A lot of devices in the Table of Hardware have an outdated / non-existing availability status. In order to keep the ToH usefull for users searching for a new device to buy, the availability data should be updated regularly.
Update availability of a device by clicking on “View/Edit data” in the last column, then follow the instructions on the dataentry page
If you can buy a device in 2020 -> Available 2020
If you can not buy a device in 2020 -> Discontinued (bonus points if you know in which year)
Do not enter Available < year in the past >. We have 2020 and we want to know if this device can be bought today, i.e. in 2020. We do not want to know when the device first was commercially available.
Click Preview to check your edit for correctness.
Click Save to permanently save your edit.
Your help is needed
The OpenWrt wiki and Table of Hardware are from the community and for the community.
The more the community contributes, the better for the community.
Do you see any device in https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_admin_available that you know has been discontinued by the OEM? Great, then you can help to keep our data up to date! See above how you can contribute directly.
If you do not have an account for the OpenWrt wiki (and you don't want to create one only for this task), just let me know your input here in this topic, and I will update the data accordingly.
There are sites that track availability and price of products. This is a Swedish example, but I think it will be clear enough:
Linksys: WRT1900AC: https://www.prisjakt.nu/produkt.php?p=2463329
I think it is quite safe to assume that this site has assigned this product an ID of 2463329, and we can query that page. It has the text "Inga butiker hittades för denna produkt" meaning nobody is selling it.
Linksys Archer C7 AC750: https://www.prisjakt.nu/produkt.php?p=1804875
So I think this device has ID 1804875. There are some key indications on the site: "Ny (30)" means there are 30 stores selling it brand new.
I think this can be mostly-automated. Perhaps there are 50-100 devices that are relevant and available today (summer 2022). For each of them we need:
a static url
a "positive" trigger (like "Ny (*)") that we are looking for
We can find a few similar sites in different countries that seem to work ok for our purposes.
A few times per year we run a script checking all sites/models, and compare the result with last run. If it is no longer positive, we update the Wiki accordingly.
As a side effect, in the long run, we could end up with links to places that sell the devices as well. All this does not need to end up on the ToH itself.
The "hard" work is to add new links to new devices.
There are exactly 100 devices in Available 2021 + Available 2022 as I am writing this. Those are a good start.
