Adding support for D-Link DAP-1610 HW ver A2

For Developers
1

Has anyone looked at DAP-1610 H/W Ver A2 yet?
I just picked one up cheap and it looks like it has CPU MediaTek MT7628A MT7628AN,
I have a bit of time to return it, but I might keep it if it looks like it would be possible to add support for it.
Looking deeper at it, the cpu looks supported by the ramips arch and on the FCC ID KA2AP1530A1 on OET FCC search site it looked easy enough to open so i kept it.
The flash chip looks to be a Winbond 25064 8MB.

2

You can flash the image for the DAP-1325.

Everything is identical, down to the leds, buttons, partitions, except that the default mac address for the wireless is the same as eth0, and the 5ghz radio.

3

I got one and flashed it with the DAP-1325 firmware, everything works fine but no wifi 5GHz. Did you manage to enable it?
It might not be that hard to add support after all, if anyone needs more info such as the bootlog I can provide that.

Thanks

4

Yeah I did, will look into submitting a pr

5

Thanks,

Is there something I can do manually for the moment to bring up the 5Ghz and change the mac address of the wifi?

6

It’s a simpe patch If you’re familiar with building from source? Or I could just build 23.05 for you.

7

I can build from source, I just need the patch and the folder where I should place it

8

Hello! Saw this post and successfully flashed a DAP-1610 A1 and am very curious how you enabled the 5Ghz
Was it as simple as installing the kmod package?

I have been digging in the GitHub to see if I could find any mention of it with no success. Any chance you have any advice?

9

So after a crash course is custom image building and digging more about the extender here is what I came up with:

5Ghz chipset uses an MT7612e which the mt76 module will support without issue.

Using the dap-1325 dts file I added the &pcie sections from the 23.05.2 repo for the mt7628an_zyxel_keenetic-extra-ii.dts file and added them to the dap-1325 dts file.

&pcie {
	status = "okay";
};

&pcie0 {
	mt76@0,0 {
		compatible = "mediatek,mt76";
		reg = <0x0000 0 0 0 0>;
		mediatek,mtd-eeprom = <&factory 0x8000>;
		ieee80211-freq-limit = <5000000 6000000>;
	};
};

Then after running make menuconfig I selected the dap-1325 image and added the mt76 module.

After the build I have a fully functioning DAP-1610 running openwrt on both bands.

10

The path to the file is:
target/linux/ramips/dts/mt7628an_zyxel_keenetic-extra-ii.dts

target/linux/ramips/dts/mt7628an_dlink_dap-1325-a1.dts

11

Thanks, it works. I hope someone with enough knowledge can submit a PR to add this device.

12

Looking into that part as I have some vacation time to burn.

13

Hello, do you mind sharing this build please?

14

I will work on forking this forking fork. :face_with_monocle:

I'll put the link in here when it's put together.

15

I'm also able to run 5ghz on custom build. If you want to try here is the link - https://gilewski.it/openwrt/openwrt-ramips-mt76x8-dlink_dap-1325-a1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
Performance is not great, but maybe I'm missing something in the configuration.

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16

Hey @michalg I created an account here to specifically thank you for sharing the firmware for dap-1610. It’s working quite good for me and now I’ve got seamless roaming over FT setup in my home.

Many thanks :+1:

17

After installing the firmware by @michalg I got 5ghz radio running successfully, but if I try to activate the 2nd radio (2.4ghz) the router loses its connection to the main router. Is anyone else seeing this issue?

@michalg could you share your experience with this firmware?

18

I did not test this firmware for this case, but I saw 2.4GHz random disconnections when 5GHz was present. I thought that the reason was poor signal, but apparently it might be software problem.

19

Hi, thanks so much for building and sharing! Works great for me as a 5ghz client with very good tx rates. I haven't experienced it myself but I suspect that some glitches reported by others might be due to overheating when both 2.4 and 5 mhz are actively transmitting. There is only a small piece of metal attached to the chip as a radiator within a small body with poor ventilation. As a quick test it's easy to remove the back cover to see if it helps.

But my main question now and the reason for the post is really to ask you to rebuild the image against a stable branch because the snapshot used for building is no longer current and I can't install any additional packages (need wireguard and shadowsocks, which should fit the remaining memory). Or if you have built those modules and packages already please share. Thanks again in advance.

Overall I'm very happy with this tiny router now which I got very cheap in a charity market and such great potential thanks to your great work guys!

20

Finally got around to updating the fork I created for this

Should just have to build it with the normal steps:

  1. Run ./scripts/feeds update -a to obtain all the latest package definitions defined in feeds.conf / feeds.conf.default
  2. Run ./scripts/feeds install -a to install symlinks for all obtained packages into package/feeds/
  3. Run make menuconfig to select your preferred configuration for the toolchain, target system & firmware packages.
  4. Run make to build your firmware. This will download all sources, build the cross-compile toolchain and then cross-compile the GNU/Linux kernel & all chosen applications for your target system.

Also here is a link the the sysupgrade bin

Additional note here on my personal config I updated the LEDs in LUCI to monitor the connection to my router as the low LED 2.4Ghz network Medium 5.0Ghz network and High is monitoring the bridge.

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