I have a few old V1 EAPs collecting dust, looking to repurpose them to a new home and was thinking of installing OpenWRT on them.
What's not clear to me.
How do you manage SSIDs and if there is a central way to configure them all?
What about devices roaming, how is that handled?
I assume you need to manually setup each AP, but Omada is nice since it one central config for all APs, and helps with fast roaming so it not depended on the client or low signal strength
Before going further, what are the specific models. It makes sense to verify they are supported by OpenWrt (and specifically, a current version).
How many are you talking about? For a few or a handful (say <10), it's usually easier to just manage each device individually... it's usually a matter of set-and-forget once things are dialed in.
However, if you have a large fleet and/or are okay with the additional complexity, there are some tools for fleet management like DAWN or OpenWISP. These are not trivial tools, though... there is a steep learning curve.
Roaming is mostly a client side process. All that is required for roaming is that the APs are setup with the same SSID, encryption type, and passphrase. You should also consider physical placement, channel selection (non-overlapping on neighboring APs), and power levels (in the vast majority of cases, reducing the power) to tune your network for optimal roaming.
It is possible to add additional configuration elements to try to improve roaming specifically dealing with the speed of the transition and/or density distributions -- 802.11r and sometimes 802.11k/v can be used. However, I recommend not using these standards unless there is an actual demonstrated need for it and you know what you are doing. These standards often cause more harm then good in many user environments -- the earlier bit about basic network tuning is the foundation and is usually all that is required to have a high performance system.
As I mentioned above, DAWN or OpenWISP would be similar to Omada, but more complex to get running. The Omada system (and others like Unifi) are actually quite good and they do make the process easy. But for only a handful of devices, it's not hard to manage them individually. And I covered the bit about fast roaming (802.11r) which I don't recommend in most cases.
Its only a few EAPs and yes, they are supported by OpenWRT.
I've in the past dealt with sticky clients that stay stuck on an AP, and in the past set RSSI values and reduced signal strength as well as messed 802.11r and 802.11k/v.
It's been a hit and miss until I started using the Omada controller.
The best way to deal with sticky clients is to simply use non-overlapping channels and then reduce the power levels such that the overlap in coverage area is minimized. This will typically cause the client device to roam based on its own internal logic.
Using features like 802.11k/v/r will only help if the radios are properly tuned in the first place. And min-RSSI values tend to cause more problems than it will solve in a multi-AP config.
If you want a controller there's Openwisp, Radiusdesk and a few others, if you don't want a controller there's other options.