OpenWrt + Squeezeslave + Multiple Routers

Discussion about my Wifi Radio project at http://mightyohm.com/wifiradio/ or my WL-520gU talk at NOTACON.
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Braklet
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:44 am

OpenWrt + Squeezeslave + Multiple Routers

Post by Braklet »

Questions about running Squeezeslave on OpenWrt pop up from time to time in various forae, so I figured I'd capture my latest experiments for public consumption. All of them involve the squeezeslave-oss_1.2-r365 package most appropriate for the router/OpenWrt combination in question.

I built all OpenWrt images locally in order to bundle all required custom drivers (USB, audio, wireless).

1. Asus WL-500W

SUCCESSFUL

OpenWrt ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT (Bleeding Edge, r33527)
Squeezeslave Attitude Adjustment brcm47xx package
http://squeezeslave.googlecode.com/file ... cm47xx.ipk

The 500W's oddball draft-N Broadcom 4321 radio was always an issue in the past, limiting the box to brcm-2.4 and the proprietary Broadcom drivers. I was VERY pleasantly surprised to find that trunk (b43 driver) fully supports the stock radio now, opening a whole new range of updated applications. Squeezeslave works perfectly.

2. Asus WL-500W & TP-LINK TL-WN861N

SUCCESSFUL

OpenWrt ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT (Bleeding Edge, r33527)
Squeezeslave Attitude Adjustment brcm47xx package
http://squeezeslave.googlecode.com/file ... cm47xx.ipk

One good thing about the 500W is that it's easy to swap out the mini PCI radio card for this well-supported Atheros card (ath9k). This was mandatory if you wanted to run brcm47xx and the 2.6.x kernel. Swapping radios is thankfully no longer necessary, but trunk + ath9k still works great. Squeezeslave works perfectly.

3. TP-LINK TL-MR3020

SUCCESSFUL

OpenWrt ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT (Bleeding Edge, r33395)
Squeezeslave Attitude Adjustment ar71xx package
http://squeezeslave.googlecode.com/file ... ar71xx.ipk

This tiny little box, along with the USB sound card, fits in less than a 5"x3"x1" space. It was my easiest OpenWrt + Squeezeslave installation by far. Frankly I was surprised at how easily I got this working right out of the box. The only gotcha I can think of is that TP-LINK doesn't provide anything like Asus' wonderful firmware recovery mode, so if I accidentally bricked this one I'd have to solder a serial connection. Luckily that never became a problem. Squeezeslave works perfectly.

If you are buying new, this is the one to get. Since it's limited to 4M flash it's not a perfect hacking platform, but it has a lot of RAM for specific applications.

4. Asus WRT-520GU

NOT SUCCESSFUL

I won't bore you with a detailed list of my tries, suffice to say that the only firmware I could get to stream music reliably with this platform is MightyOhm's original base (Kamikaze r12857 + mpc & mpd packages):

http://mightyohm.com/files/kamikaze-2.4 ... uashfs.trx
http://mightyohm.com/files/kamikaze-2.4 ... es/mipsel/

AA trunk r33527 brcm47xx & b43 kinda-sorta works, as it lets me install the corresponding Squeezeslave package and even associates with my WLAN. Unfortunately, the wireless link goes Tango Uniform as soon as I start a music stream. Tried other combinations (Backfire, including brcm-2.4) to no avail. Either the wireless was unstable or MP3 decoding caused a lot of dropouts. Seems odd to me as I'd expect this Broadcom radio to be a lot more popular (and therefore better supported) than the 500Ws radio. I would not recommend buying this one, it's too bad as this router can regularly be found on sale.
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