.com/pistar/pi-star.mobile.install.sh’ and run it. The next command to run is  ‘sudochmod 555 /tmp/pi-star.mobile.install.sh’ followed by ’sudo /tmp/pi-star.mobile.install.sh’. Finally, copy and paste ‘sudorm -r /tmp/pi-star.mobile.install.sh’ and run it.

After all the commands have been successfully executed, go to the update tab and then on your phone, open a browser and type in pi-star.local/mobile in the address bar and tap on Enter.

A Summary table

FAQs

Can I change the root password from the mobile dashboard?

No, you can’t change the Pi-Star root password from the mobile dashboard instead; you have to use the desktop dashboard to change the password.

Is the mobile dashboard password protected?

Unfortunately, the mobile dashboard isn’t password protected and doesn’t even require an admin password to access your Pi-Star. It also contains fewer features compared to the desktop dashboard.