Engenius outdoor AC wifi support

For Developers
1

Hello devs,

I am working with a customer on a new project that needs outdoor long range wifi. Any hope we can get the Engenius Ensky outdoor radios (EnStationAC, EnStation5-AC or ENS500-AC.) supported in OpenWRT?

I can see that OpenWRT already supports the ENS620EXT, but it has 5dbi antennas which are unfortunately not enough for the project.

Anyone interested in getting the above devices supported? I can do some testing or log work.

2

Hi, I added support for EnstationAC

however, I had to break it open to get serial access for testing....
(I used PVC cement to put it back together, not ideal but it remains waterproof :laughing: )

if you are willing to do this I can help with the other two models

3

Absolutely. Let's do the ENS500-AC, no worries about breaking it open. It does not look like it is a QCA though, some docs are mentioning a quad-core processor, do you know which cpu? ipq40xx may be?

Let me know (or pm me) how you want to proceed.

4

yeah you're right...it is IPQ
more difficult to work with...

the type of case that has to be broken is the round one
the other can be opened without breaking anything

are you able to solder pins if you need to?
and a multimeter to verify the pinout?

FCC pictures

https://fccid.io/A8J-ENS500AC/Internal-Photos/Internal-Photos-pdf-3415274.pdf

5

in case you have the round model...

the part you have to break apart is the first picture on page 6 / 17
(Page 14 as written on the document)

then the rest is screws

6

Sorry I was not clear. We did not order any because they were not supported by OWRT, so I don't have them yet but I can order and solder the serial.

However, I don't really have experience in H/W or dts, did not have to do that before. We can send you one though if you have time to work on it.

7

Sure you can send me one. I will message you an address at some point....

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8

information on a sample of the boards...

the hardware differs by version, which is best determined by the FCC ID
like I said, IPQ is harder to work with right now, but still possible
however they might do a completely different upgrade method for IPQ boards
which would make it take longer to figure out maybe

IPQ40xx:
A8J-ENS500AC

QCA956x:
A8J-ENS500-ACV2
A8J-ENSTA5-ACV2 (same as ENS500AC v2, in a different case)
A8J-ENSTACV2

QCA955x:
A8J-ENSTAC (already supported)

AR934x:
A8J-ENS500
A8J-ENSTA5 (same as ENS500, in a different case)
A8J-ENSTA2

9

So the new models will be QCA956x. That's 1 core, right?

I was hoping to get the IPQ (4 core) as we are having some cpu intensive applications running. There are plenty of QCA devices in openwrt but the IPQ would be good contender to Ubnt and MikroTik!

10

the ENS500-AC v1 is IPQ, and the only one in the series
ENS500-AC v2 is QCA

what kind of cpu intensive applications?

QCA is not 4 core ARM, but the core is pretty quick for a router and great for most situations

11

We're doing a lot of end-to-end network tunnelling, with no offloading to the NIC.

Anyway, I guess no point from working on IPQ/V1 since it is going EOL. Let me know if you'd like to work on v2, I think it is still a good option since it comes with 2 ethernet ports.

12

no IPQ is not EOL it is newer, its just more difficult to build for it

none of the chipsets will be EOL here, the only limit is flash space

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