Add support for Xiaomi AX1800 Wifi 6 router

+2 to add OpenWRT support for Xiaomi AX1800 (AX5/RA67).

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+3 to add OpenWRT support for Xiaomi AX1800 (AX5/RA67).

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Guys, you may upvote as much as you want, but the 256MB of RAM really isn't worth somebody's time to get this running.
Even QCA has had a hell of a time getting ath11k to work at all with that much RAM

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@robimarko how stock firmware (based on OpenWRT) is work on this device? If it takes more time please forget about this => devices and save your time. Thanks for your contribution.

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Well, that is the keyword here "based on OpenWrt", because all they are doing is using an old OpenWrt release for its build system and some basic packages and then adding a 4.4.60 based kernel which is so modified that it basically lost any resemblance of 4.4.x, and then they start including the various switch and ethernet driver hackery they have.

Does that look like OpenWrt, if so then every vendor SDK that uses OpenWrt is somehow supposed to work on the upstream OpenWrt without any effort

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I'm wondering if we can at least build a qsdk based firmware for this router if not openwrt? I've see some source trees for ipq60xx (like this https://github.com/8devices/openwrt-8devices/tree/qsdk-11.3-ipq60xx-4.4)

Feel free to try but that tree is just hacked together to kind of work but not fully

Hi all

I have two ax1800, in mesh mode.
But they connected via 5g wifi.
Can i set the mesh, to connect via cable?

Also i can set the wifi power higher?

The AX1800 mesh very easily but there doesn't seem to be any controls.
Even from command line I cannot see much available.

It worked fine for me when I plugged two AX1800 together using LAN from AX1800 set to router (in 3.0.34 firmware) and WAN on the other unit.
The Chinese Firmware (1.0.44) works even better and doesn't require the main unit to work in router mode.. I had it set to AP mode. It was able to setup another AX1800 via wired connection into mesh without using the normal recommended method.
Note also mesh via wifi is probably not gaining you anything over just using AP mode.

Also i can set the wifi power higher?

Yes but you need to get permanent SSH access and set CountryCode and power levels yourself. It is not easy unless you have another router that can be flashed to OpenWrt assuming you want to keep the international firmware 3.0.34 which unfortunately has not been released to public.

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I have a few question for the forum.
Thanks for all the info. I bought 3 AX1800 to try out as AP or mesh in place of some of the big name commerical units which don't suit lots of people.
I opened SSH using an old OpenWRT router I had saved for just such a purpose.
Made the SSH permanent by modifying the mtd9 bdata area.. using Oded.dev method with a few kinks in the system worked out from Chinese originals.
https://oded.dev/2020/11/30/AX3600-1/
The header.py script failed continually. On both Mac and Linux machine from a friend. Line 158 error. So just edited it directly using hexfiend.

Question 1
It all worked great.. for first few resets. Change of setup etc. Telnet in and got SSH working again each time. Then something happened and the password stopped working. Going right through the opening SSH again did not work. The password for the router was changed.
Has anyone experienced this?
I searched and nobody else has reported the problem I can see.
To fix it I loaded latest Chinese firmware.. 1.0.44 and the password came back to Xiaomi default.
So far another AX1800 has suffered the same problem. And I was forced to flash to 1.0.44 on that as well.
If we had a copy of the 3.0.34 firmware to flash it would not be an issue.. but until Xiaomi releases an update I am stuck. The Chinese firmware is fine.. better in fact in some of the Mesh setup as per question above.

Question 2
Did anyone flash back to 3.0.44 firmware using any method??
I have an AX3600 on order to play with as it seems a better unit to work with. So I might try flashing partitions on that one and hopefully can figure out which is what.
I made a copy of all the flash partitions.. except the last two which are active (mtd24,25). So I have a copy of mtd0 to mtd23 but not from either of the ones now on Chinese firmware.. I was in the process of getting its firmware when the password problem happened.

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I also use the same, the ap is plugged by wan, and the other is plugged by lan, but they connect each other by wifi.
How i can setup to connect by cable?

There is any tutorial to ssh access?

Plug the mesh node via its WAN port. I think using LAN is causing it to behave as if you are creating a wireless bridge.

Out of the three original units only one is left that has 3.0.34 firmware but when I swapped that firmware to 1.0.44 (chinese version) it did allow mesh from AP mode.. whereas the international firmware only allowed mesh from full router mode.

Tell me what firmware you are running on AP unit and mesh node unit and I can run a test to see if it works.

The whole of this thread has the topic of how to get SSH access.. sorry but you need to read it. There is no single tutorial site unless you use Chinese firmware and once there you cannot go back.. but it is easy from 1.0.17.
See the youtube link near the top.

The only way to get ssh access with international firmware is using the second true OpenWRT router... You can probably pickup something second hand for a few dollars.
I followed this exactly.. It is for the Redmi AX6 but the AX5 is close enough to work. Don't expect instant success .. it takes loads of patience to get the sequence exactly right. At each step you must get the right response from your browser connection.. otherwise go back and start over.. which means every time you will get a new stok key.
Note a computer with both ethernet and wifi network adapters makes life a lot easier.

That gives you SSH but it is not permanent. It will survive reboots but not reset, firmware update etc.
So the second bit means you need to follow the link I gave in the second post to Oded.dev and here things start getting complicated because a key part of his method simply did not work. If you get the first part done post back and I can perhaps help a bit with the second bit.
Note that this led to me having to flash Chinese firmware as it also lost the password in two of the units.

Did you get dump of global firmware? Sorry, I'm not quite sure I'm understood the sentence right. If you did, mtd22 and mtd23 are the kernel and the system partition images and all you need to create restore image. System partition dump has a lot of FF at the end and probably needs to be stripped (or maybe not),
then you need combine kernel and system partition files (with --data option) with ubinize.sh script from here. And then you can flash it via ssh with xqflash or some other way.

Yes.. the global firmware is still working on one of the AX1800 and yes mtd22 and mtd23 are listed as

mtd22: 003a2000 0001f000 "kernel"
mtd23: 01303000 0001f000 "ubi_rootfs"

So that makes sense.. thanks for the link.. will check it out.

Hello

i have the global version firmvare on is.
if i install the china version, app still working?
english language is available?
if i put the second router in wan the internet stop working, like some ip problem, or i dont know.

On the global version the option to select mesh disappears when you select AP mode.. so I don't understand how you have it configured on the main unit. Are you running it in router but double NAT? If that is the case is your wired network plugged ONLY into the Xiaomi or still into your main router because that will totally mess things up.
For your situation reset the second unit and configure it in AP mode as well.. configure it with the identical SSID and passwords to your other unit.
You lose nothing... you will get handoff and all the other goodies of mesh without the pain. But you will have to check your main router NOT the Xiaomi for all the clients and it will not show what AP they are connected to.

Using the Chinese version firmware the mesh works much better. You just use google translate to see the English version.. but since Xiaomi routers show you next to zero info it will all still be much the same.

The main router is just set as dynamic ip internet, then i add the second on as mesh.

if i install the china version the wifi power will be higher?

No, because it is set to EU. You use the Chinese version to open SSH so you can change power and country settings to match your own.
And fix your issue with failure of connection over ethernet for backhaul.

Do you have any success in dumping/flashing global firmware? If you need volounteer for test, I'm ready to assist.

Wow, that would be great. I looked at the site you referenced but it is going to take a bit of absorbing as it is outside my experience.
Can I email you? How? New user here.