Building gateway

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Scott Penrose

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Mar 25, 2010, 9:29:49 PM3/25/10
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Hi Team

I have been searching for the ASUS Router WL500-gP V2 to build 2 of the gateways for my house and property. But I have completely lucked out. Everyone seems to have them either out of stock or no longer buying them.

Has anyone found an alternative, or a supplier?

Ta

Scott

Sam Sabey

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Mar 25, 2010, 9:36:52 PM3/25/10
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Hey Scott,

I believe the WL500 gP V2 is no longer made, which is a crying shame...

I am looking at them moment to source direct some of their smaller cousins, the WL-520 gU version. It's not large enough inside to accommodate all the gubbins for the Super Router, but it hosts a Zigbee nicely, and works well.

Sam.

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Scott Penrose

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Mar 25, 2010, 9:47:03 PM3/25/10
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Thanks Sam

If the guts work ok, I am happy to mount in an alternative box. Yeah it is a shame about the WL500, but it is important that we use a production version.

Scott

Luke Weston

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Mar 29, 2010, 6:05:47 AM3/29/10
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Does anyone know any vendors that are carrying the WL-520gU locally at
a decent price? It seems more expensive than the WL500, and it's less
powerful :(

On Mar 26, 12:47 pm, Scott Penrose <scooter...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Sam
>
> If the guts work ok, I am happy to mount in an alternative box. Yeah it is a shame about the WL500, but it is important that we use a production version.
>
> Scott
>
> On 26/03/2010, at 12:36 PM, Sam Sabey wrote:
>
> > Hey Scott,
>
> > I believe the WL500 gP V2 is no longer made, which is a crying shame...
>
> > I am looking at them moment to source direct some of their smaller cousins, the WL-520 gU version.  It's not large enough inside to accommodate all the gubbins for the Super Router, but it hosts a Zigbee nicely, and works well.
>
> > Sam.
>
> > On 26/03/2010, at Fri 26, 12:29 PM, Scott Penrose wrote:
>
> >> Hi Team
>
> >> I have been searching for the ASUS Router WL500-gP V2 to build 2 of the gateways for my house and property. But I have completely lucked out. Everyone seems to have them either out of stock or no longer buying them.
>
> >> Has anyone found an alternative, or a supplier?
>
> >> Ta
>
> >> Scott
>
> >> --
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> >> To post to this group, send email to aiko-p...@googlegroups.com.
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Paul Szymkowiak

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Mar 29, 2010, 10:37:56 AM3/29/10
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Hey Luke,

What about these alternatives?

  WL-566gM - case looks equivalent to WL-500, however not certain its still in stock with any retailers (1 link below).
  Also not certain what PB impact the extra antennae will have: 

  WL-520GC - case is different, so not sure about internal space

  The Tenda model W311R Wireless N broadband router I'd posted on before:
  also appears on a number of ebay seller lists:
  and here's its "hack" on the DD-WRT forums:
  
  The D-Link DIR-300 might be a possibility
  Open WRT:

  Or the D-Link DR-600
  Open WRT:
  
  Other options?



Paul

Sam Sabey

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Mar 30, 2010, 7:27:16 PM3/30/10
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Hey Paul,

Some nice research dude!

I've been hunting away on this for a while looking for an alternate now the 500p V2 is "discontinued"  One important thing IMO is support for OpenWRT's list of devices:

And there i at least 4MB of Flash ram (for the 2.6MB OpenWRT image)

I can't see the WL-566gM on this Asus supported list.
The 520GC  looks at the right price, but it's got 2MB of Flash, not enough for the Aiko Image, and it's not really OpenWRT supported.

I haven't seen the Tendra supported by OpenWRT, though it may be possible?

The Dlink DIR-300 may be a candiate, but I'm not sure what the implications of "partial support" for OpenWRT mean...
The Dlink DIR-600 isn't on the WRT list... Perhaps it's a 8/32 version of the 300?

From all this I'm settling on the following;

1.  I'm trying to import direct a bunch of WL-520gU devices, at a betteror price for the Aiko dudes than the open market.  These make sense for the SEG stuff but the uber router has other requirements.
2.  Starting to explore an alternate open source hardware gateway with Jon Oxer
3.  Considering looking at the original (and but ugly) and pricey WRT54G that has the USB and moar memoriez and flashz...

Sam.

Luke Hovington

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Mar 30, 2010, 7:35:19 PM3/30/10
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I haven't played with the aiko side of things as yet, but from previous hacks I have been using the WRT54GL <- Note 'L'
The L series has extra ram and is easy to flash to the dd-WRT (www.dd-wrt.com) sorry haven't tried openWRT.
Besides all the POE hacks ive done to my fleet, I have added a 64Mb SD card to boost the available space more.

So if you are wanting to go for a linksys box go for the WRT54GL as the are the same price for more stuff!!

Cheers
Luke H

Sam Sabey

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Mar 30, 2010, 7:43:38 PM3/30/10
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Hey Scott,

The guts work just fine. I've been running a 520gU at my place for all my main stuff for some time, and it's rock steady. I do like it's smaller form factor a lot :D

Sam.

Sam Sabey

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Mar 30, 2010, 7:51:39 PM3/30/10
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Nice!

Does this machine have an easy to access internal serial port?  I think they are all broadcom CPU's on these too.  Not this is a big deal, as I can easily compile up an new image for the Atheros and other CPU's.

Sam.

Luke Hovington

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Mar 30, 2010, 8:32:50 PM3/30/10
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You will need to solder on a header but it is there..

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WRT54GL_MAX232_Serial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series

Cheers
Luke H

Sam Sabey

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Mar 30, 2010, 9:07:22 PM3/30/10
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Sweet!

Sam,
not afraid of no warranty violations.

Luke Weston

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Apr 2, 2010, 4:35:15 AM4/2/10
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I've crosschecked the current routers that are in stock at MSY against
the OpenWRT supported hardware list.

The following are all stocked by MSY at present and have at least some
mention on the OpenWRT page (supported, partially supported, or
probably able to be supported).

Linksys WRT160N:
Price: $91
Flash: 4 Mb
It's a Linksys WRT series, so it probably has a good OpenWRT support
and user base.
Very sexy black case.

D-Link DIR-320:
Price: $80
Flash: 4 Mb
Partially supported (?) by OpenWRT
Includes USB port!

D-Link DIR-615
Price: $85
Untested with OpenWRT.
Flash: 8Mb (wow!)

NetGear WNR2000:
Price: $74
OpenWRT status is "work in progress", I don't know how well supported
it is.

Edimax BR-6204WG:
Price: $33
OpenWRT status: untested
Flash: 2 Mb
Only has 2 Mb of flash, but it's very cheap!
Perhaps the OS could be hacked extensively and stripped down to bring
it in under 2 Mb?

Sam Sabey

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Apr 2, 2010, 5:48:41 AM4/2/10
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Perhaps it can be hacked under 2 Meg? Looks like the cheapies are
heading this way. I did find that some of the current 2mb cheapies
don't have serial...

In other news I heard from china today. Here's for win on the 520gUz

...from @samotage on the go.

On 02/04/2010, at 7:35 PM, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com>
wrote:

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Sam Sabey

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Apr 5, 2010, 1:56:01 AM4/5/10
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I now have my house running on the Linksys uglee WRT54GL with the current SEG image:

For flashing I used the internal upload from the stock firmware. I just had to change the extension from .trx to .bin

It was quite straight forward, the only significant difference is the pinout of the RX/TX is swapped compared to the Asus routers.

There are lots more gubbins inside, including wound inductorz, probably attributable to the higher price.

So, we now have "another" if not more expensive alternative.

When I get some time I will blog on the more detailed build.

Sam.

On 31/03/2010, at Wed 31, 11:32 AM, Luke Hovington wrote:

Sam Sabey

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Apr 5, 2010, 9:52:27 PM4/5/10
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I've ordered a D-Link DIR-320 for investigations.
I will report back on my findings. It sure has a strange serial port pinout, and it seems they are all different!

Sam.

Sam Sabey

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Apr 9, 2010, 7:40:57 AM4/9/10
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Hi All,

My DIR-320 arrived today, and I like this unit a lot. Some things to note:

Same broadcom chip as the WL500gp V2
USB2.0 - means 3G backhaul supportable
Pre-attached serial header (bummer pinout is different to the SEGbee explorer)
It's in a nice case, nicer than the Linksys one and moar functional than the Asus one.
Perfect internal dimensions for my SEG requirements (zigbee only)
Room inside for other things like uberouter parts. It may be possible to do the whole uberrouter perhaps with the ArduinoPro mini even?

I haven't flashed it up, but plan on commissioning over the weekend.

I will report back.

Sam.

Sam Sabey

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Apr 19, 2010, 3:20:42 AM4/19/10
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Hi All,

My DIR-320 arrived today, and I like this unit a lot. Some things to note:

Same broadcom chip as the WL500gp V2
USB2.0 - means 3G backhaul supportable
Pre-attached serial header (bummer pinout is different to the SEGbee explorer)
It's in a nice case, nicer than the Linksys one and moar functional than the Asus one.
Perfect internal dimensions for my SEG requirements (zigbee only)
Room inside for other things like uberouter parts. It may be possible to do the whole uberrouter perhaps with the ArduinoPro mini even?

I haven't flashed it up, but plan on commissioning over the weekend.

I will report back.

Sam.

Sam Sabey

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Apr 28, 2010, 7:14:25 AM4/28/10
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Some #WIN to report.

I've successfully flashed this dlink-wrt with a modified openwrt kernel that solved the file system fail! AND it's now using the SEGbee board designed by Luke to get my energy dataz.

So, gentlemen, if the next 24 hours goes well, we have another WRt candidate.

Still waiting for Asus #win, which is still #fail at the moment.

Sam.


On 19/04/2010, at Mon 19, 5:11 PM, Sam Sabey wrote:

> And mixed levels of #fail to report on this unit unfortunately...
>
> 1. The flash procedure is not very nice. There is a 2 second window to flash, which is easily missed. AndyG had the bright idea to use a separate router to assist the process which worked.
> 2. The SEG OpenWRT image didn't work. Some Panic dmesg about the some file system #fail :(
> 3. I ended up getting a default DD-WRT image flashed on, which de-bricked this into just a router.
>
> So the prognisii on this is:
> - nice kit
> - firmware mucking about to get it right...
>
> So I am going to return focus to the Asus WL520gU which I've had some positive indications about today! I will report #win if it happens.
>
> Other things:
>
> SEGmeter is getting ready, they are in, and available to the good peeps in this list.
> http://smartenergygroups.com/samotage/posts/67-SEGmeter-the-open-source-energy-meter-arrives
>
> Email me direct for details.
>
> Sam.
>
>
> On 09/04/2010, at Fri 9, 9:40 PM, Sam Sabey wrote:
>
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