Chillifire based on OpenWRT Kamikaze 8.09. The benefit is that this new Chillifire firmware version can be installed on many more hardware architectures and thus routers compared to the old one. Microtik boards, Ubiquiti routers, FritzBox, Fonera, some Asustek and DLink routers, Atheros chipset based routers (to name but a few)are all within reach now. By no means are you confined to the good old WRT54GL – not that there is anything wrong with it. The firmware expects a minimum of 4MB flash memory and 16MB RAM. For a list of supported router models please refer to OpenWRT Table of Hardware for now. We will update lists of actually tested routers as the tests occur over time and we receive feedback from clients. We are reliant on the feedback of the community, as you will understand that we cannot test them all. If you want a firmware image compiled by us for a certain Hardware platform, please contact us via support. We will do that for you and ‘tackle’ the router together with you, if further adjustments for that particular model are required. Another very important improvement is the ability to track web traffic down to IP address level for logged in users. This is a feature that may be a legal requirement in some jurisdiction. The firmware also provides an overview of currently logged in users and the ability to disconnect them, if required. An improved interface to maintain your own splash page and add webpages or websites to your walled garden rounds up the improvements. Chillifire now supports DD-WRT To manage your hotspot with Chillifire using DD-WRT on your router, simply install the standard version of the DD-WRT software on your router as you usually would (for installation instructions, supported models, and firmware download check www.dd-wrt.com). Once DD-WRT’s standard version is installed all that is required is some additional configuration through DD-WRT’s web front-end describes in this guide and you have a Chillifire Hotspot. Pricing and account options are customisable through our Chillifire control panel just the same as for a Hotspot run with Chillifire firmware.Detailed configuration instructions on how to configure DD-WRT based routers to work as a Chillifire Hotspot can be downloaded here Chillifire hotspot users can now enjoy your hotspot in Spanish The spanish language translation of Chillifire was performed by native speakers and covers the entire hotspot front end. We are looking forward to welcome more Spanish speaking hotspot owners to our community. And of course, we encourage anyone who wants to see their language represented to contribute. The translation apparently took less than an hour. Free Access Hotspots with Chillifire Free-Access hotspots have finally arrived at Chillifire. This now delivers a much requested functionality to our service subscribers. In particular in the US hotspot access is expected as a free service in hotels, and other locations. So why have hotspots at all then if access is free for the end user? Because there are still legal requirements to monitor and log network traffic and access. You also do not want to have the access monopolised by individual users, so you need to control bandwidth and data load. You may wish to block people using your connection, who are not actually patrons of your business. These are just some of the good reasons to still have a hotspot that can help you control all these aspects without having to hands-on manage it. So how does this new Free-Access portal work? Hotspot users will be presented with the usual logon screen. If they have no valid login yet, they can register by pressing on a ‘Register’ button. The registration is configurable. It will always request the users email address, which has to be a valid email address – valid not just by format, but truly existing on a mail server. In addition you can request the entry against an existing physical address (checked against Google maps) and a codeword chosen by you (to be given to patrons of your business or your neighbours or anyone else you want to share your connection with to prevent passers-by using your connection randomly). Once the data is entered and validated the user receives a user, password and can log on. You can see how these registration configuration options make this service equally as attractive for cafes with targeted patronage as well as communities who wish to provide general WIFI coverage. There are further scenarios enabled, for example the suppression of the registration ‘on-the-fly’ as described above. This is handy if you wish to hand out users individually (created manually in the console) to only agreed users, say in your private club or some of your neighbours. Moneybookers Payment Gateway Integrated We now offer the Moneybookers payment gateway as an additional payment option for your pay-by-use hotspot. Moneybookers is one of the large international payment gateway providers, who accept CC payments without requiring expensive banking merchant accounts from users of their service. Their service accepts payments in over 190 countries Multi Language Support We have now added multi-language capability to our existing multi-currency handling making Chillifire a truly international service. For your Hotspot users this means they can change the language of the Hotspot purchasing process by the click of a button (or a flag that is) and purchase and consume your Hotspot services in their language. Customise your Hotspot start page We now offer you a variety of different color schemes for Chillifire over the standard yellow/black and white color scheme. There are now four color schemes available: OceanBlue, YellowFire, SteelGrey, and CoffeeBrown. And there are even more ways to customise your hotspot: 1. You can add (and change) your own logo on the page. You can upload your own logo, which will be presented in prominent position in the center of the hotspot screen. If you’d like to display text information instead or in addition to a log, you can add a tag line. You can also pick and choose one of the standard color and layout schemes mentioned above. These additions and changes are made in the account maintenance screen in the control panel and are available to anyone. 2. You can use a custom start page (aka. Splash page). That way you host your own start page, the first page the user sees when connecting to a Chillifire Hotspot, and users are redirected to your page instead of ours. Then you can link back to our page where users can buy access or type in the voucher code. (the link required to open the login page is http://192.168.182.1:3990/prelogin). A custom start page / splash page must be entered into the router configuration itself. Please consult our manuals and video tutorials on how to do this. 3. You can request a customised template with your own ‘skin’ that has your own color scheme and look and feel. Currently this kind of customisation cost 20 USD if you just customize the color scheme, but leave our logo and copyright information on the site. 4. If you’d like to have your own branding only on the hotspot site (removing all Chillifire related information and using your own domain name on customer start pages) we charge a one-time setup fee of 200 USD. If you require us to completely change the layout of the site completely, change or create art work including buttons, headers etc, we charge according to effort, at a rate of 50 USD per hour. In that case please send us your requirements and request a quote through our contact form New pricing plans available Our new pricing plans give you all the options you can wish for. They even allow for periodic access plans, so you can start your own ISP business. Add to that a new and improved hotspot login screen, the ability to control the speed and bandwidth per plan, and to redirect users to a specific page Online User control added, Console and Voucher improvements Our Chillifire console received a major refresh using AJAX. The old transactions were successively replaced by flash new AJAX pages. No more waiting for the page to refresh, as you page through the data or filter or resort data. You will feel the improvement immediately. Sell Hotspot Vouchers with Chillifire Our new voucher system has now been released. Now you can create and print prepaid vouchers for your hotspot, resell them to clients in your hotel, café, etc. And the best thing is - you can do so immediately. No waiting until the vouchers are released or activated. As soon as you have paid your fees the vouchers can be used by your customers. New MAC Address blocking function We have added another revenue protection feature: When you receive a fraudulent purchases from a particular device (desktop, laptop or phone) you can now block that device from access to the Chillifire service. Sure, you can also get the credit card blacklisted with the payment solution provider, such as PayPal or 2checkout.com. Video Tutorials published! It never has been easier. We now provide video tutorials for all the different steps and many of the different configuration options for a Chillifire hotspot. You can find the video tutorials on the Tutorials page. Aside from feedback on the quality and usefulness of the video tutorials provided in this first issue, we would like Demo Videos We have added two demo videos that show how the hotspot works for the user. One video shows the process using a credit card through the 2Checkout.com account. The other video shows payment through a PayPal account. The PayPal video also shows how the PayPal payment could also be made with a credit card without the user