WR703N and LeoPhi
Well its been a while since I started working on getting a LeoPhi and a WR-703N working together, I had too many other loose ends to finish before I finally got around to actually starting on this. I left off getting OpenWRT flashed onto the router and a quick setup. Getting the firmware on the router is pretty trivial, but setting it up to work with the USB port and serial takes a bit of work. I plan on making a detailed write up on it but wanted to leave a little hint post.
The gist of it is when working with the Leo line of sensors is to install and enable kmod-usb-acm (pretty much the core USB ones too even kmod-usb2 for 2.0 hub support) I actually had better luck using the newer version of OpenWRT and LuCi instead of sshing in via CLI. I then configured the start up file to run ser2net as a test via the -C switch per each USB device connected.
The key to the routers configuration is to set it up as a wifi client with a IP addressing scheme similar to the host network, but to keep the LAN side on a different “hosts” portion (basically the xxx.xxx.1.xxx portion of the IP). This way we can easily configure the router from inside the LAN should something fail in configuration. I also configured WAN administration since technically the wan would be a client to an existing network!
The WR703N and LeoPhi hack is proving to be a really handy hack so far, and I am working on a full blown article and a video as well! Stay tuned!
Andrew
on February 8, 2014 - 20:57:29I’m really happy to see you working on this! In fact, I came across the LeoPhi and LeoeC in the process of investigating a hydroponics project that would use the same Atheros AR9331 chipset used on the WR703n and the Arduino Yun to control a series of ATmega32u4-based boards (ala LeoPHi) for the sensor/actuators. There was something about the WR703n that always brought me back to it even though its not particularly hacker-friendly and running LUCI pretty much hogs all the memory. Thats why I was so psyched to learn that the new Arduino Yun would basically be a WR703n with a Leonardo embedded onto the same board. Better yet they reworked the standard OpenWRT into a spiffier version called “Linino” (www.linino.org). So for my Hydroponic controller I’m envisioning an Arduino Yun only with ports for multiple Leo’s instead of just one. Besides the Yun and the WR703n variants, the only other development board that uses the same Atheros chipset is the Dragino kit distributed by Seeed Studio. While I might use the Dragino as a reference, I’m weighing whether or not it would be worth trying to create an Atheros AR9331 Breakout Kit from sctatch.
So needless to say, I’d be very much interested to learn more about how you made out with the WR703n and the LeoPhi! If your interested, I’m documenting these experiments through a series of research notes compiled on this wiki page- http://publiclab.org/wiki/new-concepts-for-oshw-in-indoor-gardening
Great Stuff!