Installing 24.10.4 on BT Home Hub 5A (PlusNet) - WiFi not installed

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

This is my first attempt at setting up OpenWrt.

I am trying to set up 4 Home Hubs as 5 port switches and wifi access points and a fanless PC as a router. I thought I would start with the home hubs as they might be a good start.

I managed after a days investigation and multiple attempts to get version 24.10.4 installed and booted but no WiFi - neither working nor appearing on the network tab.

Installed from "openwrt-24.10.4-lantiq-xrx200-bt_homehub-v5a-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin"

So followed some suggestions to install drivers but they seemed to be already installed.

Eventually I followed the other advice - restore from backup and start again. This time I tried a couple of different versions but the installations failed so went back to 24.10.4

Again successful install but still no WiFi

HELP! please

Thanks

2

Check what lspci -nn (probably has to be installed pciutils), iwinfo, iw list and dmesg have to say about it.

3

Did these devices have OpenWrt on before you flashed 24.10.4?

I have a good few HH5a/PlusNet One routers and they all run 24.10.5 successfully with both wifi radios present (but disabled by default as is the OpenWrt way).

4

Thanks for your interest.

No these were "standard" routers.

When you say WiFi is disabled by default - I believe that even so wireless appears on the Network tab. Is that correct?

5

Yes, you should see the radios on the Network > Wireless tab.

Mine are shown as

Qualcomm Atheros QCA9880 802.11ac/n

and
Atheros AR9287 802.11b/g/n

on 25.12.1

What guide did you follow for flashing them? Never had a problem myself, other than the pins being quite small :smiley:

EDIT: according to my notes, I flashed 23.05 first, then 24.10 and now 25.12.
EDIT2: might not have flashed 23.05 first on some of them (don’t want to muddy the waters)

6

Thanks for help - especially hedzwillroll (love the username)

I have successfully installed 24.10.6 and the WiFi has appeared - wonderful

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7

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