Wifi range extender at our new home in Salaiya, Bhopal

After selling Ankur Apartment flat at Delhi we permanently shifted to Bhopal in our new 3 BHK Flat at Canal Kinship, Salaiya, Bhopal wef 28 June 2025.

We had Tikona Broadband connection at Delhi which we wanted to relocate to Bhopal and accordingly Tikona Engineer visited us at Bhopal flat but he declared our area as unserviceable. 

At Bhopal we decided not to install the TV in Living Room and installed it in third bedroom. We invited Jio Fiber to install their modem near the TV.

After a few days I observed that Jio Fiber coverage is not proper in other bedrooms and decided to use TP Link modem used for Tikona connection at Delhi as Wifi range extender.

I watched couple of videos on youtube and tried to set up TP Link modem according to their advice but none of them worked satisfactorily,

I asked ChatGPT (which I use very frequently at Bhopal) for solution and re configured TP Link modem according to ChatGPT advice and then it is working perfectly as wireless extender. I have kept TP Link modem in the middle of Living Room.

The configuration is as follows:

Use TP Link modem as wifi connection to the device.

Login to modem typing  192.168.0.1  in the browser and password set up by you previously.

Goto Network > LAN Settings

Disable DHCP server so it does not assign IPs.

This avoids IP conflicts with Jio Fiber modem.

Set up static IP in same network range.

Jio Modem IP is 192.168.29.1

Set up TP Link to 192.168.29.2

Subnet mask 255.255.255.0

This makes sure both devices are on the same network.

Enable WDS Bridging

Go to Advanced > Wireless > Advanced Settings

In WDS enable WDS Bridging.

SSID to be bridged SSID of Jio Fiber modem

MAC to be bridged MAC of Jio Fiber modem

Security WPA/WPA2

Version WPA2PSK

Encryption AES

Password Password of Jio Fiber SSID

Wireless Settings

SSID SSID for TP Link

Password suitable password

Save settings and the modem will ask for reboot, do it.

 It works perfectly but we have to do a setting in Jio Fiber modem as well

Use Jio Fiber modem on the device

Login typing 192.168.29.1 in the browser

userid admin

password Jiocentrum

It will ask to change the password for admin and guest user

Choose suitable long passwords and confirm them.

Go to Network > LAN > DHCP Set up

Start IP address will be 192,168,29,2

Change it to 192.168.29.3

This is required since we have set up TP Link to have static IP of 192.168.29.2

This is necessary to prevent Jio Fiber modem from assigning 192.168.29.2 to some other device through DHCP. 

Air India direct flight to San Fransisco has flown through China today.

 My sister in law left for San Fransisco by AI 173 flight which flows over North Pole. I tracked that flight on flightstats.com till it landed in SFO. That flight did enter Atlantic Ocean and moved Northward till it terned South East towads international Date line. The route is through Pakistan, Tazkistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhastan, Russia, Atlantic Ocean, Russia.

I decided to follow the flight path for couple of days.

To my surprise today the flight was headed towards Siachen Glacier and entered China,  then Russia. It remained on Land in Russia. Here is the flight path.

This is surprising news.

Creating signed Form 15H file using pdftk and Drive app.

 I had invested in NCDs because there was no TDS on interest income on NCD. But from the current FY 2023-24 there is TDS on interest on NCD.

If you don't want deduction of TDS you need to send Form 15H (applicable for Senior Citizens). You can download Form 15H in pdf which is a 4 page document. First page is to be filled and signed and there is declaration on second page which is also to be signed. The remaining 2 pages are for the use by the company who pays the interest.

PDF forms can be filled on Firefox. For saving the filled form you have to press Ctrl+c. The first 2 pages can be filled and printed for signing.

The filled and signed pages can be scanned as pdf using Google Drive app on Android phone.

Open the Drive app Click on + then on Scan. Scan page 1 select OK cick on + icon on bottom right and scan page 2 select OK and save to My Drive.

Download the Scanned PDF from Drive to your Linux Desktop/Laptop.

Download and install pdftk.

Extract page 3 and 4 from 15H Form in pdf with following command.

$ pdftk Form15H.pdf cat 3-4 output Form15Hp3-4.pdf

Combine Scanned PDF with page 3-4 with following command.

$ pdftk Scanned.pdf Form15Hp3-4.pdf output Filled_Form15H.pdf

Filled_Form15H.pdf can be sent to the Company or the agency who manages form 15H on their behalf.

Running frugal install of Easy OS.

 Recently I came to know about Easy OS, a Linux distribution developed by Barry Kauler who developed Puppy Linux and gave it to community. I downloaded the .img file of easy 5.4.5 from this page and checked md5sum.

I created a folder EasyOS on root of the Ubuntu Linux I was running, mounted the .img file and copied its content (easy.sfs, initrd, vmlinuz) to EasyOS folder.

I added the following menu entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom

menuentry 'Easy OS 5.4.5' {
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1e364a7e-9e6d-468a-99a2-404936a14d59
linux /EasyOS/vmlinuz rw wkg_uuid=1e364a7e-9e6d-468a-99a2-404936a14d59 wkg_dir=EasyOS
initrd /EasyOS/initrd
}

and updated grub.

I could boot into Easy OS Desktop.

I opened Package Manager (pkg) and clicked on Flapi.

I added Gnucash in Flapi by clicking on Customize button.

 and clicked on Add. It opened GnuCash page on flathub and asked me to confirm that it was the right application. After confirmation it downloaded the flatpak package and installed it.

Here is the default Desktop of Easy OS

What I discovered about calls from 5G phone.

 As written in previous post I upgraded to 5G phone. As per Welcome offer I am getting unlimited 5G data from Jio.

When 5G network is available (it is available most of the time in my area) there is 5G icon on top panel.

When I call someone or there is incoming call the 5G icon vanishes and the call goes over 4G LTE network.

After searching on net for this issue I discovered that my phone is not having VoNR or Vo5G calling feature. You can read about what is VoNR or Vo5G on the following website:

What is Vo5G or VoNR? Everything you need to know

Vo5g is available on Jio since it is SA (Standalone) network but Airtel has no plans to launch SA network.

I conclude that 5G has arrived in India only for data and calling will take place on 4G LTE network even on so called 5G phones.

I bought 5G Phone.

Since the launch of 5G networks by Airtel and Jio last year I was looking to upgrade my 4G phone to 5G.

I bought Samsung Galaxy M13 5G model which was delivered today on 16 March 2023. I exchanged my POCO C3 phone.

My service provider is Jio. After updating the Operating system Jio network detected that it was 5G phone and sent invite of Welcome offer.

Initial setup of the new phone was done on WiFi network. I installed MyJio app and logged in and saw the Welcome offer. Jio asked me to switch to mobile data and I could see the 5G icon on top panel.

I checked the network speed and found 180 Mbps speed.

I made couple of phone calls and voice was very clear.

Enjoying the free 5G network.

Endless OS 5.0.0 Gnome 41.3 on Wayland

 I have switched to Endless OS for last six months. Today I updated to latest version Endless OS 5.0.0

There are new features:

Multiple Workspaces

Swipe left/right with three fingers to switch between workspaces

Two finger scrolling.