Dear OpenWrt community,
I successfully flashed OpenWRT to my ZSUN Card Reader following the tutorial  of wiki.hackerspace regaring the zsun-wifi-card-reader factory-update
Had some fun with it and tried to use it as a repeater as this device is capable to open 2 wifi connections.
It worked flawlessly. I used the mode where the ZSUN uses its own name als ssid "openwrt" and connects to my wifi router (it's a FritzBox 7390).
As soon as the FritzBox is not present and I boot up the ZSUN, the "openwrt" access point is not visible. Why? It just has no connection to the router but why should it not open itself to the public to be configurable.
OK - I thought - let's connect it to the tethered wifi hotspot of my iPhone. So when the FritzBox is not present, it at least can connect to my iPhone hotspot and I can configure it then to connect to another router if needed.
No way.
The ZSUN connects to my iPhone - yes. But I can not access its web interface via the given IP nor can I ssh to it. Why?
Worst of all: If my iPhone access point is not present and the FritzBox is present, it does not connect to it automatically. So at the moment I have no idea how I can connect to it.

Worst of all 2: Before connecting to my iPhone I had the idea to fake the FritzBox by giving a Android Smartphone tethered hotspot the name and password of my FritzBox. But this small openwrt router deas not seem to be so dumb as other wifi devices and it does not connect.

Any ideas how I can connect to the ZSUN an reconfigure it?

Many thanks in advance and best regards
Muhackl

This is known behaviour on OpenWrt devices: The AP goes down when the STA goes down because the STA goes into scanning mode. There is a workaround/hack in this forum thread.

Well, you could always reset it to the default configuration by inserting a MicroSD card when it boots (while it blinks, the MicroSD card slot acts as a "button").

Yes what metai said.  Also this: When you use LuCI to "join network", it will make a STA interface including filling out the BSSID field to match your AP's MAC address.  That will prevent it from connecting to any other AP, even one that has the same SSID and encryption, because its MAC address doesn't match the one originally detected.

To allow your STA interface to connect to any AP matching the SSID and encryption configured, leave the BSSID field blank.

(Last edited by mk24 on 5 Jan 2017, 01:12)

First of all thanks for the hints.
The reset-via-sdcard worked perfectly! (Though you have to hit the perfect time-window)

The workaround sounds great and I will try it out.

Thanks again for saving my ZSUN.

(Last edited by muhackl666 on 5 Jan 2017, 08:45)