HeaterMeter + LinkSys WiFi Router = LinkMeter


 
Originally posted by John Mangan:
John, congrats! I would love to know what you had to do to solve the LCD issues you were having. That is the same point where I left off on mine.
Click to expand...

If you go back and look at the Schemantic Ed added an Edit about a Resister on the button board. He sent an email stating that the resister would cause lcd problems.

Now were they the same problems I was having, not sure. I was just in the process of trying yet another board and i added the resister into the board and as i was soldering I checked and rechecked every solder, every connection over and over again until I felt confident that I could not find anything that might effect it from working, except maybe the programming(i basically totally lost when it comes to the program part of it, lol).

When I plug it in, the display did not turn on right away, not until i hit the reset button and then i got just a blank screen and then fiddling with the contrast, I was able to finally get the thing to work.

To answer your question, im not sure if it was the resistor or I had another problem with my soldering skills. But, this time I Double checked the soldering as I went and also I cleaned it a few times 99%+ isopropyl alcohol as I worked on the board.

Give the resistor(r22) a try.
 
I've been a little quiet because I've been busy working. For a career programmer I am an extremely slow typist, so I can either work or talk about it. I wanted to get the OpenWrt install a little easier before I provided any documentation, rather than provide conflicting information. If I'm not clear on anything, point it out and I'll fill in more detail.

Step 1 - OpenWrt Kernel 2.4 (optional)
Follow the instructions on the OpenWrt WRT54GL page to install OpenWrt. I can't provide any clearer explanations than they have there. The safest thing to do is install a 2.4 kernel version like they say to. These are located in the brcm-2.4 folder for these Linksys WRT54GL routers. Once it is installed, telnet 192.168.1.1 and set the boot_wait property in nvram. This gives you a failsafe in case a later flash fails and leaves your router unbootable.

Step 2 - OpenWrt for reals
While LinkMeter can run on any OpenWrt install I believe, I've built a custom firmware image that has all the prerequisites in it. The easiest way to flash this if you've done the previous step is to telnet back in and flash it from the command line:
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">
cd /tmp
wget http://capnbry.net/linkmeter/s...rcm47xx-squashfs.trx
mtd write /tmp/linkmeter-brcm47xx-squashfs.trx linux && reboot
</pre>

Step 3a - Configure wireless client (manual)
If you're familiar with editing config files with vi, the quickest way to do this is to edit /etc/config/network and make your wan section look like this:<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">
config 'interface' 'wan'
option 'ifname' 'eth0.1'
option 'proto' 'dhcp'
option 'hostname' 'lm54'
</pre>
and edit your /etc/config/wireless
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">
config 'wifi-device' 'radio0'
option 'type' 'mac80211'
option 'macaddr' '00:25:9c:52:44:5e'
option 'hwmode' '11g'
option 'channel' 'auto'

config 'wifi-iface'
option 'device' 'radio0'
option 'ssid' 'yourwirelessap'
option 'mode' 'sta'
option 'network' 'wan'
option 'encryption' 'psk2'
option 'key' 'yourwpakey'
</pre>
Obviously the ssid and key should be changed, also the encryption if you aren't using WPA2 PSK. Finally commit it by /etc/init.d/networking restart

Step 3b - Configure wireless client (web)
Connect to the web interface http://192.168.1.1/. Go to Network -> Interfaces -> WAN -> Physical Settings and uncheck the box that says "creates a bridge over specified interface". Save.
wlsHq.png


Next go Network -> Wifi and click the Edit icon. You want to check the Enable checkbox, set the channel to auto, the Mode to be Client, and the network to be WAN,and the rest of the setting are specific to your network. Namely ESSID should be your network name, and the security probably needs to be configured. Save, reboot.
4EivA.png


Once you reboot your router will get a DHCP dynamic address and you can access it wirelessly. The http://192.168.1.1/ address will only work when you're physically plugged into the router.

Step 4 - Install LinkMeter
Command Line: opkg install http://capnbry.net/linkmeter/s...meter_1_brcm47xx.ipk
GUI: Go to System -> Software and paste the url in the "Download and install package" box:
http://capnbry.net/linkmeter/s...meter_1_brcm47xx.ipk
dRGZG.png


Step 5 - That's it.
Go to the base URL of your router again:
http://your.router.address/

And you should be redirected to the LinkMeter main page. You can access it without the double bounce using the URL
http://your.router.address/cgi-bin/luci/lm/

You'll notice you can't change any the probe names or setpoint if you're not logged in. If you see a link on the bottom of the page that says "Login", you're in guest mode.
 
Any of the Linksys WRT54G routers which have 16MB of RAM and 4MB of flash should work. Also, I forgot to mention that the SD card mod is not required for any of this right now. There will be the ability to save your databases with notes and whatnot.
 
Ah yes! Forgot about that. Eventually there will be a link from the main page to take you to the configuration but until then it is conspicuously absent.
 
When I went in to configure wireless encryption I got:

WPA-Encryption requires wpa_supplicant (for client mode) or hostapd (for AP and ad-hoc mode) to be installed.

I went into System/Software and did an 'update package lists' and installed both the wpa_supplicant and hostapd. I then had to do a reboot.
 
Ok a couple questions for Bryan:

1) I'm curious as to why you bound the wireless to the wan side as opposed to the lan side?

2) I don't see a DHCP server in your custom build. Is this just to conserve space or is there a code problem?

3) When in AP mode, the radio won't come up when set to auto on the channel. You seen anything odd?

4) I'm having a lot of reboots with Trunk, you see any issues using Backfire stable?

As usual, many thanks.
 
That's really odd. I know I have wpa_supplicant built in, I use WPA2 too. I even tried it without it a long time ago when I was first cutting packages because the description was a little vague as to if it was needed with the new broadcomm driver. I'm positive it is in there now though, I'm using it! I'll have to flash the image I posted to see if it somehow got left off the build.

1 2 and 3) The LinkMeter router build is not designed to be your internet router or establish a new network. Because of that, all the firewall, DHCP, and AP stuff has been stripped out to save space and RAM. My instructions are how to configure it to be a wireless client on an existing network. I bind the wireless to the WAN port because that's the recommended way to make a wireless client out of it. I think the issue is that if you bind the LAN ports, and the router can't get a DHCP address, then you're totally screwed because the WAN port is set to DHCP by default too so there'd be no way to get into the device to change the config.

As for the other questions about running as an Access Point, I've never even tried. The main issue being that if you set it up as an AP, thinking you're going to make a standalone network, you'll need the DHCP server as well to give out addresses. Now the problem is that you'll obviously need to bind the DHCP server to the wireless adapter and now you've created a conflict between client mode and AP mode. I figure client mode covers 99% of what people want, and if someone wants to set it up as a standalone AP with a DHCP server, I'm sure they have the know-how to do it.
 
Originally posted by Bryan Mayland:
That's really odd. I know I have wpa_supplicant built in, I use WPA2 too. I even tried it without it a long time ago when I was first cutting packages because the description was a little vague as to if it was needed with the new broadcomm driver. I'm positive it is in there now though, I'm using it! I'll have to flash the image I posted to see if it somehow got left off the build.

1 2 and 3) The LinkMeter router build is not designed to be your internet router or establish a new network. Because of that, all the firewall, DHCP, and AP stuff has been stripped out to save space and RAM. My instructions are how to configure it to be a wireless client on an existing network. I bind the wireless to the WAN port because that's the recommended way to make a wireless client out of it. I think the issue is that if you bind the LAN ports, and the router can't get a DHCP address, then you're totally screwed because the WAN port is set to DHCP by default too so there'd be no way to get into the device to change the config.

As for the other questions about running as an Access Point, I've never even tried. The main issue being that if you set it up as an AP, thinking you're going to make a standalone network, you'll need the DHCP server as well to give out addresses. Now the problem is that you'll obviously need to bind the DHCP server to the wireless adapter and now you've created a conflict between client mode and AP mode. I figure client mode covers 99% of what people want, and if someone wants to set it up as a standalone AP with a DHCP server, I'm sure they have the know-how to do it.
Click to expand...

Agreed that most will use client, I just need this to be portable for competitions, etc.... As far as the lan vs wan, I was just curious. It really doesn't matter as you could use a static IP on Wan too. It's just whether you want 4 ports available or 1 which most people will use none anyway.
 
Ok, having a problem with the dependencies. AVRdude from your site gives me an MD5 checksum error and the one from their repository is way too large, it says 878k. Is there a switch to force install?
 
Ah yes. I also tried setting my router up so it would be a wireless client and bridge the connection to the LAN ports, so plugging in to a LAN port would get you in the WiFi network. Thiiiis did not go well because apparently it is only supported on the brcm-2.4 target with the proprietary broadcomm driver and I'm on 2.6 with I believe another driver.

There's a bunch of good documentation explaining why it doesn't work and some other options. The easiest way was to just make it a dumb client. After a while I asked the question "Who is going to go out to their grill with a device that doesn't have a wifi connection to plug in and use a wifi connection?" I think any device portable enough to be carried to the BBQ would already have wifi.
 
Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
Ok, having a problem with the dependencies. AVRdude from your site gives me an MD5 checksum error and the one from their repository is way too large, it says 878k. Is there a switch to force install?
Click to expand...
Yeah the stock avrdude doesn't work for flashing via the web interface. I don't know if the MD5 sum error is because they both have the same version number or what. I tried to modify the release version when building avrdude but it never worked and bloit if I know what's going wrong. You can force linkmeter to install without the dependency though, it just won't have the ability to flash via the web interface.
 
Yeah there are a lot of options, even WDS, but I thought the easiest thing for people to wrap their heads around is imagining it as a client device just like anything else on their network.

Of course, you're not tied to anything so folks can make it an AP or kill your network with a G device running WDS or whatever because there's plenty of space to install packages on the overlay filesystem right from the web interface. No SD card needed!
 
Originally posted by Bryan Mayland:
Ah yes. I also tried setting my router up so it would be a wireless client and bridge the connection to the LAN ports, so plugging in to a LAN port would get you in the WiFi network. Thiiiis did not go well because apparently it is only supported on the brcm-2.4 target with the proprietary broadcomm driver and I'm on 2.6 with I believe another driver.

There's a bunch of good documentation explaining why it doesn't work and some other options. The easiest way was to just make it a dumb client. After a while I asked the question "Who is going to go out to their grill with a device that doesn't have a wifi connection to plug in and use a wifi connection?" I think any device portable enough to be carried to the BBQ would already have wifi.
Click to expand...

Good point. I ended up going back to your Attitude Adjustment image and adding dnsmasq. I have the LAN side static w/ DHCP server so I can connect with my droid or ipod Touch but can still plug the linkmeter into my lan via the WAN port for updates. All appears to be solid and I still have 728kB free.
 
Now that folks are starting to check out my work, I'll post my todo list in roughly the order I'm working on things. If your feature isn't on the list, let me know and I'll put it up on the board!
TODO
 
So, if openwrt does not have a repeater-bridge, then are we able to access the router behind another router on the network, using open-wrt?

I will be installing openwrt this morning. IF so then I will need to hook the router directly to the modem and my laptop until I have downloaded all the software needed to run the heatermeter.
 
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