Add OpenWrt support for Ubiquiti AirCube ISP (UBNT ACB-ISP)

Hey @c-mauderer thats brilliant work, thanks! I'd be happy to test it for you but probably wont be until the weekend. Will get back to you.

Hello @tamdenholm, did you encounter any problems or did you just not find time to test? For the later case: It's not a problem. I know that time is limited and not always available on call. But in that case I'll just send the patch for review to the OpenWRT team without further tests. Otherwise someone would have to review it on on Christmas which isn't really the best time for work :wink:

Just for information: I opened a pull request here: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/2631

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One of the maintainers checked my patch and is now mostly OK with it. He told me that he is ready to merge the patch as soon as there is another test result from here. So it would be great if someone could test it. You can use my pull-request branch for the testing: https://github.com/c-mauderer/openwrt/tree/acb-firmware-gen

Hello @tamdenholm,
do you see a possibility to test the method in the next time? The pull request is waiting for feedback from a second tester and it would be great if it could be closed. And it was due to your inquiry that I started to work on that again. Otherwise I would have ignored that topic for quite some more time :wink:
Best regards and a happy new year,
Christian

Hi, the holiday season is on and today i tried out the instructions in https://github.com/c-mauderer/openwrt-Ubiquity-Aircube-notes/blob/master/0001-ath79-Generate-firmware-image-for-aircube-isp.patch.

I couldn't get that to work, but then i noticed that you referenced patch/www in the uhttpd file. I created the directory and tried again.

Success!

******** Done ********

was output and then I tested with my old firmware file that I built when I patched ubntbox last time.

Success again. So the routine you built for flashing is working great.

I will try to get some free time later in the week and build an image with your patches to see if that works also.

Best regards and a happy new year!
Snap

Hello @Snap, thanks for testing. I'll add the note regarding the directory to the commit message of the patch. For building OpenWRT please use the one from the pull-request branch (https://github.com/c-mauderer/openwrt/tree/acb-firmware-gen). During the pull-request I adapted some parts compared to the one in the note repo.

By the way: I mentioned your work regarding how to patch the binary in the commit message. I hope that is OK for you and not to few?

Okay, as luck would have it, time slowed down this evening, and I compiled a fresh image from your repo.

Install went perfectly and is now running on my AirCube ISP right now.

So thumbs up for your effort in finishing this!

And the mention is quite alright, no problems there.

Thanks for testing it and the positive reply. I'll report it in the pull request so it can be finished. After the pull request is accepted, I'll update the wiki page.

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Today I tested POE passthrough with an old NanoStation M5.

I connected it to the WAN port and of course there was no power sent through.

Then I ran this command:

uci set system.poe_passthrough.value='1'
uci commit

Still no power... Then I did a reboot, and then the NanoStation lit up and started booting.

So gpio 11 is correct, not sure why it needed a reboot to take hold, but it works.

Maybe you could add that behavior to the wiki page? PoE and PoE pass through are still listed as untested: https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/ubiquiti_aircube_isp

I don't have any PoE equipment so I can't really test it. The pin was only an assumption based on the analysis of the original firmware. It's quite possible that some second step is necessary.

Updated wiki.

Found more PoE info, updated wiki. Live changes is now possible.

Great. Note that since a few days the installation instruction is updated in the wiki too. I even found out just today how to add the snapshot Install URL :wink:

Hi all!

Thanks for the awesome job!
I own an AirCube AC (802.11ac + 1Gbps ethernet ports). Do you know if this openwrt firmware could work on that device?

David.

I didn't have an AC and therefore I didn't test it. From what I can tell, the 5GHz chip is an U-AME-G1-BR4A (see FCC photos: https://fccid.io/SWX-ACBAC/Internal-Photos/Internal-Photos-3441425). That seems to be a re-labeled ath10k compatible chip: https://oldwiki.archive.openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/unifiac#ghz_wireless_phy

The bad news is: For other boards there is a FDT entry for it and there is some qcom,ath10k-calibration-variant = "xxx" in the FDT entries. So I don't think that it will work out of the box. And I'm not sure what has to be added for the calibration variant.

Hi,

Thank you to take time to give informations.
In case I create a custom OpenWrt image and I try it using your procedure, is there some sort of emergency reset to put back an original F/W?

David.

Hello David,

U-Boot isn't touched during the procedure. Therefore the official process works:

Please note that you should do a configuration reset after recovery. Otherwise the hacked upgrade config is still there and opens potential security holes.

Please also note that I didn't analyze whether there are some special calibration data for the 5GHz WLAN. I didn't see them in the images that I analyzed but in theory they could be somewhere where content is lost during the upgrade process. Although I wouldn't expect it.

Best regards

Christian

Hi Folks,

As far as I understand ACB-AC was not tested by anyone ?

Br,
Mike

As far as I know, no one tested it.

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