Mesh/Hardware experiments

This page documents various hardware experiments started 5th of July 2016. Using new types of hardware as home nodes and external antennas and wifi usb sticks.

Nexx WT3020F - Very cheap home node ($12.50)

• Cheap: $12.50 shipped
• Single band 2.4 GHz
• Two PCB trace antennas. No plugs, not even internal.
• Two ethernet interfaces
• One USB plug for host mode USB
• Tiny physical form factor
• USB powered (comes with usb cable but no power adaptor)
• Not AR71xx (ramips mt7620)

Juul (talk) loaded OpenWRT onto one of these and started a compile of sudowrt for this chipset. OpenWRT seems to work fine.

The firmware was flashed via the existing web UI which is available on 192.168.8.1 with user/pass admin/admin.

RT5572N - Dual-band single radio USB wifi adapter ($6)

• Two PCB trace radios
• Two u.fl connectors
• Does either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz

Juul (talk) tested this on a Nexx WT3020F and it seems to work quite well. Here's how to install the driver:

opkg update  
opkg install kmod-rt2800-lib kmod-rt2800-usb kmod-rt2x00-lib kmod-rt2x00-usb  

Seems to support an arbitrary number of ad-hoc/client/master mode wifi interfaces (tested up to 8).