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Hardware for OpenWrt

wrtnode.com

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Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#31

Post by mschuster91 »

eric_bullington wrote: post #29
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

I'm sorry to bust the fun on this, but I would never rebuild this device (or anything other with radio capability)... simply because of the costs of certification which is mandatory for any RF transmitter.

Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you saying that certification would be required to build this device in the U.S. (not sell or market it)? If so, this is incorrect. There is no FCC certification required for low-powered, non-licensed devices like this one if you don't sell or market them. You can run up to 5 such devices without any certication. See page 3 on: http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Tech…

I'm living in Europe, here you are liable for any RF device you use - and even in the license free bands, if you operate a self built jammer (or accidentally build a jammer instead of a working device) you're liable.

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#32

Post by zdw »

dublinben wrote: post #26

It seems unusual to pick a Mediatek SoC, if the goal is open source compatibility. It would have made much more sense to go with an Atheros SoC and Atheros modems, which can be used with no proprietary binaries whatsoever.

I was thinking the same thing. Atheros has been very good with Open Source friendly hardware documentation and licensing.

The downside is that most of the Atheros chips have a single <1Ghz MIPS core, when most of the rest of the router SoC market is switching to multi core 1GHz+ ARM devices, or is focused on other parts of the device space.

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#33

Post by Noel_lo »

Hello people, I am Noel from WRTnode.com. Very glad that you notice us. Actually, we have opened public Beta version sale in China for RMB$148(as US$24), and closed today as two month later. We have donated 20 boards for the BattleMesh V7 http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV7#Donated_OpenHardware_-_WR.... And the Schematic is: http://cn.wrtnode.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/WRTnode_sch..., and we will give all the BOMlist and PCBlayout soon. Maybe it will be sold publicly at the ends of July. All OpenWrt firmware source comes from dev.openwrt.org. The board is officially supported by OpenWrt.org as one of the three devices on MT7620n. the only thing bothered is that the Wi-Fi driver of MT7620n is close-sourced by the MTK, so we have to provide the .ko binary driver in https://github.com/WRTnode/openwrt-packages/tree/master/rali... , We are trying to communicating with MTK to open the driver's source.

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#34

Post by eric_bullington »

This is an interesting project, but it's a shame they're using a Mediatek chipset instead of an Allwinner one. Mediatek is one of the biggest GPL violators out there, while Allwinner chips are among the most open hardware out there (perhaps the most open). See:

http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page

The only non open hardware on Allwinner chips is the ARM-licensed Mali GPU, but it's been reversed engineered to the point of producing a working, third-party, open source driver (the lima driver).

Both are very inexpensive Chinese chip manufacturers that use ARM-licensed MCUs, so it's not like the Allwinner is a vastly different product.

I personally prefer licensing projects with a permissive license that permits closed commercial development, such as the MIT or BSD license, over the GPL. However, when a company like Mediatek chooses to use GPL'ed software and then fails to follow the license terms, I think that displays a contempt for the entire open source community that I cannot support.

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#37

Post by cottonseed »

daveloyall wrote: post #24

I'm missing something: where is the source code (design files?) for this "open source hardware"?

They claim they are going to open source it. This is (disappointingly) common practice among "open source" hardware projects. See, for example, most "open source" kickstarters.

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#38

Post by cottonseed »

It seems very hard to find an high-performance (i.e., not TI's CC3000 module), open Wifi module for a project like this. I assume that's why they choose a chip that requires a binary blob Wifi driver. Has anyone researched the open alternatives? Novena for example didn't integrate Wifi but left it to a PCIe module. Are there open PCIe modules?

edit: I should say, TI's module isn't open either. As far as I know the firmware, which includes a TCP/IP stack, isn't open.

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#39

Post by wazoox »

mhw wrote: post #4

A fun comparison: 20 years ago you could spend a large number of dollars (anyone remember how much?) on a dreamy Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Unix workstation. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Indigo%C2%B2_and_Challenge_... its specs included: * MIPS CPUs ranging from the the R4000 to the R10000, with clock rates of up to 250MHz. (This project uses a related MIPS CPU that clocks at 600MHz.) * Up to 512Mb of RAM, equ…

I have an old SGI catalog, an Indigo2 Impact used to be about USD 30 000 to 40 000 in 1996, depending upon the configuration (Solid, High or Max Impact).

Re: Hardware for OpenWrt

#40

Post by bluedino »

mhw wrote: post #4

A fun comparison: 20 years ago you could spend a large number of dollars (anyone remember how much?) on a dreamy Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Unix workstation. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Indigo%C2%B2_and_Challenge_... its specs included: * MIPS CPUs ranging from the the R4000 to the R10000, with clock rates of up to 250MHz. (This project uses a related MIPS CPU that clocks at 600MHz.) * Up to 512Mb of RAM, equ…

SGI's secret sauce was their 64-bitness and their 3D hardware. Their CPU/networking wasn't really anything special even at the time compared to Sun/DEC.
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