I am trying to port/develop OpenWrt and install it in the Xiaomi Wifi Mini hardware.  It is a very cheap hardware with 802.11ac capability, but the firmware is just not good at all.  I just want to replace it with the original OpenWrt.  Can anybody give me some directions to start with?

Thanks a lot!

I just think to make the image then flash it into xiaomi wifi.

Hi,

I managed to install OpenWrt on the Xiaomi MiWiFi Mini following the instructions here http://en.miui.com/thread-64391-1-1.html and compiling a binary with the patch from https://github.com/rssnsj/openwrt-xiaomi-mini. 802.11ac wireless is working

Please report here or add information to the wiki (http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/xiaomi/mini).

Cheers!

(Last edited by lordroger on 21 Jan 2015, 22:00)

Oh thanks a lot, let me try this out first.

Dear Lordroger,

Can You give me compiled firmware with patch for Xioami MiWiFi Mini?
I need 802.11ac, but I don't have experience with bunary compilation.
Now my WiFi Mini working with r583-20140827, but only on 2.4G.
My email: airis24@gmail.com.

Thank You in advance!

Hi,

Please find a .bin here: http://onionwrt.link/download/xiaomi/

It works for me with dual radio.

Hi,
Thank You for help, but unfortunately this update doesn't working on my router.
After flash sysupgrade from web interface over r583-20140827 stable firmware  router died and I need restore router by flash original Xioami firmware from USB drive.
Next time I will try flash router from SSH.

I've tried to build fw with patch mentioned in openwrt wiki, got no 5ghz device and very low signal from ap on 2.4 GHz, tried compiling trunk(there is a choice for this device), got 5ghz device, but ap on 5ghz won't go up and still very low signal on 2.4 GHz. Have not tried binary from this thread, but I assume it would be the same. There's definitely something wrong with 2860 driver there (5ghz, 7612e scans for networks ok,shows good signal, but ap won't bring up). I have 128mb ram instead of 64, mentioned in wiki. There's some proprietary driver for both 2.4 & 5 GHz devices,  it is used in pandorabox(Chinese fork of openwrt) but looks like it isn't compatible with luci, I've tried to flash pandirabox, but interface is Chinese, I've managed to switch to Russian and stock openwrt theme, but could not bring up 5ghz neither 2.4 ap or sta mode using luci, it seems to me stock Chinese interface may be capable of that, but there's no way I could understand those symbols. So for me openwrt on this device is hardly working one. Anyone got decent performance of this device running openwrt?

(Last edited by dnkn on 19 May 2015, 00:12)

Instruction 29 at the miui.com link above shows you how to switch to English after installing Pandora Box. I'm running the unstable version r601 successfully with both radios. Be sure to set timezone/country first since that controls the frequencies you're allowed to use.

Are there any benefits of using Xiaomi Mini instead of TP-LINK WDR3600 ?

802.11ac, mainly.

Ok so today i installed CC RC1 on my xiaomi mini, everything works! after flashing openwrt on it i needed to installed the mt76 drivers to get the AC wifi chip to work as well.
its really cool, 128MB ram 16MB flash, good antennas, usb and 3 ethernet ports for just 30 bucks!!

hi ,
you can download the PandoraBox firmware .
URL : http://downloads.openwrt.org.cn/Pandora … M/testing/

how is that different from the the normal openwrt image? as the normal image (CC rc1) works well.

That one uses proprietary wifi drivers (and?) hw_nat module.

Are you getting strong 2/4ghz signal on CC RC1 ?
I've built some prior to rc1 image and got ~40% of signal strength on 2/4ghz compared to stock xiaomi fw. Also 5ghz AP did not come up,but scanning for the networks worked fine on 5ghz .

Will try to build rc1 image, may be there were some fixes lately.

Hardware is brilliant for the money,but I'm intending to use this for smart home project so stock fw is a no go I need a working openwrt. With decent wireless performance.

i noticed the mt76 driver for this board is iffy at best, i did get it to work, but it does only work on 20 or 40 mhz, the 80 or 160 one does not work...

(Last edited by yoyellow on 29 Jun 2015, 20:23)

Flashed fresh build of CC RC1 still the same low signal on 2.4ghz , about 1/2 of what it is supposed to be. I have an ap in the next room currently, got 100% signal (-45 -50 dbm) on xiaomi fw....with openwrt it shows 52% and -75 dbm. What confuses me is that running iw phy1 info  shows
Coverage class: 0 (up to 0m)
Available Antennas: TX 0 RX 0

on all of my other routers it shows some antennas,for example,this one from netgear wnr2200

Available Antennas: TX 0x3 RX 0x3
Configured Antennas: TX 0x3 RX 0x3

The same shows d-link dir825 b1.

Well,for now it's WIP,no more. Not a supported hardware. I guess the only way to get decent wireless performance from this device in openwrt is to use proprietry modules as pandorabox does. open source modules lower the wireless performance dramaticly (no 80/160 on 5ghz and very low 2.4 ghz signal reception/ap strength).Hope that may change in time. For now I'll try to build BB with proprietry modules, there are some leaked(?) sources on github.

Some update.

I had no luck so far compiling with propriety modules, but found out that bb firmware built with patches from openwrt wiki actually  has decent wireless power on 2.4 GHz, but connection quality and strength is reported badly, for example it shows -80db signal on xiaomi, but -51db on the ap it is connected to. So it's something wrong with driver reporting data. Latest trunk now bugs more then previous versions, iwinfo segfaults , luci is not working in wireless section, good news is that something is being developed there. Tried every binary available, all suffer from the same low signal on 2.4ghz, some have 5ghz, some do not. In log there is something about 80/160 MHz support on 5ghz, but iw phy0 info shows only 20/40 support, so there's a lot to be done to reveal all he capabilities.

(Last edited by dnkn on 30 May 2015, 16:27)

is there a place where these proprietary modules/drivers can be downloaded? cus i want ot build my own openwrt build and put these in there...

only tomorrow ( 3rd aug) big discount on these miwifi mini babies: http://brands.aliexpress.com or http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product … 91379.html only 27 dollars

(Last edited by yoyellow on 2 Aug 2015, 16:47)

I bought a couple on the sale, when I get them I'll try and see what I can do with them like I did with the WT3020...

Is this the GitHub repo that you're referring to?

https://github.com/rssnsj/openwrt-xiaomi-mini

There is a Chaos Calmer RC3 image no, since support has been added before Chaos Calmer got branched?

Do i have to repeat all that have procedure to get pure OpenWRT on this router?

what do you have isntalled right now? if its the pandora firmware (which is based on openwrt) you can simple flash the regular openwrt image

Nope i'm with the original firware. 2.2.something.