This page shows the procedure for initiating the communication with the mesh expander under the openwrt distribution.

This procedure has been established using vanilla Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS.
You need to make sure you have at least 50GB of free space on your hard drive before going further. You need to make sure your computer is up to date by doing :

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

The first thing you need to do is set up a git account.
How to set up a GitHub account

• Fork the repository using the command :

git clone https://github.com/servalproject/openwrt  

• Compile the project using

  sudo make

  
  

This may take a while, you might want to leave your computer working overnight

• If you get an error like this one :

It means that there are some dependencies missing. You need to install ncurses, zlib, openssl, awk, gcc, g++, subversion

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev lib64z1-dev libssl-dev gawk gcc g++ subversion

Note : you may have different dependencies missing, make sure to install all of them

• Compile the project using

  sudo make

  
  

This may take a while,you might want to leave your computer working overnight

To connect the mesh extender to a computer we will need a serial cable and a USB serial adaptor and 3 jumper leads.

The pins we are interested in are : Pin 1 for the ground, Pin 5 for the Domino RX, and Pin 19 for the Domino TX.

• Cut the wire part of your serial cable and bare it.
• Find which wire correspond to the pins we are looking for with a multimeter.
  • To do that plug a probe of the multimeter in a pin we want to have and test every wires they are at the other end. W
  • When you see the multimeter displaying something, it means that you have the right cable.
  • Mark this cable and do the same thing with the next pin
• Connect the jumper leads to wires identified earlier
• Check that the pins correspond to the wires and that the connection works using a multimeter.
• Connect the pin 1 to the GND pin of your USB serial adaptor, the pin 5 to the RXD and the pin 19 to the TXD.

Your cable should work now. You can try connect it on your computer and see if it is recognized :

lsusb

• Create a tftp server using this page :
  

How to create a TFTP server

• Go to the openwrt/bin/ar71xx directory :

cd openwrt/bin/ar71xx 

• Then copy the openwrt-ar71xx-generic-gl-ar150-initramfs-kernel.bin file into the main directory of your TFTP server and rename it to openwrt-domino.bin
  

cp openwrt-ar71xx-generic-gl-ar150-initramfs-kernel.bin [//your_server_directory///openwrt-domino.bin] 

Your TFTP server is now ready.

• Connect the micro usb cable to the computer
• To launch the communication with the mesh extender
  

sudo cu -l /dev/ttyUSB0  -s 115200

• If the permission is denied
  • Install minicom and launch it with

    sudo minicom -s 

  • Then in the Serial port set up menu
    • Serial port : ttyUSB0
    • Hardware Flow Control : No
    • Sofware Flow Control : No

• In the same menu :
• Save the changes as dfl
• Leave
• You should now be able to communicate with the mesh extender
• Launch minicom

  sudo minicom -s 

• And then power the mesh extender

You should see the device booting.

• Connect the ethernet port of the mesh to your computer and set the IP to 192.168.1.2.
• This is now the tricky part, you have 2 seconds to type gl to interrupt the boot
  • If the boot interrupt doesn't work, it means that the USB port doesn't allow to pass character.
  • To resolve that, make sure that the the minicom set up is correctly done, especially that Hardware flow Control is disabled
• Type the command

  run lf

The firmware is now flashing

• Type the command

  boot

You have now successfully flashed the firmware.