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SoundMate M1

Purchased a couple of SoundMate M1’s for a great price to add wireless audio to area’s of our home. After a short time messing with it, I could only get iTunes to detect it as an audio source. While this is ok, I need it to work with DLNA sources from other devices. Also the web interface looked different from other images I had seen on the web. So I did a little poking around: Downloaded an older version of the firmware and did a string and hex dump to see if there was anything interesting in them. While the string dump was boring, the hex dump revealed: 00000000  01 00 00 00 4f 70 65 6e  57 72 74 00 00 00 00 00  |….OpenWrt…..| “OpenWrt” – Awesome start. Extracted the Root-FS using Firmware… Read More »SoundMate M1

WR703N v1.7 Warning

I bought a few more TP-Link wr703N routers and proceeded to flash the firmware like I had done with previous ones…. Bricked one, but the other is fine. The models with version 1.7 firmware cant be flashed the same way as the older ones I have. It’s serial console or brick. I did solder the serial points on the first one, but couldn’t fine the hot glue gun to hold them, so when the cables moved it ripped the pads straight off, and no matter how well I scratched the tracks back I couldnt get the wires to solder to them well enough to de-brick it. So from now on it appears to be a better idea to hot glue your cables, then solder, then flash. This is the firmware I ended up using. Which… Read More »WR703N v1.7 Warning

Wireless Serial Convertor

WR703N Project Box’s

I’ve been inserting the WR703N’s into cases to make them more durable and less ‘touchy-feely’. The Serial to Wireless convertor – used when configuring Cisco switches, you an configure and upgrade the IOS on using it. This has been great for large installs then having to setup 20+ switches. Benefits include being able to sit comfortably at a desk while setting it up, and it runs off a phone backup battery so it doesn’t need to be plugged into a power outlet or USB – general run time is  > 2-3hrs. The case/enclosure allows it to be hanging from a switch without caring a lot for it’s safety. It can take bumps and drops very well. The external connections are RS232, Ethernet, and the hole on the right is for a micro USB power cable.… Read More »WR703N Project Box’s

Final with backup battery

WR703N – External Antenna

I wanted to extend the range of the WR703N to allow it to pickup more access points. My mini 4GB USB drives have also arrived in the mail, so this makes it the perfect time to start the mod. Here we have the devices used to complete the mod: 4 port unpowered USB hub, DLink external antenna, female SMA pigtail, 4GB Sandisk USB flash drive, and a WR703N running OpenWRT. Opened the case to see where the internal cable and mount can run. Decided off center of the 2 edges in the picture below. To start off open the WR703N case and drill a hole for the pigtail. Make sure the hole is low enough so that it doesn’t interfere with the lid. You might be able to see I also used a pocket knife… Read More »WR703N – External Antenna

TP-Link WR703N – Small packets, lots of options

The WR703N is advertised as a mini 3G/WIFI travel router. You can get for about $23 on ebay. There are 2 similar models: WR702N and WR700N, both not as good; WR700N requires mains power, and the WR702N has half the flash, to point out just a few differences. I’ve used OpenWRT in the last few posts and have been very happy with the package selection and setup options, so it was a pretty obvious choice and luckily it’s available for this device. Interfaces: 1x ethernet (10/100Mb), 802.11N wireless (150Mb), USB host. Features: Powered by 5v usb, 32MB RAM, 4MB flash, small foot print (5.7cm x 5.7cm x 1.5cm), CPU:Atheros AR9330 rev 1. I used to use a Nokia N95, then an E63 to do passive war driving (collected about 8000 AP’s), which is what I’m… Read More »TP-Link WR703N – Small packets, lots of options

HP T5500 series Squeezeslave V2

If you haven’t figured out by now, I’ve been keen on small network sound devices for a while, although this should be the last revision. As a carry on from this article, I’ve kept with OpenWRT but moved to a different architecture (arm -> x86) to support the thinclients I have and will be getting. In comparison the wireless router was easy to get the base image installed but Squeezeslave wasn’t. This time the base image was stupidly difficult, and Squeezeslave was a cut’n’paste job. The reason why I couldn’t use a pre-built image was because the x86 image doesn’t support booting from a USB device and it needed sound card support. This article doesn’t cover making the image from scratch, just installing the image I created for the HP t5500 series. I did however… Read More »HP T5500 series Squeezeslave V2

Turn a WRT350Nv2 into a Squeezeslave (networked audio)

Brought a WRT350N v2 from the flea markets last week ($20), installed OpenWRT 10.03.1 using the WinXP firmware upgrade utility. After that installed I then installed some additional packages (full list). So at this point I was able to insert a cheap USB sound card in the rear and it would detect it. I was able to change the volume using alsamixer for testing. Now for the frustrating part, cross compiling squeezeslave to execute it on the WRT350Nv2. I tried a few precompiled binaries, but they were no good. The basic steps I took were: Download OpenWRT SDK. Make sure you’ve gotten the required packages installed in your host machine, check here as a reference. Download additional packages for the router using opkg or the web-interface, this will allow the use of the USB port and install alsa for… Read More »Turn a WRT350Nv2 into a Squeezeslave (networked audio)