Anybody know if this Dual-Band Bullet is supported by OpenWrt yet?
As it is dual-band, would be a great target for 802.11s Meshing. (802.11s is supported on the dual-band UniFi hardware but not this dual-band Bullet AFAIK)
It's likely very similar hardware to the NanoStation AC loco. That model has a low power 2 GHz "management radio" as well as the main 5 GHz radio. It's not clear is the main radio in the Bullet selectable dual band or simultaneous?
I don't see a use case for the Bullet that wouldn't be equally served by a Unifi AC Mesh, or if you need a dish antenna, one of their CPEs with integral dish. The AC Mesh looks to be the same price as the Bullet. It does have 1 or 2 dB less power but you gain 2x2 wireless, twice the RAM, and standard 802.3af power capability.
Since they are all Atheros chipset, under OpenWrt the UniFi and AirOs lines both use the same wifi drivers. So the same modes are available though the AirOs devices are limited by having only 64 MB RAM instead of 128 that the UniFi platforms have.
If I had one I'd try the AC loco firmware on it. Their TFTP recovery makes it very unlikely to get stuck with a severe brick.
mk24: Thanks for reply. Have not tried the LocoAC FW yet on the B-DB-AC, but
- B-DB-AC: 25 dBm max TX
- UAP-AC-M: 20 dBm max TX
5dB is a lot. 6dB represents a 2:1 ratio on range.
Couple that with the fact the bundled antennas with the UAP-AC-M are low gain , whereas the Bullet can have much higher gain antennas, means the Bullet will have much higher range, albeit at lower speeds as it only SISO (UAP-AC-M is MIMO)
I tried the following - but it failed
- Used these instructions: https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/ubiquiti_nanostation_ac_loco
- Upgraded B-DB-AC to V2WA.V8.5.0 (Note the "2WA"), build 36727
- Patched ubntbox: "hexdump -Cv /bin/ubntbox |..."
- chmod +x /tmp/fwupdate.real
- Uploaded to /tmp :
openwrt-19.07.2-ath79-generic-ubnt_nanostatio
n-ac-loco-initramfs-kernel.bin - Tried to upgrade
/tmp/fwupdate.real -m /tmp/openwrt-..... - Get this error: Invalid Image MAGIC ''V'
So seems the LocoAC openWRT FW is not suitable for the B-DB-AC.
Any other suggestions?
Rob
Try the "squashfs-factory" OpenWrt image as the wiki page says, not the "initramfs".
mk24:
Thanks for the suggestion.
/tmp/fwupdate.real -m /tmp/openwrt-19.07.2-ath79-generic-ubnt_nanostation
-ac-loco-squashfs-factory.bin
Invalid version 'WA.ar934x.v8.5.0-42.OpenWrt-r10947-65030d81f3'
Hmmm.. did not work either
The B-DB-AC has a "2WA" board so that is probably the reason.
Ideas?
BTW - This page has conflicting info on the bin file to use: https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/ubiquiti_nanostation_ac_loco
Typo?
No typo. If you read the installation section completely, you will notice that there are two installation instructions: One with factory image, one with initramfs image.
https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/ubiquiti_nanostation_ac_loco#installing_openwrt (factory)
https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/ubiquiti_nanostation_ac_loco#alternate_installation_instructions (initramfs)