Amped ALLY - Wireless Settings

Hi all,

My local Microcenter had the Amped Wireless ALLY 1200 systems selling for <$10 a year or 2 ago so I bought a couple. Just recently I was able to get the OpenWRT v21.02.1 for the r1900 installed via TFTP and functioning on all units (master and extender units) but I don't know that functionality is where it needs to be to be a daily use system in my household. I don't have the option to change any Wireless settings, unless I'm missing a setup step or something somewhere.

Any other ALLY users out there who have had success and using this system to it's fullest capabilities?

Sorry just saw this. There's an issue with the initramfs images that needs to be patched before the 2nd step (sysupgrade) will work. Once you sysupgrade successfully, all of the drivers are there, the wifi works, and your settings can be saved.
There's a 1-time fix to work around this. Log in via SSH, and edit /lib/upgrade/platform.sh. Change:

	ampedwireless,ally-00x19k|\
	ampedwireless,ally-r1900k)
		if [ "$(fw_printenv --lock / -n bootImage 2>/dev/null)" != "0" ]; then
			fw_setenv --lock / bootImage 0 || exit 1
		fi
		;;

to:

	ampedwireless,ally-00x19k|\
	ampedwireless,ally-r1900k)
		if [ "$(strings /dev/mtd1 | grep -c bootImage=0)" != "1" ]; then
			dd if=/dev/mtd1 of=/tmp/mtd1.tmp bs=1c
			sed -i 's/bootImage=./bootImage=0/g' /tmp/mtd1.tmp
			mtd -e /dev/mtd1 write /tmp/mtd1.tmp /dev/mtd1
		fi
		;;

Once you do this, you can install the sysupgrade image and will be fine going forward.

HTH

A more appropriate patch for /lib/upgrade/platform.sh for 21.02.x:

	ampedwireless,ally-00x19k|\
	ampedwireless,ally-r1900k)
		if [ "$(grep -c bootImage=0 /dev/mtd1)" != "1" ]; then
			mtd erase u-boot-env
		fi
		;;

This resets the uboot environment, which has the side effect of setting bootImage=0.

22.03.0 also just came out, but the patch for this hadn't been finalized & merged so it does not work (see PR here). For now, please build 22.03.0 from scratch, with the PR, to get working images.

Manually applying the change to the script works fine for me, but for some reason the only version I can seem to get to install via U-Boot, or sysupgrade after the patch, is 21.02.0.

When I try other versions in the 21 and 22 branch U-Boot gets a checksum error, and if I try to sysupgrade to one of the other versions from 21.02.0 I get the "lzma error 1 - must reset board to recover" after if flashes.

I am able to recover either back to stock or 21.02.0 with U-Boot and I have serial access. From what I've read, the LZMA error is usually an issue with how the kernel is compressed in the build. Why would that vary from 21.02.0 to 21.02.5 or the 22 builds?

This is technically the ALLY-R2100k, but all of their mesh products from this generation have the exact same hardware and FCC IDs. Even the firmware I got from support back in 2020 was for the 1900.

Thanks

edit: I was able to get 21.02.5 installed, but 22 still fails even after patching the platform.sh script.

Thanks for the info.
I've been away from the Amped devices for a bit but will try to get back to them. My understanding is that the root of the problem is often the proprietary U-boot builds the OEMs use. So AFAIK we may be just hitting the image size limit of the Amped devices' U-boot. I'll check into it though and report back.

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Thanks for your work in these. I hate throw them out seeing the vendor abandoned them out of the gate, and the radios are pretty solid. If there's anything you need me to check on them, just let me know.

I'd done some work months ago to get 22.03 working, and have validated that it still works. You'll have to build an image by hand however. The high level steps:

  1. Checkout/clone the 22.03 branch.
  2. Apply this PR.
  3. Add this line to mt7621.mk
  4. Edit this line in mt7621.mk.
  5. Follow normal instructions for building images from scratch.

Even with that, the initramfs images are sometimes rejected via TFTP. But I find that usually one of them works, so if the Router initramfs fails, try the Extender image. Once you get either initramfs image in there, you can force a sysupgrade to the proper image from LuCI. I ran into this myself yesterday, and used the router initramfs to get the extender going, then sysupgraded to the full extender image.

HTH

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