OpenWrt Category - Page 23 of 41 - CNX Software

February 14, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 WiFi 6 Router Sells for $135

The first 802.11ax routers were unveiled a Computex 2018, before the WiFi Alliance decided to use a new consumer-friendly naming scheme and rename 802.11n to WiFi 4, 802.11ac to WiFi 5, and 802.11ax to WiFi 6, and then WiFi 6 routers launched later that year from companies such as ASUS and TP-Link with price starting at $350. Prices have now come down with for example TP-Link WiFi 6 AX3000 smart WiFi router going for $142.99 plus shipping on Amazon, and Xiaomi has now launched their own WiFi 6 router with Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 offered for $135 including shipping on Aliexpress. Price may soon come down further as the router is sold for just 599 CNY, or about $86 US, in China excluding shipping. Note that with the Coronavirus outbreak, shipping may be delayed. Xiaomi AIoT Router AX3600 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm IPQ8071A quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.0 GHz CPU […]

February 11, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

MikroTik wAP LoRa8/LoRa9 LoRa Gateway Kits Launched for $169

Last year, MikroTik announced they had worked on several LoRa products including R11e-LoRa8EU mini PCIe LoRaWAN Gateway/concentrator card, wAP LoRa8 kit (LoRa & WiFi gateway) with the mini PCIe card, as well as a 6.5 dBi Omni antenna kit to extend the range provided by the 2 dBi internal antenna. All three products are now available with R11e-LoRa8EU mini PCIe selling for $89, wAP LoRa8 kit going for $169, and the optional antenna kit adding $49. The company also introduced wAP LoRa9 kit with R11e-LoRa9 mini PCIe card geared towards markets (like the USA) using the 902-928 MHz frequency band and selling for the same price. MikroTik wAP LoRa8 kit (RBwAPR-2nD&R11e-LoRa8) specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros QCA9531 MIPSBE (Big Endian) processor @ 650 MHz System Memory – 64 MB RAN Storage – 16 MB flash Connectivity Wired – 10/100M Fast Ethernet WLAN – 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 @ up […]

January 29, 2020January 31, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

LibreRouter is an Open-Source Hardware Router for Community Networks

Battlemesh (aka the Wireless Battle of the Mesh) is an event that aims at bringing together people from across the world to test the performance of different routing protocols for ad-hoc networks. While BattleMesh v12 took place in Paris in July 2019, I’ve just been informed that presentation videos were now out. There are talks about OpenWrt, mesh networks, and communities, but one talk brought a project I had not looked into details yet. Originated from Argentina, LibreRouter is described as an open-source hardware router designed for community networks that are organized by a group of people such as neighbors in order to share local and other content without a profit motive. LibreRouter LR1 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros QCA9558 MIPS processor @ 750 MHz System Memory – 128 MB DDR RAM Storage – 16 MB Flash MCU – Microchip ATTiny13 8-bitAVR MCU used as hardware watchdog to handle failed […]

January 21, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Lindenis V536 SoM & SBC Targets 4K Camera Applications

Back in summer 2018, we wrote about Lindenis V5 single board computer based on Allwinner V5 quad-core Cortex-A7 processor with two MIPI CSI connectors and designed for 4K cameras. Allwinner has now come up with a new 4K camera processor very similar to V5, since Allwinner V566 comes with two Cortex-A7 cores, and a single MIPI CSI interface, and Lindenis designed a new SBC based on the new processor using a SoM + baseboard design instead. Lindenis V536 specifications: SoM SoC – Allwinner V536 dual-core Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz; 4K H.265/H.264 video encoding & decoding @ 30 fps; 28nm process System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – SPI NOR flash or SPI NAND flash, bootable MicroSD card Video Output – Micro HDMI 1.4 port Video Input – MIPI CSI connector Audio – Digital microphone Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi 5 & Bluetooth 4.2 via AP6255 Baseboard Interface – Castellated holes […]

January 16, 2020January 17, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments

NanoPi R2S Dual Gigabit Ethernet SBC & Router is Powered by Rockchip RK3328 SoC

FriendlyElec launched NanoPi R1S router with two Ethernet ports based on either Allwinner H3 or H5 processor coupled with 512MB RAM last November. Both ports are “Gigabit” Ethernet port, but one is implemented via a USB 2.0 to Ethernet controller with a maximum bandwidth of around 330 Mbps. If you’d like to get two Gigabit Ethernet reaching close to 1 Gbps each, and your target application would benefit from a bit more memory, the company is now working on NanoPi R2S based on Rockchip RK3328 processor with 1GB DDR4 memory, one Ethernet port using the GMAC from the chip, and one Ethernet port relying one a USB 3.0 to Ethernet controller. The rest of NanoPi R2S specifications are pretty similar to the earlier board except WiFi is also gone: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB DDR4 RAM Storage – MicroSD […]

January 14, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

OpenWrt 19.07 Released with WPA3 Security, a Faster LuCI web interface

OpenWrt is a popular Linux operating system targeting embedded devices, usually routers (but not only), and serves as a complete replacement for the vendor-supplied firmware on supported devices. The developers released OpenWrt 19.07 on January 6, to succeed OpenWrt 18.06 the previous stable release. The new version brings various improvements including WPA3 support, client-side rendering of the LuCI web interface for faster rendering or a lower-load on the router, and introduces the ath79 target for MIPS routers with device tree support. While WPA3 WiFi security is part of OpenWrt 19.07, it is not enabled by default because the necessary packages hostapd-openssl (access point), wpa-supplicant-openssl (station support only) and wpad-openssl (AP + station) take a fair amount of space, and won’t fit on devices with 8MB flash or less. Another reason for not enabling WPA3 is that many existing client devices will never support WPA3, and some client devices that support […]

January 12, 2020January 12, 2020 by Siji Sunny - 27 Comments

Build & Customise OpenWrt for Raspberry Pi

OpenWrt is an open source operating system based on Linux especially designed for embedded & networking devices. This OS is well known for its lightweight footprint, standardized configuration approach (using LUCI interface), easy to build images, as opkg packages. At the core of OpenWrt is a writable root file system, where the users can add and/or remove packages, modify configs etc…. without having to re-flash the entire firmware/operating system. This is achieved by overlaying a read-only compressed SquashFS file system with a writable JFFS2 filesystem using OverlayFS. You can install pre-built packages from OpenWrt repo (which contains approximately 3500 packages) using opkg package manager. The Build Process Below steps cover the required pre-build environment and how to build OpenWrt from the source tree for Raspberry Pi board. Even though OpenWrt recommends Debian for the build machine, I built it successfully on Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop. Setup Build Environment

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install git-core subversion mercurial build-essential libssl-dev libncurses5-dev unzip gawk zlib1g-dev
unset SED
unset GREP_OPTIONS 
export GREP_OPTIONS= 
export PATH=$PATH:~/openwrt/openwrt/staging_dir/host/bin 
export PATH=$PATH:~/openwrt/openwrt/staging_dir/toolchain-mips_34kc_gcc-5.3.0_musl-1.1.16

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install git-core subversion mercurial build-essential libssl-dev libncurses5-dev unzip gawk zlib1g-dev

unset SED

unset GREP_OPTIONS

export GREP_OPTIONS=

export PATH=$PATH:~/openwrt/openwrt/staging_dir/host/bin

export PATH=$PATH:~/openwrt/openwrt/staging_dir/toolchain-mips_34kc_gcc-5.3.0_musl-1.1.16

Build OpenWrt […]

January 10, 2020January 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Xiaomi Redmi AC2100 Router Sells for $35 and Up

Xiaomi has launched several affordable WiFi routers over the years. Their latest model is called Xiaomi Redmi AC2100 Router and comes with a dual-core, quad-thread MIPS processor, 128MB storage, WiFi 5 with 6 antennas, and four Gigabit Ethernet ports. Xiaomi Redmi AC2100 router specifications: Processor – MediaTek MT7621A dual-core/quad-thread MIPS processor @ 880MHz System Memory – 128MB RAM Storage – 128MB flash Connectivity Wireless 2.4GHz 2×2 Wi-F 802.11n @ 300Mbps 5G 4×4 WiFi 802.11ac @ 1733Mbps 6x external high gain (5dBi) antennas Security – WPA-PSK / WPA2-PSK encryption, wireless access control (black and white list), hidden SSID, intelligent anti-scratch network Ethernet 1x 10/100/1000Mbps WAN (Auto MDI/ MDIX) 3x 10/100/1000Mbps LAN (Auto MDI/ MDIX) Misc – 2x LEDs Indicators (Internet and System), Reset pin hole Power Supply – 12V/2A Dimensions – 259 x 176 x 184mm The router is said to come with MiWiFi firmware based on OpenWrt with “deep customization”, […]