Router for MATE ROV (underwater robot) shore controls box

Hello,

I am the president of the Cabrillo College robotics club in Santa Cruz, California.
We have a robot that competes in the MATE ROV underwater robotics competition.
We are using ros and a raspberry pi on the robot and an ethernet cable in the tether and then we have a router on the surface and a laptop for the rqt interface.
we won the 2022 competition in the pioneer class.
because of our win people are giving us money and I want to improve our controller setup with some of that.

our mess of cables and devices took too long to setup and we got a setup time penalty.
for the 2023 competition we are building a shore controller into a rifle case
two monitors in the lid with a bezel laser cut in the school maker space.
for the bottom of the case we will have
a 12v psu
a 5v psu
a single board computer (pi or jetson, or other, haven't decided yet)
and a router
our bezel for the bottom will have panel mount connectors
a iec-c13 for power in to the power supplies
an ethernet connector of some kind for the tether (probably a bulgin connector since they are sponsoring us)
ethernet and power jacks for secondary laptops for development and debug

I need help finding the router to put in there

router requirements:
openwrt (duh)
1gig ethernet (1 wan 4 lan minimum but more is better)
2.4 and 5ghz wifi (we use one for client to steal wifi from venue and one for ap for additional monitors
mpcie slot or m.2 slot for an epo6a or em06a (cellular for when we cant steal venue wifi)
accepts 12v or 5v input

if there was a mikrotik hap with a mpcie slot and has openwrt support that would be perfect for us but that doesnt exist

is there anything with a similar footprint to a hap that has cellular as well?

(arm for the soc would be nice but not required)

let me know if you have any ideas for a router that would work for us to embed in our controls box

Was going to suggest sw301da / sw302da, but the prices are crazy high,
I bought a couple for less than $25/pcs a year ago.

Comes with three mPCIe slots, and has a SIM slot.

Unfortunately only three ports, but a network switch is cheap.

You could also try the Roqos RC150 https://www.ebay.com/itm/234656417292,
comes with all the ports you need, cellular modem, and AC wireless.

ok so I bought an rc150

it has a sierra wireless EM7455 for cellular

it has a CLM-3000-1300 3x3 wifi ac card

I got the efi combined openwrt image and flashed it to the rc150's internal ssd

how do I make the wifi and cellular cards work? there are no interfaces for them in the interfaces list.

to try to solve this myself I did the following... (I decided to start with wifi)

I installed pciutils

root@router:/# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series System Agent (rev 11)
00:04.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series Error Registers (rev 11)
00:05.0 Generic system peripheral [0807]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series Root Complex Event Collector (rev 11)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series Integrated QAT Root Port (rev 11)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series PCI Express Root Port #0 (rev 11)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev 11)
00:0f.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev 11)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev 11)
00:12.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series SMBus Contoller - Host (rev 11)
00:14.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series SATA Controller 1 (rev 11)
00:15.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 11)
00:16.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series Integrated LAN Root Port #0 (rev 11)
00:17.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series Integrated LAN Root Port #1 (rev 11)
00:18.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series ME HECI 1 (rev 11)
00:1c.0 SD Host controller: Intel Corporation Device 19db (rev 11)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series LPC or eSPI (rev 11)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series Power Management Controller (rev 11)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series SMBus controller (rev 11)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series SPI Controller (rev 11)
01:00.0 Co-processor: Intel Corporation Atom Processor C3000 Series QuickAssist Technology (rev 11)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Fiber Network Connection (rev 01)
02:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Fiber Network Connection (rev 01)
02:00.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
02:00.3 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
05:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA986x/988x 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE (rev 11)
06:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE (rev 11)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE (rev 11)
07:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE (rev 11)
root@router:/#

ok so I have an atheros qca988x card

so I installed the ath10k-firmware-qca988x and kmod-ath10k packages and I rebooted

still no wireless interfaces
not sure where to go from here...

I have two wifi cards my RC10, I need these packages to make them work

ath10k-board-qca988x
ath10k-firmware-qca988x
kmod-ath
kmod-ath10k
kmod-ath9k
kmod-ath9k-common

the ath9k are for the 802.11n card, not sure about the kmod-ath.

installing those packages in 22.03.2, pulls a lot of additional packages,
this isn't happening on 21.02.5 (might still be OK though).

I upgraded both Openwrt versions on my RC10 to the latest ones, just 2 hrs ago.

Configuring iwinfo.
Configuring kmod-crypto-gf128.
Configuring iw.
Configuring wireless-regdb.
Configuring kmod-cfg80211.
Configuring kmod-crypto-cmac.
Configuring kmod-crypto-null.
Configuring kmod-crypto-aead.
Configuring kmod-crypto-manager.
Configuring kmod-crypto-hmac.
Configuring kmod-crypto-sha256.
Configuring kmod-crypto-rng.
Configuring kmod-crypto-seqiv.
Configuring kmod-crypto-ctr.
Configuring kmod-crypto-ccm.
Configuring kmod-crypto-ghash.
Configuring kmod-crypto-gcm.
Configuring hostapd-common.
Configuring kmod-mac80211.
Configuring kmod-ath.
Configuring kmod-ath10k.
Configuring kmod-ath9k-common.
Configuring kmod-ath9k.
Configuring ath10k-board-qca988x.
Configuring ath10k-firmware-qca988x.

the modem is probably using USB via a mPCIe interface, you should be able to see it using lsusb.

root@router:/# opkg install ath10k-board-qca988x ath10k-firmware-qca988x kmod-ath kmod-ath10k kmod-ath9k kmod-ath9k-common
Package ath10k-board-qca988x (20220411-1) installed in root is up to date.
Package ath10k-firmware-qca988x (20220411-1) installed in root is up to date.
Package kmod-ath (5.10.146+5.15.58-1-1) installed in root is up to date.
Package kmod-ath10k (5.10.146+5.15.58-1-1) installed in root is up to date.
Package kmod-ath9k (5.10.146+5.15.58-1-1) installed in root is up to date.
Package kmod-ath9k-common (5.10.146+5.15.58-1-1) installed in root is up to date.
root@router:/#

ok cool got those installed (forgot to copy output on first run so second time to verify install)

wireless tab shows up now! yay

got usbutils installed

root@router:/# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05e3:0610  USB2.0 Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1199:9071 Sierra Wireless, Incorporated Sierra Wireless EM7455 Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X7 LTE-A
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux 5.10.146 xhci-hcd xHCI Host Controller
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux 5.10.146 xhci-hcd xHCI Host Controller
root@router:/#

looks like its an EM7455 just like the sticker says

ill go look at the docs for how to setup lte now

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got the qmi device showing up under devices yay

good work!

out of curiosity, what did you end up paying for the RC150,
and could you please post photos of the internals ?

Yeah i will start a new topic

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My ebay invoice says $187.41 after tax and shipping to santa cruz California