Recently got my hands on a KuWfi AX835 ceiling AP, which is apparently a Yuncore AX835 in a different housing (photos on the website show a round form factor, images in the user's manual are of a square device). They advertise that it's running OpenWRT on their Aliexpress listing, but no other details.
The original firmware (AX835-AP-V2.0-Build20230821101444) seems to broadcast a "ghost" SSID protected by a default password which I've found no method of disabling, so I'm looking into replacing it with OpenWRT.
I've tried contacting both KuWfi and Yuncore, but I suspect they won't be too helpful. There's no firmware download available at the moment.
I'll open it up and and make bootlogs/photos in coming weeks.
If anyone has any additional insight or is willing to lend a hand, please do.
@fd0e
I've also found that other device. Yuncore sells round and square cases. There is no branding at all on my device and I've also asked Yuncore about the other device.
They seemed surprised to learn about it and said they would investigate.
This has been working well for me:
The image can be flashed via TFTP (installation instructions on the commit from the PR). Yuncore will also ship devices with a different image on it.
They have an 'unlocked' firmware to flash your own using SSH. In my experience, they were very kind and even supplied internal documents of the board (which I used for GPIO mapping etc.).
In general, my experience with these vendors has been very positive lately.
They have a square device in the user's manual and a round device advertised on their website. What I bought on Aliexpress was the square one with KuWfi branding printed on top (upside down if mounted on a wall). I got the device for around 50 euros (25% VAT included) during a recent sale, which makes it a complete bargain.
As for the phantom SSID, the abovementioned stock firmware broadcasts an unconfigurable 5.8 GHz SSID (My_Vap_XXXXXX, XXXXXX being the last six characters of the MAC address) if "Country region" is set to China, which it is by default. The SSID doesn't show up if the region is set to ETSI. I've been trying to explain this to Yuncore's "Daniel" from customer support but to no avail. He also claims that telnet is "not open" and that it's open by request on custom firmware versions, which sounds about right.
I've also contacted KuWfi support. They flat out told me that no, I can't have the telnet login data because it's not open for customers and/or used for repair purposes.
I assume flashing this firmware is necessary if I wanted to flash OpenWRT without using the onboard serial port, since both SSH and telnet are disabled on the stock firmware. Can you send me a copy to check if their unlocked firmware also has the 'phantom SSID' bug?
The unlocked firmware has no wifi functionality at al, as far as I can tell.
I tried to look how they did it while bringing up the device but there was much to learn since there weren't any phys.
If you like, you can try an Openwrt image built using the release config:
I've been running my own builds based on your PR for a few weeks and it has been working fine.
Since the PR has been accepted and there are snapshots available, I've added the device to the Table of Hardware and created a device page.
If you have any photos of your OEM Yuncore device, please add them or forward them to me (mine is KuWfi branded). Since I forgot to save my stock bootlog, I've put your stock dmesg output from the PR. I'll add the OpenWRT bootlog once I upgrade it to the latest snapshot.
Network interfaces, switch and hardware IO sections on the device page still need work, if you don't have the time to update those, feel free to send any relevant hardware information you got from the manufacturer to me and I'll update the wiki.
I've tried upgrading my personal PR build to the latest official snapshot(s) and there seem to be some issues.
LEDs don't work after uboot (neither the front-facing RGB nor LAN/WAN port status leds)
WAN/LAN MACs are suddenly different
Can anyone shed any light as to what has changed? There have been a couple of commits on the filogic target as well as this device after the PR has been pulled.
Can't speak for yogo1212, but I got the KuWFI branded square form factor from KuWFI's Aliexpress store, where it's listed as "KuWFi 3000Mbps Ceiling AP Access".
@letshin Sorry, I can't just give you an answer that 'works'.
But I can describe my general strategy - in hope that it helps you.
I've had a good experience just asking manufacturers for one or two sample devices. Writing emails is a rather impractical method compared to navigating a store but....
If simply asking kindly doesn't help, I'd opt for something more creative:
Many of these manufacturers are trying to get into deals with bigger companies that sell their routers for them (because b2c+returns is a hassle, especially across markets), so using a company email does help. Sometimes they'll ask for your use case - just make up something plausible. It can also help to establish the idea that you could be ordering a lot more in the future.
A fairly inconspicuous story could be: You're working for R&D of a company that is looking for a new device to use for their future service work. The product is intended to be used in the office buildings of your customers.
I've found that trying to convince an Asian manufacturer that porting a device to Openwrt could enlargen their potential customer base is usually a waste of time. No idea whether they don't understand the culture or whether they just prefer knowing exactly who they are dealing with.
If you also want to do a port, you might also want to be asking for GPIO mappings, device trees, and other development related material (greatly reduces the need for reverse engineering). So far, I've always had to argue. Why won't I just be using their software and why do I need to be rolling my own?
I don't really have a good answer here. Try to find out what they are interested in and provide an answer that they would accept. Maybe you need tight integration with your custom controller infrastructure.
With Yuncore, they provided me with two round routers instead of the square cases they advertise on their website which, I suspect, was due to what I told them about what it'd be doing with the hardware.
I just checked and seems that the mac issue was solved a few months ago, at least the wifi mac it's consistent with the sticker
The only issue would be the led, did a quick review of the dts but I didn't see changes on that section so not really sure what could be the problem, also using the KuWfi version
