Adding OpenWrt support for TP-Link Archer MR200 V4?

I bought one of these very recently. I wasn't even planning to use OpenWrt with it: I mostly bought it to replace my aging combo of Huawei E5372 + TL-WR1043N.
I wanted something that was essentially a "LTE to ethernet" adapter (because getting the LTE modem to work with the TL-WR1043N back in 2015 was a bit of a pain, also it is stuck on an old OpenWrt version and I want to update without fear of breaking the setup).
Much to my disappointment/excitement it seems this MR200 v4 is essentially what I already had (a traditional router connected over USB to a LTE modem), but with way more proprietary glue code of dubious quality.

@Lochnair, did you make any progress on this since your last edit? By "mostly working", do you mean that a stable LTE data connection can be established after the initial "finicky" phase? Did you figure out what proprietary executable needs to be ran? I suppose the stock firmware does this over adb. I've been going through the GitHub and it seems that the LTE modem is the only thing that's not fully functional yet, is everything else relatively stable?

No, I gave up on it and bought a Teltonika RUT240 instead.

It's a bit foggy how far I got with it. IIRC I could never get it to reliably start the Android part properly on boot. And getting the IP set on the interface didn't work as it should either (without manually setting it).

I tried to look through the stock firmware for hints on how to enable the modem properly, but I couldn't find anything.

Anyone could provide me Mr200 V4 chip backup?
I have a company locked firm with tftp locked and the only way to get around is flashing the winbond chip...
I already have a programmer, I just need a chip backup for stock firm.

I'll probably be able to do so, but that unit is at our vacation home. So it won't be until our next trip there.
There's a good chance I'll go there for new years though.

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That would be amazing!
I appreciate it

Hello
Has anyone succeeded to run openwrt on MR200-V4?
If yes, Please provide me the file to flash from stock. I really need your help guys.
Or even please tell me the detailed steps.
Thank you in advance

it seems you can build a image flashable from tftp

I cannot find mr200v4 anywhere even when choosing target profile under MT76x2

make sure you use mr200v4 branch
git clone -b mr200v4 https://github.com/Lochnair/openwrt.git
then browse to mt76x8

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
  │ │                             Target System (MediaTek Ralink MIPS)  --->                                                  │ │
  │ │                             Subtarget (MT76x8 based boards)  --->                                                       │ │
  │ │                             Target Profile (TP-Link ArcherMR200 v4)  --->      

Can you please please upload a working tftp-recovery.bin so I can flash?

Check my answer 3 posts above

What I meant is a ready built image :frowning:

i don't have v4 and can't help further

Is there any updates on this? Can I flash v1 firmware on v4?

OpenWrt Firmware Selector

You could, if you're willing to risk a brick.

Ahh... So nobody has done it before huh?

Cheers.

It's a different SoC (MT7620 vs MT7628 IIRC), so doubt that'll work. And the modem works differently (which is why I gave up on it, see above).

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Thx bro!!!

Hi @Lochnair

I have "borrowed" your fork of MR200v4 and compiled a image.
But I have some problems with the QMI communication to the modem.
How far did you get in your investigation? Where you able to have a stable QMI-communication with the modem?
I can run one or two commands and then it hangs.
Did you have any serial interface to you modem?

This is all I have in dmesg:

[   12.076077] qmi_wwan 1-1:1.4: cdc-wdm0: USB WDM device
[   12.083532] qmi_wwan 1-1:1.4 wwan0: register 'qmi_wwan' at usb-101c0000.ehci-1, WWAN/QMI device, 0e:e8:b7:e3:c5:7b

@mrhaav
I don't remember exactly how much I was able to solve back then.
I do remember having that issue with QMI hanging, but I can't really say if that was fixed with initializing the Android part, or how that worked.

As for serial, no not as far as I know. The serial access for the modem if there is one would be on the Android part of the router. So you might be able to hook up something with adb.
I wasn't all that familiar with how modems worked at the time, so I didn't really try to get serial access to it, since I thought I'd get by fine with QMI.

It'd be awesome if you managed to get it working properly somehow. I do still have mine laying around collecting dust at the family vacation home, so I could potentially help test things, but honestly I still believe this thing really isn't worth the effort if you can afford getting something more OpenWrt friendly.