In the previous post of this AirPiConsole series (part1 , part2 ) I used Autossh to create a reverse tunnel from the device to a cloud VPS to permit remote access.
The VPS I use is cheap but unreliable so the tunnel was down most of the time so I started looking for a better alternative.
The solution came from the Packet Pushers podcast episode PQ134 about ZeroTier .
What is ZeroTier?
Welcome back to AirPiConsole blog post, this is part two.
If you read part one and followed the configuration steps you should now have a fully working Raspberry Pi Zero W connected to your WiFi network.
You should also be able to connect via Bluetooth to get a console connection without knowing the IP address of the Raspi.
Now it’s time to move on and start to actually connect to the serial ports.
As a network engineer I spend a lot of time with my laptop connected via serial cable to various devices.
Physical serial connection is needed for initial device setup and sometimes per customer’s security policy I can’t access the network, so I can only use out-of-band management. I also configure many devices at staging lab that I call the “Theory room” because you know, in theory everything works ;-)
Long story short, in 2013 I bought an Airconsole and I really enjoyed the possibility to connect to serial ports over WiFi or Ethernet:
