Donating Meraki MR24 3x3 MIMO to Developers? Who?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

I purchased a couple dozen Meraki 3x3 MIMO MR24's on eBay and would like to pass some on to serious developers if they might help improve the MR24 OpenWRT experience with greater functionality and greater installation and maintenance ease-of-use, especially for using with mesh configurations.

I bought these radios, without power supplies, for around $7 each (in quantity) which, at that relatively low cost, make them a relatively "great deal." Perhaps the more knowledgeable could weigh in on if this radio is useful for that price for a mesh network covering a small campus.

The radios are not outdoor rated but appear like they'd fare well under an eave if not in direct rain. External antenna hacks are possible too.

At this price point I also started looking at the radio also as a potential inexpensive monitoring station, modding this radio for other uses, as the SoC apparently supports more than what the radio is using. (The WD NAS uses the same system on a chip.)

Is this the right message board for this offer?

Please reply here or PM.

p.s. I made the same offer on OpenWISP tonight so perhaps we could get some synergy going if there is any interest there too.

ref:

  1. https://openwrt.org/toh/meraki/mr24
  2. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openwisp/eKHgZO_m6Sc <--- list of additional links on this radio
2

Why would a developer need these?

edit: To add on to that, the Meraki MR24 is already supported.

1 Like
3

Could having some 3x3 of the same radio facilitate ease-of-configuration setup for mesh environments? My impression was that 1) mesh is not super easy to set up and that 2) this particular model has some minor cosmetic issues still.

If it's already supported is there any way to have it "better supported" or is it basically working fully / not working, and it's already "working fully."

4

Regardless of the hardware make/model, I've found it quite easy to setup mesh networking (i.e. OLSR) on OpenWrt. It's really as simply as:

  1. installing mesh software
  2. connecting at least one interface to the mesh; and
  3. setting up route announcements on all routers

There's even a web GUI for config. Next, I'm not sure how a cosmetic issue (in hardware) is related to OpenWrt. If you're referring to "software cosmetics," the look-and-feel is identical across all devices - so that doesn't make much sense. Lastly, if a device is supported - it's as simple as that. There's no such things as "super support" and "better support".

  • Perhaps, you can explain the issue you're having?
  • Are you seeking a certain feature addition (e.g. some push-button mesh config script)?
  • Do you have a question about mesh configuration - you may wish to make a thread for your mesh configuration questions
  • Are you seeking a custom mesh firmware build (BTW, that can be done using the image builder)?
2 Likes
5

I'll dig into it.

I guess I was being somewhat lazy hoping that by offering hardware setup might get easier but perhaps it is already easy and I need to dive back in.