NetPulse

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Try the live demo on demo.netpulse.cloudless.club

NetPulse is a read-only PWA for monitoring a home network built on OpenWrt/GL.iNet routers: fleet status, per-router health, connected devices, a live topology map, WireGuard peers, AdGuard Home stats and alerts, in real time. One static Go binary with the frontend embedded, self-hosted on a small Linux box.

Try the live demo

See it running without installing anything. Head to demo.netpulse.cloudless.club — a full sample network, no sign-up required. In read-only mode, so you can explore freely.

Why does this exist?

I believe in digital sovereignty: if a device makes you depend on its cloud, its firmware or its vendor, it isn't 100% yours. That's why I've always favored hardware I can flash or root. My home layout ended up with four routers: a Flint 2 as the main one and three Xiaomi AX6 access points bought second-hand for 30 euros each. Cheap, powerful, and all running OpenWrt. That sovereignty let me orchestrate and personalize the network exactly how I wanted (not without some challenges), but I always missed a unified view of what was going on: what connects where, what's healthy, what isn't. There was nothing out there, or I couldn't find it, so I built it. NetPulse is that global viewer: it analyzes your network, spots anomalies, and warns you.

Why this stack?

• Go, single static binary: a 24/7 monitor on a small LXC. The stdlib net/http ServeMux, no framework, go:embed for the frontend. Upgrade is swapping one file.
• modernc.org/sqlite, CGO off: fully static, no C toolchain needed on the target. Time series, users and sessions in one embedded SQLite file (WAL).
• Read-only by design: the server generates its own ed25519 keypair; you authorize the public key on each router and it only ever reads (ubus, /proc, iwinfo, bridge fdb, wg show). It cannot change your network.
• React 19 + Vite + Tailwind PWA: installable, live over SSE (5 s), the same UI shell as my other apps.
• systemd, no Docker: it monitors a network; it doesn't need a container to do it.

Features

• Fleet overview: health score, live traffic, latency, per-router status (CPU, memory, temperature, uptime).
• Live topology map: inferred from the bridge FDB (and LLDP when available), with wired/wireless clients, switches and hypervisors detected, WireGuard tunnels drawn peer to Internet.
• Devices: every client with type classification (hostname patterns + OUI), first seen, band, signal.
• WireGuard: peers, latest handshakes, transfer per peer.
• AdGuard Home: query stats and top blocked domains.
• Alerts: temperature, firmware available, new device, handshake, with a bell feed.
• Multi-user auth: bcrypt passwords, per-user language (ES/EN), admin and viewer roles.
• Demo mode (DEMO_MODE=1): a 67-device sample network, no routers needed.
• Optional collector sidecar: TCP latency probes per router with its own long-term time series.

Screenshots

Topology: inferred live from the bridge FDB, tunnels included

Devices: every client classified, with band and signal

Routers: per-router health at a glance

What to expect

NetPulse is a personal project, built for my own network and released as free software (AGPL-3.0). It is and will always be free. I work on it in my free time: there's a long list of ideas, but little time, and it evolves following my own needs first. With contributions or support it might grow faster, but I can't promise anything. Honest scope note: so far it has only been tested with my own hardware (a GL.iNet Flint 2 gateway and three Xiaomi AX6 access points running OpenWrt) plus WireGuard and AdGuard Home. Other OpenWrt devices should work, but yours would be the first to tell.

Roadmap

Phase	Status	Highlights
1 — Topology v5	✅	Semantic map: live FDB + LLDP, backhaul, managed vs. inferred switches, hypervisors with nested CTs, time-series collector
2 — Alerts, Push & agent pilot	✅	6-category alerts, native Web Push (VAPID), on-demand refresh, OpenWrt agent pilot (token ingest, SSH fallback, procd)
3 — Read-only base + Node→Go	✅	React PWA, read-only SSH polling (ubus, /proc, iwinfo), AdGuard + WireGuard, multi-user auth, backend migrated to a single Go binary
4 — View-model + Settings revamp	✅	API as a presentation view-model (vm: 1), single-sourced demo canon, semantic topology in the snapshot
5 — Agent resilience	✅	Router-side watchdog + heartbeat, server-side manual rearm, TTL auto-rearm, admin-only mutation routes
6 — Agent security	✅	HMAC-SHA256 on agent ingest, serve the agent binary from the server itself
7 — Agent deep dive	✅	Real-time wifi events (iw event), bidirectional SSE, .ipk packaging (11-12 MB RSS, <1% CPU)
8 — Consolidation	✅	/api/health metrics, persistent agent registry, retention ladder (raw 7d → 5min buckets 1y → daily ∞), recharts v3, outgoing alert webhooks
9 — On-box	✅	UCI config, AUTH_PASS bootstrap, TLS self-signed + SPKI pinning, pairing token, OpenWrt server package
10 — Orchestration	🔄	Plan→apply→state engine + sandboxed agent executor (10.1), AdGuard module (10.2). WireGuard/DAWN-write deferred to Phase 17
11 — LuCI package	✅	luci-app-netpulse shipped as .ipk/.apk on every release: local agent status/view (procd, UCI, logs, restart/rearm) + bridge to the web app
12 — Security audit	✅	TRUST_PROXY, anti-replay on ingest, body cap, password min 10
13 — Robustness audit	✅	Single-flight GetOverview, SSE write deadline, sshpool dial race, error wrapping
14 — WiFi/roaming visibility	✅	DAWN signal matrix, 802.11r status per SSID, channel utilization survey, persistent roaming events feed (30d)
15 — Reports	🔄	Daily/week/month availability. Pending: traffic, activity, alert summary, export
16 — Advanced alerts	🔮	Custom threshold rules, new alert types (roaming failure, channel congestion), scheduled silence, email
17 — Write to routers (skeleton)	🔮	Common deploy engine + 11 modules index (AdGuard full, WiFi guest, DDNS, QoS, WireGuard, OpenVPN, Tailscale, DAWN-write, Batman, DPI)
18-20 — Beta-testing program	🔮	Module groups by risk (low / medium / high) with stable + unstable release channels and external beta-testers

Full detail in docs/ROADMAP.md.

Installation

Requirements: Linux (x86_64, arm64 or armv7) with systemd.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnacho/netpulse/main/install.sh | sh   # (recommended)

The installer is plain, readable shell: inspect it first. It detects your distro and arch, downloads the verified release (sha256 against checksums.txt), creates a sandboxed netpulse systemd service and prints the initial admin password once. Update by re-running the same line; remove with sh install.sh --uninstall.

Optional latency sidecar (time series of TCP probes to each router):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnacho/netpulse/main/install-collector.sh | sh

Stable binaries are published per v* tag (goreleaser); rolling per-commit builds live in the go-latest prerelease for the in-app updater.

Connecting your routers

The server generates its own ed25519 keypair and shows the public key in Settings. Authorize it on each router you want to monitor (/etc/dropbear/authorized_keys). The gateway is auto-detected on first boot via LAN discovery (TCP :22 sweep, ubus/GL-UI fingerprint); the rest are added from Settings. Polling is strictly read-only.

OpenWrt packages

Every v* release ships the agent and the LuCI app as installable OpenWrt packages alongside the tarballs:

• netpulse-agent as .ipk (OpenWrt 24.10 SDK, mediatek/filogic) and .apk (OpenWrt 25.12 SDK, qualcommax/ipq807x).
• luci-app-netpulse as .ipk and .apk (all arch, any target): LuCI pages that show the local agent status, let you restart it, edit its UCI config and jump to the NetPulse web app.

Grab the assets from the latest release and install on the router (LuCI System > Software, or over SSH):

# OpenWrt 24.10 (ipk)
opkg install ./netpulse-agent_*.ipk ./luci-app-netpulse_*.ipk

# OpenWrt 25.12 (apk)
apk add --allow-untrusted ./netpulse-agent_*.apk ./luci-app-netpulse_*.apk

luci-app-netpulse depends on netpulse-agent and luci-base; installing both packages together resolves the dependencies without extra feeds. After install, LuCI picks up the new pages automatically (the package restarts rpcd and clears the index cache).

Development

# Backend (Go; serves app/dist via go:embed)
cd server-go
cp ../app/dist internal/staticspa/dist -r   # the embedded dist is never tracked
go build -o netpulse ./cmd/netpulse && DEMO_MODE=1 ./netpulse

# Frontend (dev server with proxy)
cd app
npm install
npm run dev

The legacy Node backend was removed (it is not deployed or updated anymore, decision 5-Ago-2026); its git history is preserved. Migration from its database happens automatically on the first Go boot.

Tests

cd server-go && go test ./...

Big thanks

NetPulse wouldn't exist without OpenWrt. The whole premise of the project, that you can own and control your network hardware instead of depending on a vendor's closed firmware, only works because OpenWrt exists. If NetPulse is useful to you, the real credit goes to the OpenWrt community.

License

AGPL-3.0