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Topic: Pictures/details of TL-WR720N 3G Chinese version

The content of this topic has been archived between 8 Feb 2018 and 8 May 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

elecnix,

tried your build - worked just fine with -F (force) switch due to my 703 firmware

the only thing is that LAN doesn't seem to work for me, at least my PC did not receive IP from DHCP, WAN works just fine.
Should they be both connected?

perhaps I should reset the settings, as i tried to preserve them.

(Last edited by gently on 29 Jan 2013, 09:48)

gently wrote:

elecnix,

tried your build - worked just fine with -F (force) switch due to my 703 firmware

the only thing is that LAN doesn't seem to work for me, at least my PC did not receive IP from DHCP, WAN works just fine.
Should they be both connected?

perhaps I should reset the settings, as i tried to preserve settings.

Yes, please reset your settings and let me know if that works.

I "firstboot"-ed the device and port seems to work now, thanks!

still not in the trunk?

(Last edited by gently on 30 Jan 2013, 15:01)

Great work guys, was not around for a while!

gently wrote:

I "firstboot"-ed the device and port seems to work now, thanks!

still not in the trunk?

Are the switches working for this build?

Switches works for me, in fact I use mine to set the wireless mode before I plug it in, very handy.

Switch doesn't work for me at all, at least I haven't noticied any change when tick it, no messages in logs, etc. Should there be a handler configured somehow somewhere?

Also please advise how to overcome errors caused by the fact that elecnix's manual build is a bit outdated regarding opkg packages and I have to force the deployments which is not good.

(Last edited by gently on 6 Feb 2013, 12:59)

The switch works in the normal openwrt way as I understand it.  Hotplug and startup script.  Look around and you should find more info...

I'd recommend build your own image and packages.

I will google a bit, thanks. I was expecting the same behaviour as default f/w has when it applies various scripts without rebooting the device.

as for the own packages - sounds like a nightmare, why to have opkg and maintain own repository?

netprince wrote:

The switch works in the normal openwrt way as I understand it.  Hotplug and startup script.  Look around and you should find more info...

I'd recommend build your own image and packages.

@netprince
As for files in /etc/hotplug.d and /etc/init.d, do I need to apply that in the router openwrt after install or I can directly put into the source code to compile?  This is always very confusing for me. I have been googling around but still confused.  Can you give some hints or point out any references?

My WR720 router works fine with the Openwrt firmware that I compiled.  However, I don't know how to make the switches work correctly, though.  I tried the openwrt firmware from the Chinese Website, the results are still not right.  My understanding is that in Router mode, eth1 should be wan and eth0&wifi should be bridged to lan;  For AP mode, all three should be bridged together in lan;  3G mode should be same as AP with USB0 enabled.  What I found is that none of the modes has eth1 bridged to lan.  It is always as wan interface under dhcp.  Is my understanding correct?  I would really appreciate if somebody can share the files related to the switch in the /etc/init.d/ and /etc/hotplug.d/button directories.  Thanks.

The TL-WR720N on TP-Link's English pages looks quite different.  It has 2 LAN ports and a WAN port, no USB, sloped sides, etc.  There only seems to be a V1.  This variant seems to be sold here (Canada).

Is it related at all to the Chinese one?

Download for TL-WR720N V1 (includes link for datasheet)

Hugh wrote:

The TL-WR720N on TP-Link's English pages looks quite different.  It has 2 LAN ports and a WAN port, no USB, sloped sides, etc.  There only seems to be a V1.  This variant seems to be sold here (Canada).

Is it related at all to the Chinese one?

Download for TL-WR720N V1 (includes link for datasheet)

I noticed that one also.  It is a totally different router.  There are some Chinese versions very similar to that, e.g. Mercury MW153R (Mercury is off brand of TP-Link).  These Chinese two port routers has only 8M ram 1 or 2M flash (I don't remember exactly).  Not sure about the spec of this 720.

(Last edited by twinclouds on 7 Feb 2013, 21:11)

In order to read the state of the switch in a startup script, you need to parse /sys/kernel/debug/gpio.  I realized that I didn't actually configure hotplug for this one, didn't figure I would ever use the switch after its plugged in.

By reading http://www.clarenceho.net:8123/blog/art … h-openwrt, I created three scripts for three different modes and modified the slider and 20-slider files in /etc/init.d/ and /etc/hotplug.d/button.  Now the ap and router modes working correctly as I expected.  I have not tested out the 3g mode because I don't have a 3g dongle, but at least I know how set it up once I have the right config files.

This is a very interesting router!

Any update on compatibility?  I'm sooooo close to getting one just to try for myself smile

Madox wrote:

Any update on compatibility?  I'm sooooo close to getting one just to try for myself smile

There is a submitted patch, but by looking at the source code, it was not yet pulled.

Hi,

Sorry new to OpenWRT. I tried to build the factory image from the fork at github - after installing on to the device and restarting, it does not seem to work. Everytime I start (or restart) the device, the LED will flash blue once and then there will be no more LED lights. Is the router bricked? If so, how do I debrick it?

Thanks

metamorph wrote:

Everytime I start (or restart) the device, the LED will flash blue once and then there will be no more LED lights. Is the router bricked? If so, how do I debrick it?

I've also seen a weird behavior. From memory, if you boot it with no WAN link, this will happen.

Thanks elecnix. I installed the self-compiled factory image using the TP-Link webUI via a LAN cable from the computer to the LAN port (not the LAN/WAN port).

After the device restarted, I cannot telnet or ping into 192.168.1.1, and the LED light is off (it will flash once when I turn it on but then it will remain off afterwards). Sounds like a bricked router?

Or it is still ok, and I need to boot it with a WAN link? Tried to plug a cable from the WAN/LAN port to my internet router but does not seem to work too.

@metamorph:
Not sure why you want to build the factory image.  What I did was to first load the 703n Openwrt image.  It should work except for the second ethernet port.  (You need to modify the the header, though.)  Then you can modify the source code to recompile and enable both ethernet ports.  It should be pretty straight forward.

Just bought one here on Brazil. Looks like the one in Hugh's reply.
It says "TL-WR720N Ver: 1.0" ... any firmware for this one?

(Last edited by digital on 8 Mar 2013, 23:40)

Thanks to elecnix, I've also built a couple of test images today at :-

http://www.madox.net/blog/2013/03/10/tp … s-openwrt/

This is based off r35905 and the 3.8.2 kernels.  Both eth0 and eth1 appear to work, as well as WiFi and the mode switches.

Guys, can we push/donate somebody to add the patch into the trunk?
it is really painful to build a VM with all dev tools, maintain repository, etc. just for one single build per day/week/month...

Madox: this images you've built are for the chinese version? or the other one?

(Last edited by digital on 11 Mar 2013, 13:41)