Porting Meraki MR16 to ath79

hurricos · June 28, 2020, 9:01pm

Hi there,

Today I worked on porting the Meraki MR16 to ath79, and had some general success:

A lot of things still need to be fixed:

Properly handling sysupgrade from ar71xx
Fixing last LEDs
Currently the WiFi LEDs don't do much.
Not using kmod-owl-loader to load eeprom data to the WiFi chips
Apparently using owl loader isn't good, and there are good alternatives: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/1258#issuecomment-411518044

I'm not 100% sure how to go forward; I did speak back in January with the person who originally ported the board to OpenWrt (riptidewave93), but I left the conversation idle until today, where I decided to up and do it (and so far it hasn't been too hard).

For moving forward: I get the impression that https://openwrt.org/submitting-patches should have me squash all of my commits into one and then submit a merge request.

ghoffman · June 28, 2020, 9:54pm

I've got a bunch of old MR16's that i used to use in my hme mesh network. last openwrt version was 17.x.
i'd love to tyr your update - are inaries available?
thanks

hurricos · June 29, 2020, 1:39pm

They are currently available for the ar71xx target.

Worst-case scenario, if you are in a situation where they won't boot their current OpenWrt version, just get a PL2302-based USB to Serial cable and reflash them directly:

github.com

btvmeshnet/hardware/blob/master/platforms/Meraki/MR16/flashing/Flash-MR16.md

# Opening MR12/16
You will need
- T5 TORX screwdriver
- Philips screwdriver
- some sort of prying tools (spudgers work well)

- Unscrew the two screws on either end of the device
 - Notes: They are somtimes covered in tape, you can push your Torx screwdriver into it to unscrew through the tape.
 
  ![](./pics/screw.jpg)
 
- Remove the metal cover from the plastic cover
  - You will need to pry the plastic away from the metal to release the clips
  - The best way to do this is by wedging in guitar-style opening picks between each clip and its mate, then picking one clip to leverage up with a flat-head screwdriver; pictured below

  ![](./pics/spudgers.jpg)

- Once removed, unscrew the board from the metal casing

  ![](./pics/screws.jpg)

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