VRConfig – Visual Router Configuration for OpenWrt

Hi,

I am Tobias, a Computer Science student at the TU-Berlin. This is my second time participating in GSoC for Freifunk.
I am excited about this project as it helps to reduce the entry barrier for inexperienced users of OpenWrt and its web interface LuCI.

When you look at the current LuCI Webinterface you will notice that it looks fairly decent, especially with the Material Theme.
However for an inexperienced user without a technical background it surely looks scary. All the text full of technical terms with few pictures can look like a book with seven seals.

This project aims to introduce a graphical configuration mode.
To make the configuration interface more connected to the actual router the user owns, we want to display an image of the backside of the ports in the web interface.
The user shall be able to interact with this graphical representation of the router by hovering and clicking on the different parts like LAN ports, antenna etc.

What are the necessary steps to archive this goal?

First, we need pictures of the backside of all the different router models. Here the idea is to collect them via crowdsourcing by the community. Everyone can take a picture of their router and upload it to a Git repository. Also, the location of of the router components must be marked on every picture. For that I will develop a small application which allows the user to annotate a router picture and generates a metadata file.
Second, the annotated pictures need to be integrated into the OpenWrt buildsystem.
Third, a LuCI application needs to be developed to display the result as an interactive graphic in the web interface.

In the next blog post I will go into more detail on the individual steps as well as update you about the progress.

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