do you know a correct outdoor AP (2.4GHz or 2.4 + 5.8, no pb) with good OpenWRT support ?
I try to find one not too expansive that can run recent OpenWRT versions.
I don't want to buy TP-Link products this year, becase you can't know which HW revision you will receive (eg. EAP225 outdoor v3 is supported ... but what about the v4 ? and EAP110 is not supported anymore), Ubiquiti is too expansive for me.
Zyxel NWA55AXE seems to be the only option from major brand but I don't know 802.11AX for the garden.
Thanks
Edit: something like that should be perfect, but I'm not able to find any information about OWRT support:
Note there are two versions of the Comfast, with completely different hw, only the older, Qualcomm based version is supported, the newer one is supportable, but not added.
MikroTik has the wAP AC which should have full support. IPQ40xx ARM instead of the QCA9531 which is getting very long in the teeth by now. Like any MikroTik device though, it comes with caveats - you need a downgrade of the factory firmware and bootloader before you can run OpenWrt on it.
I'm in the RCN, and have been involved in cobbling up every kind of crew WiFi you can imagine, many of them (for security and various other reasons) were exterior. Just to put it out there, I have had very good experience with non-outdoor-routers inside a protective radome. And when I say radome, it can be as simple as a plastic cake cover or food container, or more purpose fit like IP67 instrumentation boxes, some of which have mounting and cording solutions, to actual radomes.
In my experience, with the outdoor hardware, you end up either getting stuff with mediocre weatherproofing, questionable performance, or exaggerated prices.
Thank you for all your answers.
I will look at your suggestions in detail.
I'm not a big fan of IPQ chips, I've tried a few (4018 and 8072A) and they are much more power hungry than the competition (QCA, MediaTek).
To go a bit into detail, I am looking to replace my venerable TL-WR841N (QCA9533, 2.4GHz only) which is in the technical room of the swimming pool and which is limited to version 19.07. It has posed absolutely no problems for 1000 years since I put it into service
The fact that it is inside the room poses concerns (concrete walls), the wi-fi of the outdoor Iot has a hard time passing the walls of this shed and I would of course like to be able to have an AP with a newer version of OpenWRT.
Its hardware would have been more recent, I would certainly have simply moved the antennas outside the room to solve the problem, knowing that it only consumes 1.5W
if you like a specific chipset, like the QCA9533, use https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_extended_all to look for any devices with the same radio, that might still be buyable, and have bigger flash > 8mb flash
8mb flash devices will be EOL:ed after next stable release of openwrt.
using QCA9533 + 16mb flash as filter, the list gets reallyshort.
Oh, thanks, good information !
I was really pleased with the 841n long lasting under OpenWRT ... it's perhaps time for to choose a more durable SoC for this AP I want to replace
Yes, I haven't had time to look at the replies in the last 2 days
So now I have to reply (myself) to the question: 2.4GHz only or not ... that's the question (EW71 or EW72 v1)
Yes. Looking at the photo it looks like the RF signals are being run through mixers to combine 2.4 + 5. I can't tell for sure because I can't zoom in close enough. But the functional block bottom left close to one SMA plug looks like it's a mixer. You lose about a dB of signal that way Maybe 2. Depends how efficient their mixer is.
since I put it into service
