-A Simple Homebrew Plug and Play 3DS HomePass Relay and Fake "Nintendo Zone" Hotspot-
One of the major features of the Nintendo 3DS is streetpassing. It allows the little Miis/Avatars that you create in one system to jump from one 3DS to another to be used in the Streetpass specific Plaza Games (along with lots of in-game goodies for retail style games such as Bravely Default, Animal Crossing, Kid Icarus, Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, etc etc).
The problem is, unless you live in a high population density area such as NYC or Tokyo, walking close enough to someone else who has a 3DS in their pocket during their daily travels makes these Streetpasses are far and few inbetween.
In comes Homepass relay. Nintendo wanted to offer relay hotspots where these Miis could be queued up in small groups, and then relayed when you next pass that hotspot. The problem again is that you need to find one of these special nintendo zones, which are located at retail establishments, and again, not all that common.
In comes Homepass. Homepass is a method of "tunneling" these 3DS Streetpass packets by pretending to be official Streetpass relays. There are several methods to set these up, but can be tricky, and require special hardware. They also tie up otherwise full blown PCs while you are using them.
And finally... in comes SpillPass.
Spillpass is a turn-key solution to getting unlimited streetpasses on your 3DS at a low cost and requires almost no technical skill to set up. You just buy the hardware, flash an image to an SD card, and plug it all in. It is also smaller than your home router and takes very little electricity to run 24/7. You will have a full streetpass queue every 10 minutes. Forever. It also acts as a "Nintendo Zone Hotspot", which lets you use that normally useless nintendozone icon on your 3DS to download exclusive demos and browse some other advertisey *** that you normally need to sit in a toys-r-us or bestbuy to do
The below tutorial is copied and modified from my own site located at http://www.spillmonkey.com/?page_id=5
Spillpass is 100% free to use and distribute as well as 100% legal. Nothing here steps on the toes of Nintendo nor requires any soft/hard modification to your system. Enjoy!
-Update- With Nintendo's recent change to their relay network, the SpillPass Pi now offers 12 streetpasses about every 8 - 10 minutes. That is enough streetpassing to keep you playing all the Mii Plaza games in rotation forever without breaks (with the current MAC list and timing structure, this device will never overlap into the 8-hour cool-down period)
Description:
SpillPass Pi aims to be a plug and play StreetPass relay and Nintendo Zone Hotspot that will function behind any standard home router without configuration. Just plug it in and let it run! It runs on the Raspberry Pi hardware and runs the latest (as of this writing) version of Raspbian OS. Thanks goes out to the Raspberry Pi foundation as well as the HomePass community for their work and continued support and progress in helping people the world over complete these damned 3D Puzzles.
(Beta Testing)
Instructions:
Step 1. Buy the components
This project requires....
A Raspberry Pi Model B (512 MB / Revision 2)
A quality micro USB power supply that can provide 1A @ 5V (a decent one as to avoid brown-outs since it is powering a wifi chip)
An 8GB SD card (and a USB SD Card reader for your PC if you don't already have one)
A USB Adapter compatible in Monitor Mode and running a chipset that works with the nl80211 driver (link below - I recommend the BELKIN 150N (F6D4050))
A free port on your router/switch
Raspberry Pi Case (optional but makes it look nice)
HDMI cable (optional to hook the device to a monitor)
Decently priced kits (they lowered their kit prices significantly) with good power supplies and cases for the Pi itself are sold by CanaKit
The cheapest USB Wifi Adapter with the required chipset comes in at just under $10 (F6D4050)
All of these items I have listed on, and can be bought directly through the hardware page on my site (i do not up-charge any of the products). There are a few of the best/cheapest options for each piece, thought you can buy them from anywhere as long as they are the same as listed above
Step 2. Download the required software - ALL 100% LEGAL BTW
Latest SpillPassPi image located here: http://www.spillmonkey.com/?page_id=5 (the link will be down the page. I linked to the site as the mirrors can change)
SD Card Imaging Software (Win32 Disk Imager) from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
ColaSoft Mac Scanner Free (Optional if you want to find the device IP after a reboot without a monitor attached): http://www.colasoft.com/mac_scanner/ind ... ac_scanner
Putty (Optional if you would like to SSH into the terminal of the device): http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgta ... nload.html
WinSCP (Optional if you would like to transfer files back and forth to the device): http://winscp.net/eng/download.php
Step 3. Flash the SpillPassPi image to the SD card
Insert the USB SD card reader into your PC.
Insert the SD Card into the card reader.
Run Win32 Disk Imager and ensure that your SD Card is now showing and selected under the "Device" dropdown box on the right hand side.
Unzip the SpillPassPi image file you downloaded earlier. (windows can do this for you if you right click the file and select extract)
Select the SpillPassPi image in the Image File area.
Click on WRITE. - It will notify you when it is completed.
*Note - Some people have had issues with the bootup after imaging. If this happens to you, you can either use dd to image the card if you are a linux person, or just make sure to format the SD card first with the official SD Formatter software located here - https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/format ... a_windows/
You should not encounter this issue if you buy your SD card with the CanaKit (though it isn't much of a problem)
Step 4. Fit them together
Fit the Pi into your case if you have one, and insert the now loaded SD card into the proper slot.
Plug the Wifi USB Adapter into the top USB slot, a network wire directly from your router or switch into the on-board Ethernet, and the SD card into the SD slot.
Plug in a monitor and keyboard if you like (optional).
Step 5. Power it up
Plug in the MicroSD USB Power chord.
The SpillPassPi will power up!
Step 6. Enjoy streetpassing and connecting to Nintendo Zone from the comfort of your own home
You are all set. Enjoy your new SpillPass Pi box!
Notes
Because the device is in rotation mode, there is a brief drop and pickup in WiFi service that some games cannot handle. It is recommended that you connect to your normal WiFi while you play these games online. I may add an option to disable/enable Mac Rotation from the WebGUI at a later time to assist with this.
Additional Advanced Notes
This device pulls an IP via your routers DHCP setting and fully releases it upon reset. It is very likely that the IP may change upon each reboot. There are two decent options to handle this.
If you have it plugged into a monitor, the system launches a new connected screen session on load (to separate the MAC rotation and hostapd script into it's own process). This screen lists off the IP address on each refresh. You can use this to connect via SCP, Putty, or to the WebGUI via http://IPADDRESSOFUNIT (currently offers only a clean reset and shutdown option).
Another easy method to retrieving the IP of the device is by looking up the mac address. By running ColaSoft Mac Scanner Free, and selecting SCAN with the default settings (it is initialy set to scan your local subnet), you can retrieve all the mac addresses of the active devices on your network. Since we are specifically rotating through a specific range of mac addresses by default, it is easy to spot. By default, the mac should be prefixed with 4E:53:50:4F:4F:XX
Additionally, you may modify the MAC Address list used by simply changing the file located at /etc/hostapd/mac_nintendozone
Additional Security Notes
This device does indeed open up a non-password encrypted wifi session. It is designed to be as simple as possible, as compatible as possible (to work behind any normal home router,) and to provide Nintendo Zone Access (does not work properly if WPA is enabled.)
It's range however is fairly short as it is using very little transmit power. It should not be a major concern for a small house. If however you are in a densely packed area and are security oriented, WPA may be enabled and configured by editing the mac changer script located in /etc/hostapd There is a section of this script that generates the new host config on each rotation. A Mac Address filter (that you would add your 3DS mac too) can also be created to maintain Nintendo Zone Compatibility while locking down the hotspot without WPA. These processes may be covered in a later update.
SSH is also enabled for the root user. You may change this password if you wish without issue to the functionality of the script. WebGUI access is via htaccess file. Change accordingly if required.
Change log:
Version 0.1 - Success! Found the cheapest and most readily available wifi chipset that supports what we need to do. Let the testing begin.
Version 0.5 - First successful streetpass via a single statically assigned mac. Working off router's DHCP without opening any ports.
Version 0.6 - Tinkering with Semperverus's rotational script. Modified, but used as primary learning source. Ty Semperverus.
Version 0.8 - First successful rotating streetpass.
Version 1.0 - First fully automated streetpass rotation from boot. Setup hostapd session in a named screen that takes over the primary monitor session on load. Displays IP and information.
Version 1.1 - Began very simple WebGUI interface.
Version 1.2 - Minor tweaks for faster boot and stability.
Version 1.3 - Just because.
Version 1.313 - Reboot and Shutdown implemented in webGUI
Version 1.5 - First Release
Version 1.6 - Added some auto-recovery if things go wrong internally. Rotation speed has also been shortened and better staggered.
This device and it's software come with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
Nintendo may at any point in time decide to completely change their relay communication methods.
If that ever becomes the case, enjoy your new re-purposable Raspberry Pi
This device and it's creators are in no way affiliated with nor endorsed by the wonderful people at Nintendo.
Though there is no official support channel, I am often found in #3DS on Efnet
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