- Open up the case gently on the bottom with the blue "triangle"
- Take out the PCB so that you can access the pins on the upper side
- Attach the UART pins on the USB-to-Serial-Dongle to the respective pins on the router PCBA (GDN to GND, RX to Tx, TX to RX).
- Plug in the dongle to the USB on your computer. When executing dmesg (
sudo dmesg), you should see something like this:pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB2 - Install e.g. picocom (
sudo apt install picocom) and connect it to the dongle using a baud of 115200 and the ttyUSB2 seen before:picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB2 - When you power on the device, you should see startup messages like this:
*********************************************
* U-Boot 1.1.4 (May 20 2017) *
*********************************************
AP121 (AR9331) U-Boot for GL-AR150
DRAM: 64 MB DDR2 16-bit
FLASH: Macronix MX25L128 (16 MB)
CLOCKS: 400/400/200/33 MHz (CPU/RAM/AHB/SPI)
** Warning: bad env CRC, using default,
use 'saveenv' to save it in FLASH
LED on during eth initialization...
*** *** * **** * ***** ***
* * * * * * ** * * *
* * ** * * * * * *
* * ***** * * *** * **** * *
* *** * * * * * * * * *
* * * **** * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
** ****** ** ***** ** *** *** ***
Hit any key to stop autobooting: 0
Device have ART,checking calibration status...
Device have calibrated,checking test status...
Device haven tested,checking MAC info...
Device have MAC info,starting firmware...
Link down: eth0
Link down: eth1
## Error: ping failed, host 192.168.1.2 is not alive!
Booting image at: 0x9F050000
Image name: MIPS OpenWrt Linux-4.9.184
Created: 2019-06-27 12:18:52 UTC
Image type: MIPS Linux Kernel Image (lzma compressed)
Data size: 1378240 Bytes = 1.3 MB
Load address: 0x80060000
Entry point: 0x80060000
Uncompressing kernel image... OK!
Starting kernel...
[ 0.000000] Linux version 4.9.184 (buildbot@2ccc8102e0c3) (gcc version 7.3.0 (OpenWrt GCC 7.3.0 r7808-ef686b7292) ) #0 Thu Jun 27 12:18:52 2019
[ 0.000000] bootconsole [early0] enabled
[ 0.000000] CPU0 revision is: 00019374 (MIPS 24Kc)
[ 0.000000] SoC: Atheros AR9330 rev 1
[ 0.000000] Determined physical RAM map:
[ 0.000000] memory: 04000000 @ 00000000 (usable)
<snip>
- After like 30 seconds, Linux is started and you can gain access to the console by pressing the return key
- Connecting the LAN port of the device to the computer
- Give the respective LAN interface on the computer the IP address 192.168.1.2.
E.g.
sudo ip addr add dev enx00606e00077d 192.168.1.2/24 - Use SSH to connect to the device:
ssh root@192.168.1.1Hint: Per default, no password is set. You might want to set one if you ever want to use this router in a productive environment.
- Go to https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/
- Chose the newest release (as of 2019-08-05 this is 18.06.4)
- Download the file
gl-ar150-squashfs-sysupgrade.binwhich can be found in the subfoldertargets/ar71xx/genericHint: The actual filename might be different, e.g.openwrt-18.06.4-ar71xx-generic-gl-ar150-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
- Attach the LAN interface to your computer
- Press the reset button on the device, keep it pressed
- Power on the router
- After 5 seconds, both green LEDs turn on. Release the reset button.
- Assign the address 192.168.1.2 to your computer
E.g.
sudo ip addr add dev enx00606e00077d 192.168.1.2/24 - Visit http://192.168.1.1 with your computer and upload the (new) firmware
- Click on browse and select the firmware file (e.g.
openwrt-18.06.4-ar71xx-generic-gl-ar150-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin) - Click on update firmware The upload will be super fast and after like 2mins, the new firmware shold be up and running.
- Project site
- Wiki
- Forum
- Building it yourself
- Reddit about Embedded - this is not at all about OpenWrt, but quite an interesting area to read and ask questions
Pretty sure I fogot quite a lot to write down here and you will have many questions. Please simply write me on WhatsApp, I will be very happy wherever I can.