Hi All,

I've got a couple of devices I've been working on for the last week, from a technical perspective everything is sorted and I'm happy but I'm unsure on what the feeling is towards unbranded devices when it comes to submitting patches.

Hardware wise it's pretty much just another hame 3g clone.
(The PCB is silk screened as "A5-V11" so have called the device this in my branch.)

The mpra1 images work fine but the build process does differ as it shares the same image packing process as the poray devices - but with a different key.

Is it worth me submitting a patch for such a device?

Thank you very much for the A5_V11 patch!

I've got this router from Ebay yesterday.
Then I've found your post there: http://my-embedded.blogspot.ru/2014/01/ … 5350f.html
After that I've rebuild an openwrt "factory" image from trunk and got the router flashed over web GUI.

Works geat! Thank's a lot!

How can I vote to make the image to be built on a regular (nightly) basis same as images for other routers supported?

we are talking about 32 MB version, right?

did you buy from aliexpress them?

Yes, fortunately the "Mini Portable 3G/4G MiFi Wireless-N USB WiFi Hotspot Router AP" I've got from Ebay has 32MB RAM.
This one has "... the PCB is silk screened as A5-V11 ..."

They are likely to be available on AE as well starting from $8+ delivered.
On Ebay anyone can bid and win it for $5-7 delivered.

Short comparison of A5_V11 vs WR-703N.

Pros:

    A5_V11 is 2-3 times smaller.
    2.5-3 times cheaper.
    Can take 5V power supply from it's own full size USB socket without mods.

Cons:

   Comes without power adapter
   Approx. current drawn: WiFi off - 150mA, WiFi on - 200mA (703N has: WiFi off - 100mA , WiFi on - 150mA)
   Openwrt SSL performance is about 20-25% less than 703N - see official benchmarks.

I have flashed my A5_V11 using the instructions here. First factory image and the upgrade.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/unbranded/a5-v11

I was expecting Luci but there is no space? since im new to commandline i tried to flash back to manufacturer firmware but openwrt says Image is invalid.

So i am stuck at commandline.

I am also using the A5_V11 and I like it much. Please keep in mind that currently support for the A5_V11 is in trunk only, and trunk builds do not come with luci by default. Using the Image Generator it should be possible to produce trunk images including luci, though. By using time Image Generator, the software gets compressed, and so there will be more space to fit everything in.

is that so. huh. i am very new to linux. half day working i got it up in wrt with wifi/Lan. I plan to use this one as a wireless file server for my phone.

flashing with OpenWRT took away 3G dialup function. but i think can be done with Luci.

probono if your are building any Luci build it would be great if you can share.

I also have looked at
http://www.digitalinferno.com/wiki/Wiki … xternalUSB

to figure out how to mount live file system on USB, no luck yet. Correct formatting, configs, transfers done but still not use USB.

Does USB need to be flagged to be bootable?

Finally i was able to install luci.

Image:

I dont need a large USB drive for this so i checked old store. There was an old USB drive which corrupts data so i tested usable memory with h2testw ~684MB. So i repartitoned 384mb.ext4,64mb.swap and 64mb.tmp total 512mb.

I edited onboard fstab file like this:
config 'mount'
    option target /overlay
    option device /dev/sda1
    option fstype ext4
    option options rw,sync
    option enabled 1
    option enabled_fsck 0

I was able to transfer live file system to USB and boot.

Then I tried to mount the swap partition /dev/sda2. It wont even boot until i remove swap settings I am not sure what i did wrong. Dunno which fstab file to edit, onboard or USB?

Image

as you can see total ram available is ~8mb will it do?

(Last edited by linusErasia on 19 Jan 2015, 21:02)

@probono
couldn't find another way to contact you.
Thanks for your awesome wiki entry on the A5-V11. What a great little device.
Have you figured out how to use its usb port?

I installed  kmod-usb-serial kmod-usb-serial-ftdi kmod-usb-acm ser2net
but I always get this error:

[   39.310000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -145
[   39.550000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform
[   55.040000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -145
[   70.760000] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -145
[   71.010000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-platform
[   81.510000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 4, error -145
[   81.650000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-platform
[   92.140000] usb 1-1: device not accepting address 5, error -145
[   92.140000] hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1
[   92.520000] usb 2-1: new full-speed USB device number 2 using ohci-platform

Do I have to power the port somehow first? Maybe then i can extend the wiki entry

I have a 2A usb charger powering my device.

The device itself need .5A.

if you connect a stick +0.1A
if you connect a Printer +0.1A
if you connect old 160GB portable HDD +1.0A
if you connect new HDD +0.5A

it depends on what you connect. so, do the math.

i use these packages

kmod-usb-acm - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-core - 3.14.26-1
kmod-usb-ohci - 3.14.26-1
kmod-usb-serial - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-serial-cp210x - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-serial-ftdi - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-storage - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-storage-extras - 3.14.26-1

I did not have an error with USB
I have a hub plugged into USB port and multiple usb devices are connected.

yet the biggest obstacle i have is being unable to mount fat and ntfs fs. windows do not support ext4 so copying files is a headache!

tried everything.

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs

mount -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs

mount -t vfat -o codepage =866, iocharset=utf8 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/vfat

mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw,iocharset=iso8859-1 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs

my opkg:

/tmp$ opkg list
base-files - 157-r43793
blkid - 2.25.2-2
block-mount - 2015-01-07-6a448a100c7ce8b8b85f262ba1258e54363da9cc
busybox - 1.22.1-5
dnsmasq - 2.72-3
dropbear - 2014.65-2
fdisk - 2.25.2-2
firewall - 2014-09-19
fstools - 2014-12-15-83cf8896a598fb9fc58da0a9bb4f137695f78853
hostapd-common - 2014-10-25-1
ip6tables - 1.4.21-1
iptables - 1.4.21-1
iw - 3.15-1
iwinfo - 2014-12-12-50370d9e698696770b021caf0b5f6482bacb45ce
jshn - 2014-11-23-f09ae76445e32511433fdab0a1bcda73aa84986d
jsonfilter - 2014-06-19-cdc760c58077f44fc40adbbe41e1556a67c1b9a9
kernel - 3.14.26-1-a0214bd0e508ad667a0a2ae8dfa22b41
kernel - 3.14.28-1-d40f32b911217132aa9437f2daeabd0e
kmod-cfg80211 - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-crypto-aes - 3.14.26-1
kmod-crypto-arc4 - 3.14.26-1
kmod-crypto-core - 3.14.26-1
kmod-crypto-hash - 3.14.26-1
kmod-eeprom-93cx6 - 3.14.26-1
kmod-fs-ext4 - 3.14.28-1
kmod-fs-msdos - 3.14.26-1
kmod-fs-ntfs - 3.14.28-1
kmod-fs-vfat - 3.14.26-1
kmod-gpio-button-hotplug - 3.14.26-1
kmod-ip6tables - 3.14.26-1
kmod-ipt-conntrack - 3.14.26-1
kmod-ipt-core - 3.14.26-1
kmod-ipt-nat - 3.14.26-1
kmod-ipv6 - 3.14.26-1
kmod-leds-gpio - 3.14.26-1
kmod-lib-crc-ccitt - 3.14.26-1
kmod-lib-crc-itu-t - 3.14.26-1
kmod-lib-crc16 - 3.14.26-1
kmod-mac80211 - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-nf-conntrack - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nf-conntrack6 - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nf-ipt - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nf-ipt6 - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nf-nat - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nf-nathelper - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nls-base - 3.14.26-1
kmod-nls-cp437 - 3.14.28-1
kmod-nls-iso8859-1 - 3.14.28-1
kmod-ppp - 3.14.26-1
kmod-pppoe - 3.14.26-1
kmod-pppox - 3.14.26-1
kmod-rt2800-lib - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-rt2800-mmio - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-rt2800-soc - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-rt2x00-lib - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-rt2x00-mmio - 3.14.26+2014-11-04-1
kmod-scsi-core - 3.14.26-1
kmod-slhc - 3.14.26-1
kmod-usb-acm - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-core - 3.14.26-1
kmod-usb-ohci - 3.14.26-1
kmod-usb-serial - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-serial-cp210x - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-serial-ftdi - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-storage - 3.14.28-1
kmod-usb-storage-extras - 3.14.26-1
kmod-usb2 - 3.14.26-1
libblkid - 2.25.2-2
libblobmsg-json - 2014-11-23-f09ae76445e32511433fdab0a1bcda73aa84986d
libbz2 - 1.0.6-1
libc - 0.9.33.2-1
libexif - 0.6.21-1
libffmpeg-mini - 2.4.5-1
libflac - 1.3.1-1
libgcc - 4.8-linaro-1
libid3tag - 0.15.1b-4
libip4tc - 1.4.21-1
libip6tc - 1.4.21-1
libiwinfo - 2014-12-12-50370d9e698696770b021caf0b5f6482bacb45ce
libiwinfo-lua - 2015-01-04-c9fd399316003040825dfbd9700488b621bd990e
libjpeg - 9a-1
libjson-c - 0.11-2
libjson-script - 2014-11-23-f09ae76445e32511433fdab0a1bcda73aa84986d
liblua - 5.1.5-1
libnl-tiny - 0.1-4
libogg - 1.3.2-2
libpolarssl - 1.3.9-1
libpthread - 0.9.33.2-1
librt - 0.9.33.2-1
libsmartcols - 2.25.2-2
libsqlite3 - 3080704-1
libubox - 2014-11-23-f09ae76445e32511433fdab0a1bcda73aa84986d
libubus - 2014-09-17-4c4f35cf2230d70b9ddd87638ca911e8a563f2f3
libubus-lua - 2014-09-17-4c4f35cf2230d70b9ddd87638ca911e8a563f2f3
libuci - 2014-04-11.1-1
libuci-lua - 2014-04-11.1-1
libusb-1.0 - 1.0.19-1
libustream-polarssl - 2014-03-25-fc0b5ec804ee43c532978dd04ab0509c34baefb0
libuuid - 2.25.2-2
libvorbis - 1.3.4-2
libxtables - 1.4.21-1
lua - 5.1.5-1
luci - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
luci-app-firewall - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
luci-app-minidlna - git-15.019.63550-0d541a4-1
luci-app-samba - git-15.019.63550-0d541a4-1
luci-base - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
luci-lib-nixio - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
luci-mod-admin-full - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
luci-proto-ppp - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
luci-ssl - git-15.019.63550-0d541a4-1
luci-theme-bootstrap - git-15.017.51462-30d45d0-1
minidlna - 1.1.4-2
mtd - 20
netifd - 2014-12-23-e9d2014a478807c7fac0581bb4a145901a3f23b4
odhcp6c - 2014-12-10-722226c4f1d45c8bf4ac9189523738abcf7d648f
odhcpd - 2014-11-06-3b628005e66e90770b2757a4a02c1dee25ccb883
opkg - 9c97d5ecd795709c8584e972bfdf3aee3a5b846d-7
ppp - 2.4.7-4
ppp-mod-pppoe - 2.4.7-4
procd - 2014-12-15-61cfe0d093056b85a311f06d44ac149e5dbb4d1a
px5g - 2
rpcd - 2014-10-20-d99e8adc4fbcf9e7a0b36df05ee1bccbedd45a2a
samba36-server - 3.6.24-1
sudo - 1.8.11p2-1
swap-utils - 2.25.2-2
swconfig - 10
ubox - 2014-10-06-0b274c16a3f9d235735a4b84215071e1e004caa9
ubus - 2014-09-17-4c4f35cf2230d70b9ddd87638ca911e8a563f2f3
ubusd - 2014-09-17-4c4f35cf2230d70b9ddd87638ca911e8a563f2f3
uci - 2014-04-11.1-1
uhttpd - 2014-10-27-fd8e5e379c23c5fbcec3e76894b839233df09067
uhttpd-mod-ubus - 2014-10-27-fd8e5e379c23c5fbcec3e76894b839233df09067
usbutils - 007-1
wpad-mini - 2014-10-25-1
zlib - 1.2.8-1

I have gotten one of these little A5-V11 MIFi devices recently. Got to play with it today and ran into the same problem.
I ended up building with trunk SVN Rev 44248, which gets rid of these errors above, but also had to remove the comgt patch from commit 43000, 002-termios.patch With this patch in place the comgt return info was all garbage, and none of the gcom scripts would work.
Next I added the ROOter scripts from http://ofmodemsandmen.com/, and now have a real MIFI 3G / 4G device, Using a Sierra 320U and DirectIP.

Not bad for about $10.

Thank you linusErasia and coltect,
I tried again with r44462 and it worked. Another issue for me were two bad microusb cables, who would have thought that

Just want to confirm that r44248 appears to fix USB sound cards too. So it is not only a fix for one specific USB device.