Patches, files and instructions to upgrade the HT-TM02 to OpenWRT
WARRANTY We should all know this but it's worth mentioning...These materials are strictly experimental and provided for educational and recreational purposes only. There is no warranty of any kind. Modifying any piece of equipment is risky and can damage your devices and related equipment rendering them unusable (bricking). You do so at your own risk. For support the best place to go is the openwrt wiki and online forum (http://openwrt.org)
Ok, on with the show....
REQUIREMENTS
- A reasonably sized USB Flash stick (preferrably a nice, clean, new >=1gb one)
- PC - any OS and browser
- Ethernet cable
INSTRUCTIONS
To install OpenWRT on the TM02 we need to replace the factory UBoot bootloader with one more compatible with the OpenWRT partitioning scheme. The hard way to do this is to solder a 3v USB<->Serial cable to the board, setup a tftp server and replace it using tftp, then reboot and us that to burn the OpenWRT sysupgrade image to the correct MTD partition using tftp. That's how I did it the first time.
Since then, I created an OpenWRT image that's compatible with the HooToo factory GUI software. In OpenWRT parlance this is called the "factory" image. Now it's easy to do the conversion/upgrade and it shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes. Here's the process....
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Connect the TM02 to power with it's mode switch in the AP mode. That's the switch selection that has the icon with an image of the world connected to a network. Wait for it to boot up as indicated by it showing up as an AP in your wifi scan. Connect to it. The password is "11111111".
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Once you are connected, open your browser and browse to the IP address 10.10.10.254 . The Hootoo GUI should appear. Bypass the setup wizard by closing it's popup window.
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Insert a USB flash memory stick (preferrably an empty one you can dedicate to this purpose) into the TM02. Wait for the popup window confirming that the TM02 has recognized the stick. Make sure the stick is properly mounted by clicking on the "Explore" menu item and viewing the directory of the stick.
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Now go to the "System" menu, select the firmware upgrade menu item, and then upgrade the TM02 using the "openwrt-ramips-rt305x-ht-tm02-squashfs-factory-r42649.bin" file from the "ramips_openwrt" directory of this repository (https://github.com/wingspinner/HooToo-Tripmate-HT-TM02-OpenWRT)
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WAIT until the timer popup times out before disconnecting the TM02 power as it takes time to write and verify the entire on-board flash MTD.
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Connect an ethernet cable between your PC and the TM02. Set your PC for DHCP and then power-on the TM02. If the upgrade worked, you'll see both LED's light up. That's the new UBoot. When it starts to boot the kernel they will go out. After about 30 seconds it should be booted into OpenWRT. Later, you can configure the LED's to do something more useful.
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LUCI should be up and running so browse to 192.168.1.1 and configure as needed. This install is intended as only an initial install to get openwrt on your device so the first thing you should do is upgrade using the latest trunk "upgrade" binary from openwrt.org.
INITIAL CONFIGURATION
OpenWRT is initially configured as an Internet access device (i.e. routed client bridge) so you should be able to add the wifi interface (WWAN) and associate with your wifi network. Relayd is already present so you may want to create that interface as well. I'm using a TM02 freshly upgraded as a client bridge with relayd as I write this.
WHAT HAPPENS DURING THE UPGRADE AND WHY YOU NEED A USB FLASH STICK
The TM02 with the factory software doesn't have enough RAM to untar/ungzip and assemble the complete TM02 flash MTD image for the upgrade so it requires a USB flash stick to use as workspace. So does the new loader. Having a clean USB flash stick plugged in is required.
The first thing the loader does is shutdown various services that might interfere with the flashing process and perhaps free up some RAM. Then it creates a complete backup of the factory flash MTD device written to your USB flash stick. It copys the entire TM02 MTD device as one file as well as each partition seperately to seperate files. The files are named appropriately and will be under the "HT_FLASH" directory on the stick. You can use this to revert back to factory if you wish. I'll writeup some instructions later for this.
Next the loader seperates the OpenWRT sysupgrade image and the new UBoot image from the overall upgrade file and ungzips and untars them. Then it assembles a new MTD device flash image which includes the new UBoot, the original factory "config" and "factory" MTD partitions, and the new OpenWRT sysupgrade image. This is then written to the TM02 MTD. A copy of this is also written to your flash stick as "openwrt.bin". Once that's all done it executes a "reboot" command. (Note:This doesn't appear to happen. Probably because the MTD has been completely overwritten as well as various services have been shutdown and removed from RAM.)
Ron Curry (Wingspinner)
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