DeadDrop
A personal experiment.
A pocket file server with its own Wi-Fi: send files between devices with no internet.
Dead Drop is a tiny file server that lives on a single ESP8266 (NodeMCU) board and needs no internet. Power the board and it creates its own Wi-Fi network called “Dead_Drop”. Connect a phone or laptop to it and you can upload, download and delete files, with nothing going through the internet, a router or any cloud account.
It is built for the moments when you need to hand a file to someone in the same room and there is no network, no cable and no app to install: a workshop, a train, a classroom with poor reception.
- 01
The board becomes a network
On start-up the ESP8266 switches into access-point mode and broadcasts the Dead_Drop Wi-Fi network from the fixed address 192.168.4.1.
- 02
Phones are sent to the page
A small DNS server answers every address with the board’s own, and the board replies to the connectivity checks that Android, iOS and Windows make. Devices treat it like a hotspot sign-in page and open the Dead Drop page by themselves.
- 03
The page is inside the firmware
The whole interface (HTML, styling and script) is stored in the program itself, so there is nothing else to host or load.
- 04
Files live in the board’s flash
Uploads are written to the board’s flash storage (LittleFS). The page lists them, and each file can be downloaded or deleted with one tap.
There is no login inside the page, so who can reach the files is decided by who can join the Wi-Fi network. Storage is limited to the board’s flash memory.