DIY Wifi Router Access Point With Raspberry Pi

Coronavirus killed my wifi

Like everyone else in the world, my household has been stuck at home for the past few months. All that working from home traffic, streaming, gaming, etc hasn’t been easy on my aging wifi access point (not technically a router in my case), and a week or two ago my wifi finally died. Woe.

In normal times, a quick trip to Best Buy for a new one would’ve been the end of it- but alas, the shelves were empty, and delays from Amazon meant the Earl household was looking at nearly five days without wifi before a replacement could arrive. Five, miserable days of being tethered by ethernet cables, of hearing a dystopian chorus of every Alexa screaming in unison about their lack of an internet connection, of smart lights stubbornly refusing to turn themselves off… in short, hell on earth.

Not today, Satan.

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Retrowave: Theme for EmulationStation and RetroPie

For my latest RetroPie build, I wanted to go with a synthwave style, so I made this 80’s inspired theme for EmulationStation.  Introducing Retrowave: plenty of laser grids, neon lights, and pixel test makes for a perfect match for RetroPie!

Image gallery:

Retrowave Theme – EmulationStation

Install via RetroPie Setup script, or download it manually here:

Check out the matching video splashscreen too!

Controlling Pi-Hole with Physical Buttons

Controlling Pi-Hole with Physical Buttons

I recently set up Pi-Hole, the awesome network-wide ad blocker that runs on a Raspberry Pi.  But, I wanted an easy way to enable/disable it using physical buttons attached to the device itself.  No problem- thanks to a Pimoroni Button Shim and some Python scripting, I can now control my Pi-Hole with the press of a button!

Read on for full instructions and the script I used.

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