I was trying to follow the steps in the page below, but it only says "you can enable telnet by flashing stock closed beta firmware" without how. I turned on the router and connected the PC to it using Ethernet, but the web UI is all Chinese (no English version available) and I cannot find the menu to install a firmware. Note that I have not connected the router to the Internet, because, you know, it will probably send my data to that Chinese company's server.
Must I connect to the Internet, in order to flash the beta firmware? The firmware has already been downloaded, but I am asking this if the firmware installation menu only appears if the router is connected to the Internet.
When I connected to 192.168.1.1., the screen with two check boxes and one big blue button appeared. I think the first checkbox is EULA agreement, and the second one is an optional agreement to register to Xiaomi. I checked only the first box and then pressed the big blue button. It then showed some page with a big illustration with LAN -> WAN connection and some 3 Chinese instructions. I clicked all four clickable things. It seems (1)selecting some Chinese ISP (2)testing Internet connection (3) and (4) basic Internet connection like PPoE, DHCP, static IP, connecting to a Wi-Fi AP, try connecting to WAN.
For the Xiaomi AX3200 (model RB01), if it does not have telnet enabled from factory, there is no simple way to install OpenWrt
Does your device have telnet enabled?
No, Telnet is not enabled out-of-the-box. As far as I understand, if Telnet is not enabled out-of-the-box, one can enable telnet by installing that closed-beta firmware. My device is AX6S (Chinese), but it is probably the same as AX6. See the passage below. My problem is that the page is not giving details on how to install the beta firmware.
If your device does not have telnet enabled from factory and it is a Redmi AX6 (RB03 model), you can enable telnet by flashing stock “closed beta” firmware.. .. If your device is a Xiaomi AX3200 (RB01 model) and does not have telnet enabled from factory, stop here - unfortunately, there is no known way to enable telnet on this model except UART flash method.
Also, the link in the first step seems to be calling luci/api/xqsystem/fac_info. I have read that Xiaomi's firmware is based on OpenWRT anyway. That link gives me some JSON, in which it says that its model is RB03, for which the OpenWRT page says Telnet can be enabled by flashing beta.
That was what I had thought before turning on the router, but all the web UI I can see is the screenshots above; I cannot find any menu to flash, and the menu is all Chinese. That is why I am asking here for the detailed instruction on flashing the beta firmware.
Found a solution. Click the link below the button and choose the second one "DHCP". Choose any password and leave other options intact, and click the button. Then, open a new browser window, go to 192.168.31.1, and type the password that you just set. It will show the router administration web UI.
