Simple Wi-Fi Hotspot Setup

How the three boxes work together

Each device does one job. Starlink just gets you internet. The MikroTik is the brain — it hands out access, charges for time, and keeps one customer from hogging the link. The Cudy is just a dumb, open Wi-Fi radio.

What you need

Four things, plus a laptop for the one-time setup.

Three cables, in this order. Leave the admin laptop plugged in until Step 4 is done.

1. Starlink → MikroTik: plug the Starlink Ethernet Adapter cable into port ether1 on the hEX.
2. MikroTik → Cudy: plug a cable from ether2 on the hEX into the Cudy's WAN/LAN port.
3. Laptop → MikroTik: plug your admin laptop into ether3 (unplug this once setup is done, or leave it — it's harmless either way).

This turns off Starlink's own Wi-Fi and router, and hands its internet connection straight through the cable to the MikroTik.

1. Open the Starlink app on your phone, connected to the dish.
2. Go to Settings → Network.
3. Turn on Bypass Mode and confirm.
4. The dish reboots (~2 minutes). When it's back, it's just a dumb internet pipe.

The Cudy must not hand out its own internet addresses — it just needs to be a Wi-Fi radio.

1. Connect a laptop/phone to the Cudy and open http://cudy.net (or http://192.168.10.1).
2. Go to Advanced Settings → Operation Mode, choose Access Point (AP), and save — the Cudy will reboot.
3. Under Wireless Settings, set the network name, e.g. "Starlink Wi-Fi — Login Required."
4. Set security to Open / None — customers connect instantly and get redirected to the login page.
5. Turn on AP / Client Isolation. This is not optional on an open network — without it, customers can see and probe each other's devices.

Skip the manual steps below by running the installer from Step 5 — it configures the router over SSH automatically. This section is here if you'd rather do it by hand in WinBox.

Get online, and name the ports

# WAN on ether1, hotspot on ether2
/interface set [find default-name=ether1] name=ether1-WAN
/interface set [find default-name=ether2] name=ether2-Hotspot

/ip dhcp-client add interface=ether1-WAN disabled=no add-default-route=yes use-peer-dns=yes

/ip firewall nat add chain=srcnat out-interface=ether1-WAN action=masquerade

Give the hotspot its own network

# A big pool: phones use several random addresses each
/ip address add address=10.10.0.1/22 interface=ether2-Hotspot network=10.10.0.0
/ip pool add name=hotspot-pool ranges=10.10.1.1-10.10.3.254
/ip dhcp-server add name=dhcp-hotspot interface=ether2-Hotspot address-pool=hotspot-pool lease-time=30m disabled=no
/ip dhcp-server network add address=10.10.0.0/22 gateway=10.10.0.1 dns-server=10.10.0.1,1.1.1.1
/ip dns set allow-remote-requests=yes servers=1.1.1.1,8.8.8.8

Turn on the hotspot itself

/ip hotspot profile add name=hsp-profile hotspot-address=10.10.0.1 dns-name=hotspot.local login-by=http-pap,mac-cookie use-radius=no
/ip hotspot add name=hs-starlink interface=ether2-Hotspot address-pool=hotspot-pool profile=hsp-profile disabled=no

Create the pricing tiers

# Up to 3 Mbps up / 10 Mbps down, one device per token
/ip hotspot user profile add name="1-Hour-Token" rate-limit="3M/10M" shared-users=1 mac-cookie-timeout=1d
/ip hotspot user profile add name="6-Hour-Token" rate-limit="3M/10M" shared-users=1 mac-cookie-timeout=1d
/ip hotspot user profile add name="24-Hour-Token" rate-limit="3M/10M" shared-users=1 mac-cookie-timeout=1d

This does everything above automatically: connects to the MikroTik over SSH (it assumes a factory-fresh router at 192.168.88.1), pushes the full network/hotspot/token config, enables the API, prints 20 starter vouchers, then installs Mikhmon — the voucher/point-of-sale panel — on whatever Linux box you run it from, already linked to the router.

Plug a Linux machine (a Raspberry Pi is perfect) into one of the MikroTik's free LAN ports, then run:

curl -fsSL https://longridge.co.zw/install.sh | sudo bash

No prompts — it makes sensible assumptions and reports exactly what it did (and any voucher PINs) at the end. If your router already has a different IP or password set, override without touching the script:

curl -fsSL https://longridge.co.zw/install.sh |   MIKROTIK_IP=192.168.88.1 MIKROTIK_USER=admin MIKROTIK_PASS='yourpass' sudo -E bash

Prefer to generate vouchers by hand from the MikroTik terminal instead? Paste this any time:

:for i from=1 to=20 do={
    :local pin ([:rndnum from=100000 to=999999]);
    /ip hotspot user add name=$pin password=$pin profile="1-Hour-Token" limit-uptime=1h comment="1HR-Batch-1";
    :put ("Voucher PIN: " . $pin);
}

The one step the installer can't safely automate — MikroTik's own hotspot template syntax and RouterOS's scripting syntax both use $(...), so pushing this file by script risks mangling it. Five minutes by hand in WinBox instead. By default the login page asks for a username and a password; customers only have one PIN, so make it one field.

1. In WinBox, go to Files, find hotspot/login.html, and drag it to your desktop.
2. Open it in a text editor and replace the username/password fields inside the <form> with the block below.
3. Drag the edited file back into the hotspot folder in WinBox Files, overwriting the original.

<form name="login" action="$(link-login-only)" method="post">
  <input type="hidden" name="dst" value="$(link-orig)" />
  <input type="hidden" name="popup" value="true" />

  <label for="voucher">Enter Voucher PIN</label>
  <input type="text" id="voucher" name="username" placeholder="e.g. 482910" required />
  <input type="hidden" id="password" name="password" />

  <script>
    document.forms.login.onsubmit = function () {
      document.getElementById('password').value = document.getElementById('voucher').value;
      return true;
    };
  </script>

  <button type="submit">Connect to Internet</button>
</form>

1. Connect a phone to the Cudy's Wi-Fi network.
2. A "Sign in to Wi-Fi network" prompt should appear automatically — tap it.
3. If it doesn't appear, open a browser and go to any plain http:// site — you'll be redirected to the login page.
4. Enter one of the PINs from Step 5 and connect.
5. In WinBox under IP → Hotspot → Active, you'll see that customer's MAC address, IP, uptime, and data used.

Quick troubleshooting