Hi,

Upto now I have been working on code for the WNDR3700, which is nice as there is a direct build option from OpenWrt However I need to build the code for a beta OpenWrt image for the netgear NightHawk R7500. I have flashed this and the basic build is up and running.

The first problem is that I cant seem to find the right CPU arch for this box. Early reviews say a Qualcom chip however cat /proc/cpuinfo shows its a dual intel chip. This gives sheds loads of details but how do I know if its arm or which arm, its not obvious to me?

Then there comes the difficults of building for whatever arch it is. I hope to just set the target in make menu config to something close, and them build in an existing home brew pacakge from there. IS this the best approach?

Thanks for looking and even more for help!

Regards

ncik

- Open it up, gather as much info on the chips used as possible (CPU/Flash/RAM). Take photos.
- Get serial access and record the boot process
- Post all gathered data in this forum
- Do not wait for others to do the job. Do it yourself, otherwise you will be waiting for long

Nick
I am a frustrated user and not very openwrt proficient so please excuse any errors here but I believe the architecture is IPQ806x ( https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=53883 )  - if you look in the development build logs the development build for this architecture never compiles. I can partially compile a CC image  using make menuconfig and get some of the packages to compile but not all. Yesterday I submitted a support request to netgear asking them why they are still selling  this router as having "opensource support" when the wireless drivers aren't opensource. No meaningful reply as yet.
Roger.

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.I have managed to make some progress here are the steps

1) I did not have anyluck with the myopenrouter build, so gave up after a few days. It seem to have large pits of functionality missing oer not working reliably

2) Reflash the R7500 with the standard netgear build (v...82)

3) Download attittude adjustment update feeds and scripts.

4) this version has an option to build for Qaulcomm Atheros IPQ806x target. Build the packages you want

5) downlaod and build 'telnetable' for the R7500, this then lets you telnet into the nighhawk which was build for attitude adjustment. I found the wget crashed so I copied the compiled packages onto a stick and use the usb ports, it auto mounts them. Install package from there. I got warnings but the packages ran.

overall the lan performance seemed poor The smae code running on a wndr3700 gave ~256Mbits throughput on these dual core boxes I got 77Mbps. However the cpu and mem when running this were only 7% and 0.3%. so there must be otherthings afoot. I could not find how to turn off the firewall, qos was not enabled.

unfortunately, there's no support in the mainline openwrt for this device right now. The build at myopenrouter is from Netgear and is likely thrown together just so they can say they offer it. It also probably uses some proprietary components that are not available to the OpenWrt dev team because they're not actually open source. The biggest problem would be Quantenna wireless driver support, which is used for 802.11ac on this router.

Nick
any chance you can post the packages you built anywhere? My build crashed several times (user error I'm sure) so I gave up trying to do it but I'd really like to add some functionality to my router.
Thanks
Roger.

Hi

drawz - Do you know if the mainline openwrt is likely to support the r7500?

rwbarrett - if you let me know the packages you want I can build/email them over, if that would help.

nick

Sure, OpenWrt can bet it in mainline if someone is willing to do the work. Getting one in the hands of the developers might help make that happen, but anyone can contribute. Support for the basic hardware, like the SoC and 2.4 GHz radio are already there in principle. Probably the switch too. The big problem will be the Quantenna 5GHz/802.11ac radio that does not have open source drivers available. That may never work in mainline OpenWrt unless the manufacturer releases some code.

I see there is now an IPQ806x compiled image in the CC RC1 http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calm … x/generic/

Does this make it possible to update the bodged AA version for the R7500 so we can install the packages from CC? Beyond my technical expertise but I thought I'd ask the experts.

Those images are for Qualcomm reference boards (AP148 & DB149). They won't work as is with the R7500. It is a good sign that the R7500's CPU is being supported, but someone needs to deal with board specific features.

The R7500's Quantenna 802.11ac wifi chip is not supported still, so you'll only have 2.4 GHz 802.11n support.