5GHz report - mesh

8 Dec 2013

The NanoBridge doesn't show up on the lan at all for me - if I turn it on,
usually the switch will have no link light and the feedhorn will have a link
light; unplugging and replugging cables will sometimes switch this.  Other
lights appear to go on correctly (power, reds and oranges if I reset it).
The NanoBridge and NanoStation spec sheets says they expect 24v 0.5A PoE,
while the injectors I've got are 15v 0.8a, which is what the PicoStation
wants.  (The wiring is the same either way, pairs 4,5+ and 7,8 return.)
The NanoStation is fine on a 15v 0.8A injector, though.
Compiling for ar71xx gets me a binary that runs on the NanoStation.  Woot!
Haven't yet been able to get the NanoStation radio into master mode, though.
IIRC someone was working on open-source drivers for it under FreeBSD - what's
the status of that?
It looks like part of my patch is in the official firmware, but not all of
it - the tweaks to telnetd and ntp hotplug aren't in.
HTTP interface feedback: (running a bastard hybrid of my
firmware and the github version, as of Dec 6):
The default hostname is picostation-juul, regardless of actual hardware
platform.
On initial HTTP connection to a passwordless router, I get both a
'No password set!' message instructing me to go to password configuration
and an 'Authorization Required' dialog.
The intuitive behaviour for me was to enter desired username and password
in the big fat boxes, when apparently the CORRECT thing was
to click 'Go to password configuration': which redirects to the
identical-appearing page http://10.0.0.237/cgi-bin/luci/admin/system/admin
At that point, I'm supposed to ignore 'Go to password configuration' and
instead log in, at which point I'll have both the auth config screen and
a message admonishing me to go to password configuration.
When you scroll down to the bottom and click 'Save and apply', you get
a very small notification that the password has been changed and a large
'Applying changes' animation that was still running a couple hours later.
ps showed no obvious sign of any processes related to the 'Applying changes'
message, though I might have missed something.
Typing your password twice (this time, on an actual picostation) and then
pressing enter deletes your dropbear settings.  Bad from a usability
perspective.  The deletion also appears to be persistent, while the big
save buttons at the bottom would suggest that dropbear changes wouldn't
take effect until you save & apply.
Recommendations:
1) Take the user straight to passphrase configuration if they try to admin
a router without a passphrase set.
2) Passphrase configuration should be just passphrase configuration; dropbear
should have its own page.
3) Status reports should be prominent and not interleaved with the
rest of the design.
4) Links should be underlined and coloured; bold alone is too subtle.
5) Call it 'passphrase' rather than 'password', so we get more correct
horse
battery staples and fewer swordfish.