IPQ4019: Adding support for TP-Link Deco M5

802.11r (or at least I think it is, given how quickly it roams stations as verified by WifiMan) works. Very pleased with this setup

Hi all, sorry for my absence. Please do whatever you need to get this running, a passing attribution to anything I've written is fine, no need for my explicit permission. It's all free and open :slight_smile: sorry I haven't been active.

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Hi everyone, Im new here. I created this account because I have been frustrated for 3 days because I cant make it work like everybody does.

I flash it successfully by using tftp method however I cant access the gateway to setup the openwrt, I already remove the specific ip 192.168.0.66. I cant seem to get a default gateway. It is blank on ipconfig on cmd.

Btw, my deco m5 is US/3.0

can anyone help me

I have the same version as you, download v3 (openwrt-23.05.3-ipq40xx-generic-tplink_deco-m5-v3-squashfs-factory.bin)

Yes, that’s also the one that I used. As I’ve stated above, I cant get into the gateway.

Will you share with me, the steps you took to successfull boot into the openwrt page?

The firmware does not bridge the 2 ports on the device and treats the port farthest away from the power connector as the LAN port (that is linked to 192.168.1.1). Can you confirm that you use this port? See also IPQ4019: Adding support for TP-Link Deco M5 - #360 by TheTKS

okay thank you, but let me clarify something.

There are two ports right? When uploading I use two ethernet cable connection.

  1. main router =====> deco m5
  2. deco m5 =====> computer

which ethernet cable am i gonna use on the far away from power cable?

There are multiple ways to solve this.

If your main router has an IP address other than 192.168.1.1 then connect your router to the deco on its LAN port (te one farthest away from the power connector). Connect your computer to your router or any other access point other than the deco device. Your should be able to reach the deco now and configure it. You can bridge both ports on br-lan and return to the setup in your picture.

You can also connect locally by connecting your computer to the LAN port (no connection to your router) and assign a static IP on your computer. Then you can configure your deco device (IP, bridge etc).

The setup you drew does not work after flashing a new firmware with default config. Because the 2 ports are not bridged, either your computer or deco is not connected to the network.

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Thanks for your initial effort of porting it to 23.05! (along with @rtytgat for the image compression fix)
I'll add the appropriate Signed-off-by and Co-authored-by lines to the commits I've cherry-picked, but can't do any development work right now since I don't have a device that's readily available to work with.

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Thanks! WiFi5 is now getting dated, but this project really kept the lifespan of my M5s extended!

Now that the openwrt 23.05.5 has been released, I am wondering if we can get a latest build for our Deco M5 router. Unfortunately I don’t have the knowledge and means to build one myself.

Hi everyone,
first thanks for your work to get OpenWrt running on the M5. Ist there any plan to do an official pull request?
I saw that there is one closed (https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/4309) and one open, but not worked on anymore (https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/9705).

As far as I understand, there is a log of knowledge for this devices now distributed over multiple repositories:

Would be great to have it officially supported by OpenWrt.

Was anyone able to build OpenWrt on the latest main? If yes, is it working as dumb AP? There were issues in the IPQ40xx target (https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/14464), probably this device(s) would be affected as well?

Thanks in advance
Roland

Just dropped a v23.05.5 release for v3 models in Releases · dutchmillbytes/openwrt (github.com) The other models will follow soon.
I am aiming to create a PR to get the support merged in the official repo. Due to lack of time it has not been done yet, but next month looks promising timewise.

Good suggection to see if it runs on the latest main. I can give it a try to create a build and see if this device is affected by the bug mentioned.

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I had a short look on the available hardware revisions in EU and US. Looks like the following hardware revisions use the same firmware:

  • HW_EU_V1
  • HW_EU_V2
  • HW_EU_V3
  • HW_EU_V3.20
  • HW_US_V1
  • HW_US_V2
  • HW_US_V3
  • HW_US_V3.6
  • HW_US_V3.8
  • HW_US_V3.20
  • HW_US_V3.26
  • HW_US_V3.28

For V2.x hardware (HW_EU_V2.20 and HW_US_V2.10), looks like a different firmware is required. Based on the already existing repositories, only the LED handling is different. Can you confirm that this is the only difference? In your repository, you're using different DTS files for V1 and V3 but the LED configuration is identical. Is it intended to distinguish the device names?

Isn’t the issue# 14464 kernel 6.1 related? I am running your 23.05.3 build which has kernel 5.15.150, 23.05.4 updated to 5.15.162, and 23.05.5 runs on 5.15.167, so is the issue related to our m5 devices?

Yes, the issue is only present with kernel 6.x. While using OpenWrt 23.05, you are not affected.

AFAIK, pretty much the latest knowledge for these devices are contained in

I did try to rebase my changes to the latest main & 6.1 kernel around June, but I remember encountering a failed boot starting from the November 2023 to April 2024 range. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in the meantime, as I do not have a device to test on right now. There's also some other DTS changes that needed to be done to make it work with the latest main, but those are relatively easy to do.

In terms of other things required for official support, I remember getting hung up on finding the vendor assignments for the wifi MAC address (might've been -1 for 2Ghz & -2 for 5Ghz), as well as trying to figure out where the wifi firmware file from @frankveltmans came from, and if it differs between device regions.

AFAIK, the primary reason was to distinguish between the device names which was done in response to this review comment on oklona's PR. I have no clue if the LED configuration for V1 is correct, but we've pretty much just retained this configuration from whoever found it first.

I installed @dutchmill’s 23.05.5 deco m5 v3 build on my spare v1 device (had to force the installation due to the unmatched hardware version). The m5 v1 device boots up ok, showing the right openwrt version but as deco m5 v3 device. Not sure how to fully test this latest v3 version on v1 hardware out though.

As for the led, I mentioned in one of my earlier post that the led on my v1 deco m5 running the openwrt 23.05.3 v1 firmware never works, it just stay at orange-ish color, but the APs work as it should otherwise, I have 3 running stably for a couple of months now. The led behaves the same on this latest openwrt for v3 running on v1 hardware, stays at orange color.

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