Can anyone advise if they have had success with this model?  If not I'll be the guinea pig but I need some help as this is my first foray into OpenWRT.

By the looks of it I have been able to determine that it is identical to the TL-WR1043ND except that the antennas are not detachable.  Hence no "D" in the model #.

I downloaded the v4 snapshot dated 8/3/2017 but it appears TP-Link has blocked using their web interface to upload custom firmware.  So I did the TFTP method.

renamed the file " WR1043v5_tp_recovery.bin".  Pressed reset button while powering on the unit.  I can see in the logs that the bin file is uploaded but no luck.  the router still has stock firmware.

Can anyone help.  I will try anything and will edit the wiki with my findings but I don't know what else to do.

Log from TFTP.  you can see that is clearly is looking for a v5 file because it error'd out when it was missing.  So at least I know exactly what file it is looking for.

thanks

(Last edited by jtroberts on 3 Aug 2017, 18:55)

Hi,

I've just bought the TL-WR1043N v5 and installed the LEDE-project firmware. This firmware is based on OpenWRT. The firmware installed fine, everything seems to work, so far no crashes or instability.

For my 'project' I just wanted to have an OpenVPN client on my router and I'm now running this router with a NordVPN account.

I'm not sure wether I can install an OpenWRT firmware, but I will try this if I have enough info (and courage) to do so.

With regards,

Rutger

The v5 snapshots seem to install OK, though who knows how stable they are. The previous one I tried a few days ago wasn't recognising the wlan link coming up, but the one I've tried today does. The stock firmware (including the reset and tftp method) does seem to have some way of determining whether the firmware is acceptable, such that the v4 firmware will be rejected.

While researching this I downloaded the stock firmware V5 and V4 sources from TP-Link with a view to seeing what the differences were as regards the wlan interface. Turns out they're completely diffrerent, because the V5 stock firmware is based on OpenWrt, with a linux 3.3 kernel.

I've tried modifying the stock OpenWrt firmware using Firmware Mod Kit to give myself ssh access, but the resulting firmware won't install.