What's the best TP-Link EAP Series AP supported by OpenWrt?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hello, I'd like to purchase a new TP-Link AP to run in "dump AP mode". I'm wondering what the best option is, in terms of features / performance, that's supported by OpenWrt?

For example, the TP-Link EAP683 LR looks like a great device, but I don't see any support for OpenWrt.

2

The truth is that you don't need OpenWrt to run dumb AP mode on pretty much any AP. I mention that because you can really get any device you want based on the hardware alone.

Of course, if you want to have additional features and capabilities that are available on OpenWrt and/or you prefer (on a more general basis) to use OpenWrt, then you'd obviously want to look into devices that are supported here.

3

Thanks, that's good advice. In my case, I have a few OpenWrt packages I need installed on the AP.

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4

EAP-613 or EAP615-Wall looks like a decent OpenWrt supported AX1800 option based on the MT7621 SoC. Others based on the QCA9563 are supported, but that platform is getting a bit dated. Might as well get ax support at this point.

Edit:
See stintel's note below pointing out the EA615-Wall has only 128 MB of memory. I must have missed that when I called it a decent AP option earlier. It's an option, but calling it a decent one may be stretching it in some cases.

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5

Note for EAP615-WALL when it contains stock firmware v1.1.7 or higher:
If you want to install OpenWrt 23.05.2 you need to edit the downloaded .bin file with a hex editor prior to flashing it. (Snapshot or next release 23.05.3 should work out of the box though)

See also
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/eap615-wall-installation-fails-with-failed-to-check-for-new-update/
https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=34e30fb53ac00f446431cb33a5439c6544527c51

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6

Looking at the FCC photos, this seems to be MediaTek-based: MT7986AV, MT7976AN, MT7976GN.

PHY: MaxLinear GPY211C0VC (SLNW8) 2.5Gbit

Flash: ESMT F50L1G41LB 128MB SPI NAND
RAM: Samsung K4A8G165WC-BCTD (1GB?)

I suspect it should be relatively easy to add OpenWrt support for this device.

It also comes with CC2652, so it should be possible to suppport Thread and/or Zigbee, iiuc.

I might get one of those and have a go at adding support. The 128MB RAM on the EAP615-Wall is proving to be problematic with extra software like lldpd, prometheus-node-exporter-ucode, snmpd.

7

Of course I had forgotten about how TP-Link likes to make it hard to access serial console :frowning:

8

Looks like I jumped the gun here. While there are no holes to solder a header, there are 4 pads on the PCB that give you TTL. I started a wiki page: https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/eap683-lr

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