I have opened the box with violence, this afternoon my friend will try to fix it using TTL

So, I also borked my WR703N using the 18nov11 openwrt image over the weekend. After connecting to the
serial port, and watching openwrt boot it appears there's a massive problem with the network driver.
Openwrt does indeed boot, and is running inside the 703N, but 'ifconfig' reveals there's no network interfaces
(just 'lo0', the loopback). Hence, no telnet or ssh even in failsafe mode. Massive *oops*

Re-flash turns out to be reasonably easy if you have the factory image on a local TFTP server _and_
you have serial port access to the uBoot console (turn on the machine, and enter "tpl" as soon as
uBoot announces "Autobooting in 1 seconds", this gets you to the uBoot prompt).

The following sequence worked for me -- tftpboot to download the factory image to RAM, erase the
openwrt from flash, cp.b the factory image from ram to flash, then bootm the newly installed factory
firmware from flash. (Similar to advice in http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr841nd)

    hornet> tftpboot 0x81000000 wr703nv1_cn_3_12_11_up(110926).bin
    eth1 link down
    dup 1 speed 100
    Using eth0 device
    TFTP from server 192.168.1.100; our IP address is 192.168.1.111
    Filename 'wr703nv1_cn_3_12_11_up(110926).bin'.
    Load address: 0x81000000
    Loading: #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        #################################################################
        ######################################################
    done
    Bytes transferred = 3932160 (3c0000 hex)

    hornet> erase 0x9f020000 +0x3c0000

    First 0x2 last 0x3d sector size 0x10000
      61
    Erased 60 sectors
    hornet>  cp.b 0x81000000 0x9f020000 0x3c0000
    Copy to Flash... write addr: 9f020000
    done

    hornet> bootm 9f020000
    ## Booting image at 9f020000 ...
      Uncompressing Kernel Image ... OK

    Starting kernel ...

    Booting AR9330(Hornet)...
    Linux version 2.6.31--LSDK-9.2.0.312 (root@bogon) (gcc version 4.3.3 (GCC) ) #149 Mon Sep 26 11:13:59 CST 2011
                    [...blah, blah... the factory firmware boots and your 703N is back to original condition...]

does root with 5up work on the serial login prompt?

Unfortunately I cannot say. I tested the web GUI with admin/admin to confirm the factory firmware was
back, but after that I packed my 703N back in its box and I will not have time to experiment again for a few days.
But hope that helps a little anyway

cheers,
gja

hi, I got my wr703n today in the mail. I wanted to put openwrt on it, but then a read that the recent trunk snapshot will brick the router.
I won't use the snapshots, I will compile my own image, but I'm not sure which revision I should check out.
I found this ticket:  https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/10456 which says that it should be fixed with r29274. Can someone who has already soldered pins for the serial-console verify this?
I wanted to open the case, is there any trick to open it, without breaking it? the devices is so small, that I'm not comfortable with using a big screwdriver
I wanted to check if I have a V1.0 or V1.2 because I read somewhere that V1.2 have no pins for the serial console. I thought this would be good to know before I brick and/or break it
For now I will probably try r28601 as sin posted that this revision should work.

eleon216

if I remember correctly, on mine the version (V1.2) is written on the plastic box of the device, near the MAC address and other info.

thanks romanrm I just checked, mine is ver1.3 so I  guess I should open it for sure the check if has the same components as the other versions before flashing anything. So maybe some advice how to open it?

(Last edited by eleon216 on 21 Nov 2011, 10:52)

good news!
I just flashed trunk revision 29283 to a wr703n ver1.3 and everything is working...

ethernet, WIFI, failsafe, and USB (as I was able to mount my usb-stick).

So the changeset 29274 fixed the problem. Everyone who is willing to compile their own version can use the recent revision, everyone else will have to wait for the next snapshot.

Could you please give some links where it is explained where and how to attach serial cable to wr703.

Much appreciated

can any of you guys who have a working serial (TTL) can post a picture of the setup?
i'm interested how/if you soldered the headers

eleon216
sorry I can't give advice on opening them, I haven't opened mine yet

That said, I really appreciate your (and others') work - bricking, restoring, flashing untested builds while not having a serial console yet Immensely useful and saves a lot of time, effort and hair-pulling for others!

(Last edited by romanrm on 21 Nov 2011, 14:08)

I am running WR703N with 4x 2700 mAh AA batteries. It lasted about 8 hours with usb speakers attached in continuous playback mode. Audio is streamed from network at around 190KB/s and CPU usage is like 20%-30%.

That sounds sooo cool, please share what you used to stream audio and which usb speakers you used? I really want this!

Ok, this is strange, I looked at https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/10456, found file with a bug, patched it and built wr703 firmware, but I still got a bricked wr703 router

That was from trunk few days ago...

Now I downloaded latest trunk...

svn checkout svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk/
cd trunk
./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a
make defconfig
make prereq
make menuconfig

in menus choose ar7xx and wr703n as model, and now I'm buiding new firmware:
make -j 3

Am I doing something wrong?

My unit (v1.2) had really tiny PCB pads (rather than holes) near TP_OUT and TP_IN at top right corner
of http://gja.space4me.com/devices/wr703n/ … 9nov11.jpg

For anyone wondering about pulling the blue lid off -- you can see three points around the
case edge where you need to pry the case sides away from plastic catches on the lid underside
of the lid: Top left (near LAN port), far right (near serial pads) and bottom right of the case
(to the right of the USB port, hidden from view in my photo). The blue lid will eventually pop off,
although you'll undoubtedly scratch the plastic edges

My first attempt at serial connection looked like this:
http://gja.space4me.com/devices/wr703n/ … 9nov11.jpg

But it was _nasty_ -- the wires started pulling the pcb pads off the board! Later I jury-rigged a second
setup which is physically more stable (with a 3-pin header glued to the top of the USB port). Photo here:
http://gja.space4me.com/devices/wr703n/ … 0nov11.jpg  (not quite clear in
the photo, I soldered one pin to the USB socket's case to provide GND connection to the serial
cable.)

For anyone interested in the USB-Serial interface, I used a cable from DealExtreme:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-cable- … 2670-13638

cheers,
gja

hey,
i just compiled and tested (on an wr703n v1.2 with old r29xxx already installed openwrt) the image at:

http://www.ip6.ro/firmware/tp-link/wr703n/

- default WAN on 192.168.0.2/24 and open wireless with "wr703n" ssid and 192.168.1.0/24 dhcp pool
- i added two firewall rules for WAN: port 22 and port 23 , feel free to delete them after you setup first time
- package restorefactory allows you to always reset to my defaults after 5 seconds pressing the reset button
- i removed the ROmanian translation from luci since i dont think you guys really need it
- ipv6 support compiled in with kernel, wide dhcpv6 and radvd
- kernel slimmed down so only required stuff for THIS router compiled in
- busybox thinned without 64bit math support, added groups, ping6 and traceroute6 programs
- 3g dongle usb 2.0 support (i tested only a zte and a huawei from my internet provider)
- NO usb storage support !
- NO opkg management support (device shows only 172K of flash free in overlay)
- blue led activity when associated wireless stations do rx/tx traffic
- so the following packages are installed:
[spoiler]
base-files-network_3
base-files_98-r29289
busybox_1.19.3-8
chat_2.4.5-4
comgt_0.32-9
crda_1.1.1-1
ddns-scripts_1.0.0-17_all.ipk
dnsmasq_2.58-2
dropbear_0.53.1-6
firewall_2-42_all.ipk
hotplug2_1.0-beta-4
ip6tables_1.4.10-4
ip_2.6.39-1
iptables-mod-conntrack-extra_1.4.10-4
iptables-mod-conntrack_1.4.10-4
iptables-mod-ipopt_1.4.10-4
iptables-mod-nat_1.4.10-4
iptables_1.4.10-4
iw_3.1-2
kernel_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ath9k-common_2.6.39.4+2011-11-15-1
kmod-ath9k_2.6.39.4+2011-11-15-1
kmod-ath_2.6.39.4+2011-11-15-1
kmod-button-hotplug_2.6.39.4-3
kmod-cfg80211_2.6.39.4+2011-11-15-1
kmod-crypto-aes_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-crypto-arc4_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-crypto-core_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-input-core_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-input-gpio-keys-polled_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-input-polldev_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ip6tables_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-conntrack-extra_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-conntrack_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-core_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-ipopt_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-nat_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-nathelper-extra_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-nathelper_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipv6_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-leds-gpio_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ledtrig-heartbeat_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ledtrig-netdev_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ledtrig-usbdev_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-lib-crc-ccitt_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-lib-textsearch_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-mac80211_2.6.39.4+2011-11-15-1
kmod-nls-base_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ppp_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-pppoe_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-core_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-serial-option_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-serial-wwan_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-serial_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-uhci_2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb2_2.6.39.4-1
libc_0.9.32-98
libgcc_4.5-linaro-98
libip4tc_1.4.10-4
libip6tc_1.4.10-4
libiwinfo_16
liblua_5.1.4-8
libnl-tiny_0.1-2
libpthread_0.9.32-98
librt_0.9.32-98
libuci-lua_2011-11-14.1-1
libuci_2011-11-14.1-1
libusb-1.0_1.0.8-1
libusb_0.1.12-2
libxtables_1.4.10-4
lua_5.1.4-8
luci-app-ddns_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-app-firewall_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-app-multiwan_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-app-radvd_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-i18n-english_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-i18n-romanian_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-lib-core_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-lib-ipkg_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-lib-lmo_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-lib-nixio_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-lib-sys_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-lib-web_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-mod-admin-core_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-mod-admin-full_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-proto-3g_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-proto-core_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-proto-ppp_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-sgi-cgi_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-theme-base_trunk+svn7969-1
luci-theme-openwrt_trunk+svn7969-1
luci_trunk+svn7969-1
mtd_17
multiwan_1.0.19-1
ppp-mod-pppoe_2.4.5-4
ppp_2.4.5-4
radvd_1.8.2-2
restorefactory_1-6
uci_2011-11-14.1-1
uhttpd_30
usb-modeswitch-data_20111023-1
usb-modeswitch_1.2.0-2
usbutils_004-1
wide-dhcpv6-client_20080615-9
wide-dhcpv6-control_20080615-9
wide-dhcpv6-server_20080615-9
wireless-tools_29-4
wpad-mini_20111103-1
zlib_1.2.5-1
[/spoiler]

(Last edited by aind on 22 Nov 2011, 00:11)

@valentt

You can try my firmware which adds usb sound card/speakers support
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 85#p148385

It uses pulseaudio as the audio streaming engine (i.e. pulseaudio is running on WR703N as a service) and in theory any pulseaudio client should work with it. I have not got time to write anything about the software/client side. If you want to give it a try you can start it with the latest ubuntu or fedora. All you need to do is to set the env variable PULSE_SERVER to point to the ip address (WIFI interface if in client mode) of WR703N. If you want to just stream your music collections I would suggest mpd with build in pulseaudio support and you can download apps on the market to control mpd on your android devices.

I am currently using Sweex GO Stereo Speaker Bar which can be bought less than £15 online. You can also try Creative A40 or Logitech S150 (around £10 online). I am not expecting those budget usb speakers to consume a lot of energy and therefore a usb battery pack should give you reasonable play time.

(Last edited by s7mx1 on 22 Nov 2011, 14:29)

I'll add my own custom firmware contribution here too then.

You can get it from http://nemik.net/tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-gen … pgrade.bin

It is designed to make the TL-WR703N talk directly to Arduino's and MSP430 Launchpad microcontroller kits by simply plugging in the kits into the USB port. Older Arduino's will use FTDI drivers and make a /dev/USB0, new Arduino UNO's make a /dev/ttyACM0, and TI's MSP430 Launchpads make a /dev/ttyACM0 device. You can talk serial to them all directly then!
Just set the baud rate by doing something like:

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 raw speed 9600

and replace /dev/ttyUSB0 with /dev/ttyACM0 for Arduino UNO's and TI Launchpad kits and 9600 with the baud rate you programmed your kit/sketch to.

You can read serial data from the kits with something like

cat /dev/ttyUSB0

and write to it simply by doing

echo "hello world" > /dev/ttyUSB0

I also packaged in SQLite and some other stuff I found useful. The .config can be found at http://nemik.net/tmp/openwrt_arduino.config

The Launchpad USB support comes from a new patch I submitted here: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/ope … 12919.html which I hope can get added to the trunk if it's OK. It enables those drivers in the kernel, they're already part of the kernel source.

I hope it is useful for someone.

(Last edited by nemik on 23 Nov 2011, 01:40)

I "bricked" my TL-WR703n about a week ago when I built and flashed an image based on r29150 (actually bricked a pair of them). So I went through the exercise of adding serial consoles to each and created a detailed howto with pictures for others on the "villagetelco" group who have also been experimenting with this router.

You can download "Serial Port for TL-WR703N.pdf" at:

http://villagetelco.org/download/tmp/fi … tp-wr703n/

Cheers!

Keith

hello, its my first post and my first contact with unix based item and OpenWRT.
I have wr703n and i want to connect my Alcatel X220 usb 3g modem, but when i plug in i can't see it in /dev/ like ttyUSB0.
I try http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/3gdongle but when i write :rmmod usbserial #optional i have:
rmmod: can't unload 'usbserial': Resource temporarily unavailable
Sorry for my English :ops:

The HOW-TO for installing a serial console on the TL-WR703n is now also available as a webpage on the Villagetelco wiki at:

http://wiki.villagetelco.org/index.php? … _TL-WR703N

Cheers,

Keith

Adding to the thread software setup client (player) side pulseaudio streaming to 703n, using s7mx1's build:
Router running in client mode, WPA2 personal, shared key
Fedora 15 with mpd

Setup pulseaudio:
/etc/pulse/client.conf
uncomment or add
default-server = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP of your router)

This is the simplest setup, it will redirect all pulseaudio to this only server. If you want you can define multiple sinks, but I personally have not gone into that yet.

Setup mpd:
/etc/mpd.conf
uncomment or add section
audio_output {
        type            "pulse"
        name            "My Pulse Output"
}

This again will make this the only output of mpd. In order to have multipe outputs define your soundcard in another section audio_output

This setup almost worked for me . For now I see that pulse is streaming to the router, the sound card is "blinking" but what is generated is only something like "static". I can hear static where some very heavy bass (i guess) is in the music. I tested the sound card directly on my laptop with Fedora 14 and it works flawlessly - I can hear the music just fine. So I ruled out suondcard malfunction.

(Last edited by momche on 25 Nov 2011, 10:16)

momche,
do you have alsamixer on the router? Try it to see if you can check and adjust the volume.

Hi romanrm,
I guess I don't know how to handle openwrt.  opkg says that there is not enough space to install alsa-utils. So it seems I don't have alsamixer.

A potential idea for someone at a loss with what to do with their WR703N...

Create an embedded Siri proxy device (for the iPhone 4S). If you've not heard of it, the project is discussed at https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy, and effectively it allows use of Apple's voice recognition for other purposes (e.g. controlling thermostats). The Siri proxy instructions will be a nuisance for many people, as they have to run a separate DNS server, have a Linux box running the proxy permanently, and so on. The WR703N (or any other OpenWrt device really) seem well suited for this task. You'd just need a custom dnsmasq rule on the device (to intercept queries for Apple's server and point them back to the OpenWrt device) and Ruby to run their proxy.

I'm not an iPhone user myself so this is of little use to me, but I thought the WR703N would be ideal and could make the Siri proxy more easily accessible.

Thanks,

Sam