OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: Installing OpenWrt in Xiaomi Wifi Mini

The content of this topic has been archived between 8 Feb 2018 and 5 May 2018. Unfortunately there are posts – most likely complete pages – missing.

Auphora wrote:

Hello!

I actually don't know if I should open a new thread, so Im just going to post it here~

After a power outage my router didnt boot up anymore (with StrangeOrange's build,the orange LED led up, but after some seconds it just turned off). So I just used a USB Stick, put changeway's build on the usb stick, named it miwifi.bin. Now the router doesnt even get to the blue led, it just goes through the orange led "state" and turns off afterwards. Flashing through the USB stick (seemingly) doesn't work. I cant reach the router via ssh in failsafe mode as well (At least it seems so). Is there something else I can do, or did I just brick it?

If you have original bootloader you should be able to flash original xiaomi firmware from usb stick. I didn't have any luck with custom roms with this method. In every recovery I had to revert to the xiaomi firmware first before flashing custom again.

mike3e wrote:

If you have original bootloader you should be able to flash original xiaomi firmware from usb stick. I didn't have any luck with custom roms with this method. In every recovery I had to revert to the xiaomi firmware first before flashing custom again.

Somehow I cant flash any firmware (original/openwrt), when I press(& hold) the reset button directly after turning the router on the router boots into failsafe mode (at least I think so, since it just shows a red LED). When I press&hold the reset button ~1 sec. later ( as soon as the lights on the LAN ports go out) it still doesnt boot into the "flash-mode" (?), but just goes off in the moment it would reach the usual booting (blue LED).

format usb to fat32 rename xiaomi fw to miwifi.bin and copy to usb. plug in usb press and hold reset button and power on router. if your usb has led it will start blinking when router start reading fw. now you canrelease button.

No reply ? Why cannot I connect MiWifi Mini to another WEP protected wifi with the pandorabox ? Thank you !

I didn't know that there are still people using WEP o_O
BTW I'm not sure, but I think that for 802.11n you need WPA2-AES to be 100% compatible...

Yes I am in Japan and they are using both WPA and WEP... and unfortunately, I cannot change the encryption of the main wifi. WEP protected wifi are using 802.11g.

edit: never mind, looks like NTP traffic on UDP:123.

Hi,
I'm using nextlvl's firmware image (OpenWrt Chaos Calmer 15.05.1 r48532 / LuCI for-15.05_MiWifi_Mini branch (git-16.092.08027-86e56b7) and observed it making a connection to hades.boxed-it.com.

i'm at a loss why that connection would occur - does anyone have an explanation?

tnx!

(Last edited by undef2 on 23 May 2016, 17:36)

Hello.

Does anyone speak Russian here?
I would like to test Prometheus firmware, but I don't speak Russian so it's impossible for me sad
Thank you smile

EDIT: I just found that it has english too big_smile

(Last edited by Benik3 on 25 May 2016, 13:24)

StrangeOrange is active also here wink

Benik3 wrote:

StrangeOrange is active also here wink


thanx to good job StrangeOrange smile

(Last edited by micro77 on 25 May 2016, 15:46)

Any news about OpenWRT?

I'm just running on the russian Prometheus firmware. It looks working fine, but it's based on Asus FW (not OpenWRT) so it's not so customizable as OWRT...

Thanks

Has anyone managed to install the right drivers for the wifi, it seems to be the only problem to use the clean openwrt on the xiaomi mifi mini router.

@StrangeOrange

I'm now running your PandoraBox 14.09r1696 firmware variant from https://mega.nz/#F!4Uh2wSDI!1HGl8pNv1gT … w!NdQ0WDRR on two devices for about 24 hours now.

Some oddities I've noticed are:

1.  I've seen the 5gigahertz wifi networking drop off completely and vanish from being visible.  The 2.4 kept working at the time.

2.  I've seen the device become horribly slow such that all performance including shell prompt are hardly even responsive.  I managed to get output from the "top" command after a long wait.  I have no idea why nmbd show in the list below.  Restart made it all go away.

2329     1 root     R     3216   3%  15% /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
2092     1 root     R     5244   4%  15% /usr/sbin/uhttpd -f -h /www -r OpenWr
  110     2 root     RW       0   0%  14% [kswapd0]
    3     2 root     SW       0   0%  13% [ksoftirqd/0]
2048     2 root     RW       0   0%  12% [RtmpMlmeTask]
3035  3006 root     R     1508   1%   9% top
1358     2 root     SW       0   0%   7% [kworker/0:2]
1569     1 root     S     1640   1%   4% /sbin/netifd

3.  I've been unable to get the other device to function as a wireless client even though it can scan and see networks.  I did see a whole lot of this message in the logs:

[13130.240000] The 8-BSSID mode is enabled, the BSSID byte5 MUST be the multiple of 8

Don't know if that is related.

dcam wrote:

@StrangeOrange

I'm now running your PandoraBox 14.09r1696 firmware variant from https://mega.nz/#F!4Uh2wSDI!1HGl8pNv1gT … w!NdQ0WDRR on two devices for about 24 hours now.

Some oddities I've noticed are:

1.  I've seen the 5gigahertz wifi networking drop off completely and vanish from being visible.  The 2.4 kept working at the time.

2.  I've seen the device become horribly slow such that all performance including shell prompt are hardly even responsive.  I managed to get output from the "top" command after a long wait.  I have no idea why nmbd show in the list below.  Restart made it all go away.

2329     1 root     R     3216   3%  15% /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
2092     1 root     R     5244   4%  15% /usr/sbin/uhttpd -f -h /www -r OpenWr
  110     2 root     RW       0   0%  14% [kswapd0]
    3     2 root     SW       0   0%  13% [ksoftirqd/0]
2048     2 root     RW       0   0%  12% [RtmpMlmeTask]
3035  3006 root     R     1508   1%   9% top
1358     2 root     SW       0   0%   7% [kworker/0:2]
1569     1 root     S     1640   1%   4% /sbin/netifd

3.  I've been unable to get the other device to function as a wireless client even though it can scan and see networks.  I did see a whole lot of this message in the logs:

[13130.240000] The 8-BSSID mode is enabled, the BSSID byte5 MUST be the multiple of 8

Don't know if that is related.

Just curious, which StrangeOrange pandorabox are you using? minimal or optimal version? I plan to flash mine too but need the 5 Ghz AC primarily to be stable.

Hi, wich one is the best openwrt fw for the xiaomi mini wifi with the strongest wifi signal?

The stock 15.05 and 15.05.1 fw have poor wifi, the dd in the #416 comment also has poor wifi.

They say that the fw in the #390 comment has strong wifi, but unfortunately it does not have a "scan" button in the wifi netwprk to connect to another wifi.
Pandora box is also not good for me, since it's not based on cc and I need the new and fixed features in cc.

So, can you show me please an fw for the mini that is at least cc, fixed wifi signal and has "scan" wifi option?

Thanks. smile

There's a rumor that the Xiaomi Mini Padovan image, being MT7620A based, will work in a ZBT WE826T with a Sierra MC7455 cellular card.  Can someone "in the know" give me more details on this - does it indeed work, without patches?

Also, I'm noticing that the MT7620A wifi seems to be unstable (with OpenWrt, which is what ZBT devices come with). Specifically, the wifi will run stable for several hours (or sometimes days), and then begin to issue "deauths" every 6 to 12 minutes, repeatedly. This, of course, causes connected devices to drop, rescan, and reconnect. If a device happens to be in the middle of a file transfer (or streaming) when the deauth is issued, that becomes problematic.

Does anyone know if this problem happens to be a "bug" or issue with the MT7620A SoC microcode, or a problem with the driver being utilized (OpenWrt by default)? The problem is exhibited on two (2) MoFi routers, and two (2) ZBT WE826 routers, so it is not just an isolated incident.  I'm hoping it's a driver, and not microcode, problem.

I would love to flash something totally outside the realm of OpenWrt, to see if it solves the above problem (but that "something" needs to support cellular WAN – specifically, the Sierra MC7455). I was wondering if this (Xiaomi Mini Padovan image) might be the solution to my problem.  Any advice, tips, or hints would be appreciated.

hi
first thanks StrangeOrange for this build it is realy good one !

i have only 1 little problem with it
can someone dell me what i did wrong ?
i wanted have my 128gb pendrive as small NAS in it.
i did set up this(i canot share link lol so in mount i added /dev/sda1 as device /mnt/sda1 as mount point options:defaults , no root , no check , and enabled (it detected pendrive capasity and filesystem as exfat so OK)
but i cannot access it via ssh
root@OpenWrt:~# /mnt/sda1/
-ash: /mnt/sda1/: Permission denied

when i created network share from /mnt/sda1/ i can access samba share but it have only 4mb of space...
after a while i figured it out than inside /overlay it created folder /sda1 and this was the place that i had access... and thats why 4mb...
after several hours

after ssh mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

and mapping again from /mnt/sda1 samba share

everything works fine ! so where is the problem ?

for now i  added mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 in to startup script and it solves my problem

but i would like to known what i did wrong ....

thanks and regards !

I just installed latest OpenWrt 15.05.1 on Xiaomi router and it seams to work ok... didn't do any longer tests, but will do.

So what is best recommended firmware for Xiaomi routers with english interface if possible?

I tried latest and stable versions of Pandorabox firmware, but I was dissapointed to see they are in Chinese so couldn't figure out and then flashed OpenWrt.

I see that Pandorabox firmware stopped being developed, and latest version is from July 2015... does anyone know why development stopped?

Are there any special features in either original Xiaomi firmwares or in Pandorabox that are missing in vanilla OpenWrt firmware?

UPDATE: found "StrangeOrange" english version of PandoraBox and I'm testing that now... so far so good, only it looks like my Huawei USB LTE modem is recognised but it is not working... but I guess I can manually fix this...

(Last edited by valentt on 11 Sep 2016, 14:36)

I couldn't get Huawei E3372 LTE modem working on PandoraBox so I just installed OpenWrt 15.05.1 and tutorial to get modem up and running:
http://kernelreloaded.com/huwaei-e3372h … lte-modem/

Only change is that Huawei E3372 LTE modem is recognized as eth1 not eth2...

Now I'm writing this post over LTE connection, Xiaomi Mini is working perfectly...

Any way to fix this?

1056.000000] Call Trace:
[ 1056.000000] [<80034bf4>] __queue_work+0x58/0x238
[ 1056.000000] [<80034e18>] queue_work_on+0x44/0x68
[ 1056.000000] [<8018b21c>] credit_entropy_bits+0x2b8/0x2ec
[ 1056.000000] [<80048fe4>] handle_irq_event_percpu+0x134/0x188
[ 1056.000000] [<8004bb58>] handle_percpu_irq+0x54/0x84
[ 1056.000000] [<80048888>] generic_handle_irq+0x28/0x44
[ 1056.000000] [<80011218>] do_IRQ+0x1c/0x2c
[ 1056.000000] [<80004830>] ret_from_irq+0x0/0x4
[ 1056.000000] [<80026950>] __do_softirq+0x8c/0x230
[ 1056.000000] [<80026d28>] irq_exit+0x54/0x70
[ 1056.000000] [<80004830>] ret_from_irq+0x0/0x4
[ 1056.000000] [<8000db88>] calibrate_delay+0xcc/0x220
[ 1056.000000] [<80336ae8>] start_kernel+0x3b8/0x444
[ 1056.000000]
[ 1056.000000]
Code: 24050510  24020001  a202c8f2 <8e220080> 7c420400  1040001d  3a740001  8f840000  8c83000c
[ 1056.000000] ---[ end trace fb2bed9685ab26c9 ]---
[ 1056.000000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt
[ 1056.000000] ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

This is on a Xiaomi Youth Wifi router. Get that error message every time it boots.

valentt wrote:

I just installed latest OpenWrt 15.05.1 on Xiaomi router and it seams to work ok... didn't do any longer tests, but will do.

So what is best recommended firmware for Xiaomi routers with english interface if possible?

I tried latest and stable versions of Pandorabox firmware, but I was dissapointed to see they are in Chinese so couldn't figure out and then flashed OpenWrt.

I see that Pandorabox firmware stopped being developed, and latest version is from July 2015... does anyone know why development stopped?

Are there any special features in either original Xiaomi firmwares or in Pandorabox that are missing in vanilla OpenWrt firmware?

UPDATE: found "StrangeOrange" english version of PandoraBox and I'm testing that now... so far so good, only it looks like my Huawei USB LTE modem is recognised but it is not working... but I guess I can manually fix this...


I went with padavan.  There is even a script that will allow you to custom compile it whenever you wish at prometheusDOTfreizeDOTnet/ although you'll need to use chrome translate for the website.  The script fully supports english.

After downloading an old Padavan binary from somewhere and liking it, I bit the bullet and installed the build environment on a VM and am using it for a number of MT7xxx based routers.

Hi folks,

I've bought one of these recently and as most of you would expect I have issues with WiFi on OpenWRT. Now I know I can use PandoraBox (actually have it installed right now), but it's old and I'd actually want to help fix OpenWRT for Mi Mini. What's surprising is that from just issues on 15.05 release OpenWRT went to no wifi at all on the current trunk (2016-10-27). I'm happy to be the hands for anyone who potentially has an idea on what to check and how to fix. Currently I have this in log every time I try to enable wifi (5G radio):

Sun Oct 30 00:52:13 2016 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (4746): Interface 0 setup failed: INVALID_WPA_PSK
Sun Oct 30 00:52:13 2016 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (4746): WARNING: Variable 'interfaces' does not exist or is not an array/object

I've found a similar issue reported 3 months ago with no updates - ticket 23115 (cannot post links yet, sorry)

Let's try to fix this together, folks, I'm good with general Linux but not so with hardware drivers and openwrt specific services, need a hand here.

UPD: figured this one out - INVALID_WPA_PSK is when "key" in wireless config is less than 8 symbols. Current trunk version of luci shows and sets too much stuff in wireless security tab so I got lost and put my wifi password into "password" field, should've used "key" instead.

(Last edited by f3flight on 30 Oct 2016, 05:13)