I'm looking for some hardware to support a project. Basically act as an AP & switch for some local devices & get upstream Internet access (if available) via a directional antenna. Basically for some events such as RVing or HAM radio field day where you are just out of WiFi range for normal devices. I haven't had any luck filtering through the Table of Hardware to find something that matches my needs.

Requirements:

• Dual radios so it can act as an AP & client at the same time
  5ish Ethernet ports for local access (more are better, could probably get by with 4)
  Removable CF or SD card so you don't have to fiddle with PXE or what not to flash a new image on it if you brick it
  Console port, preferably one I don't have to solder in
  Flexible voltage requirements (a.k.a. it will likely end up running off a car battery running around 12v give or take a few volts)

I've got some various PCengines gear, but it's low on switch ports. Soekris seems to be out of business in the US. I was looking at some of the MicroTik gear, but it's short a 2nd radio & the removable flash drive.

Should I try something like one of the MicroTik devices & use a USB WiFi NIC for the 2nd radio? I can solder in a console port & suffer through PXE stuff if there aren't semi-reasonably priced or available options, but I'd prefer not to.

You could try devices with miniPCIe slots like ClearFog Pro, or Turris Omnia. Add a second radio on PCIe.

Thanks. I remember being kind of excited about the Turris Omnia a year or so ago, then forgot about it. It looks like it naively has 2 radios in it already. Doesn't precisely match my requirements, but it's got enough ease of management functions to make recovery easy.

Got the Turris Omina a couple days ago. So far it seems to be everything I was hoping for. Easy to recover & re-flare if needed, dual radio to provide a local AP while connecting to a remote signal. Really happy with it running OpenWRT stock.

Nearly all wifi drivers allow you to run one or more APs and a clients at the same time on the same radio.  The main limitation is that if the client loses its link, the AP will go off the air. This can be worked around with a script that disables the client until its AP is found in a scan.

Dual radios generally means dual band (2.4 and 5).

Later ath9k hardware is quite power efficient.  For example I have a TP-Link WA-701 by actual measurement uses 60 mA at 12 volts, and is rated to go down to 9 so it is a good candidate to connect directly to a battery.  The WR-741 with 5 ports is likely similar.

Ya, just because you can doesn't mean you should. I was specifically looking for 2 unique radios to keep things seperate. It also means I can hook up a directional antenna to one radio for the uplink & a small Omni(s) to the other for the local AP.

Happy with the setup on the Turris. Still trying to sort out antennas. Going to ditch the duplexers & just put the 2.4/5 radio straight into the stock antennas. Putting in 2 u.fl to SMA connectors on the 2.4 only radio. Either going to out a  single normal directional antenna or maybe a cheap MIMO antenna on that.