TP-Link Archer C7 V2 - OpenWrt - Barrier Breaker

Was looking for the best AC wifi router to replace my Buffalo WHR-G300NH and found that TP-Link has just released an Archer C7 V2 which has wifi card supported by ath10k driver based on the information found here.

Here is the packaging, it says that it supports Unifi & Maxis Fiber but the support is not out of the box. You need to ask the seller a beta firmware which has VLAN support but I couldn't get mine working using even the beta firmware on my Maxis Fiber. Emailed TP-Link support but got a reply saying that they don't have Unifi/Maxis Fiber ready firmware and asked if I want to swap with one that already have, but nah, I bought the router not for running the stock firmware anyway.

Ver 2.0 hardware as per the sticker.

Anyway, I waited for a week or so and someone came up with the new hardware profile which creates the correct firmware image for OpenWrt. If you've this new V2.0 hardware and wanted to run OpenWrt on it but couldn't wait to get the patches into the trunk, check this patches:

https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-March/024459.html

To build your own OpenWrt firmware for this ver 2.0 hardware, followed these steps:

1. Have Debian 6.0 or any development system which could cross-compile the OpenWrt firmware. There are many guides available on the net, but for me, I've a VMWare Debian 6.0 VM ready on my Hackintosh machine. 

2. Follow the guide found in: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/obtain.firmware.generate. Follow the steps to get the trunk, untar the file and apply the above patches.

3. To generate the image, I was using the following command, I need the ath10k and luci support in the image:

$ make image PROFILE=ARCHERC7V2 PACKAGES="ath10k luci"

4. The generated image ready to be flashed can be found in the bin/ar7xxx/ as openwrt-ar71xx-generic-archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory.bin

UPDATE: The profile has been updated into the mainstream trunk distribution and the trunk now contains the image for Archer C7 V2.0. The image can be downloaded here:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory.bin

1-4: Do not forget that the trunk images do not contain LUCI, so, you may need to login into your router using ssh or telnet. Get it to the net and install LUCI using command line or, if you want to, you could follow the step 1-4 above, have you own image rebuild with the necessary LUCI packages.

UPDATE: The latest Barrier Breaker RC3 can be downloaded now. This has the fixes for 5GHz band which includes the calibrated setting etc. I've tested this with multi devices that support the 5GHz band and they work just fine. Please head up here to download the latest image:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_breaker/14.07-rc3/ar71xx/generic/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory.bin

LATEST UPDATE: Barrier Breaker has been available for many months now, so, please download it from the official website. Please read the comments left by visitors, they may contain important information that is helpful to make full use of the features available for this router.

5. Go and flash the firmware, do remember, the default IP address for OpenWrt router is 192.168.1.1.

To get Maxis Fiber to run, just go to network->vlan and have the following, surely don't forget to set the PPPOE userid and password:

That should be it.

Raspberry Pi + svxlink = Low power echolink node

What is the easiest way to get echolink node up and running on raspberry pi? Surely, get a premade image which has everything inside. I've created one image which can fit into 2GB SD card for this, just follow the following steps to get it up and running:

For hardware, you need to have the following:

• Raspberry Pi for sure, with a minimum 4GB SD card
• A USB echolink interface, can be commercially sourced or DIY. There are many DIY schematics out there that you could follow.  
• Here is the configuration on how to get the things working together, courtesy of svxlink.de website:

For software:

1. Download the following prepared image from google drive, it is based on raspbian-2015-02-16 image and has pre-installed svxlink-14.08. raspi-wheezy-svxlink.img.zip
2. Unzip the file and copy it to your SD card using the following instructions that can be found here.
3. Boot up the RasPi, if you do not have an HDMI monitor, you may want to access the RasPi from your terminal emulator (putty or the like), connect the RasPi to your router via CAT5 cable. 
4. To find the IP address of your RasPi, just go to your router status and look for the hostname raspberrypi. 
5. Use SSH connection, logon to the RasPi using the default username/password which should be: pi/raspberry
6. If you've bigger SD card then the 4GB image, you may want to use fullest capacity of the SD card, run the raspi-config command as sudo:
• $ sudo raspi-config
• Choose the first option to expand rootfs. Exit when done.
7. Edit the following config files for svxlink (command):
• $ sudo nano /etc/svxlink/svxlink.d/ModuleEchoLink.conf (edit the callsign - use sysop -L callsign, password, sysop, location and description)
• $ sudo nano /etc/svxlink/svxlink.conf (edit the callsign), if you're using echolink interface that uses VOX, just leave the others as is. Edit the APRS info too as required.
8. To tune the mic/speaker, use alsamixer:
• $ sudo alsamixer (use the up/arrow to tune the volume, right/left to move between speaker and mic sliders). 
• If the slider has MM underneath them, it means that they're muted, press 'M' to unmute.
9. You should be done with the configuration, you may run the svxlink now to test it out.
• $ sudo svxlink
10. Your node should appear in the echolink now. Try to use your PC or android client to connect to your node and see if it is working. You may need to configure your router to allow echolink to work, use port forwarding and forward the UDP port 5198-5199 and TCP port 5200 to your RasPi IP address.
11. If everything is working as expected and you want to run svxlink as a service, follow the steps here. The link to auto start the server has been vanished, so the best to do an autostart of the svxlink is by running the following command (if the /etc/init.d/svxlink is not present, copy the script over from the source under distribution/debian/etc/init.d/):
• $ update-rc.d svxlink defaults