Running OpenWRT on the Plusnet Hub One (& BT Home Hub 5a)

[#1]

Hello, Thanks for all the information people have provided on this topic.

I have a HH5 i would like to run OpenWRT on but i am stuck.

I have soldered the wires to the router as described.

I bought myself a Raspberry Pi 3

I open picocom and type 'picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyAMA0' and stuff comes up and ends with 'Terminal Ready'

I short out Boot_sel2 and power up and none of the routers lights come on.

Nothing appears on picocom.

As per another suggestion in this topic, i have connected RX and TX together on my Pi but i am unable to type in the terminal at all, so there is no 'echo' 

I feel the problem might be with me using picocom, I bought the raspberry pi for this so have no other experience with it.

Is anyone able to shed some light on where I'm going wrong?

thanks in advance

[#2]

Hi,

Have you connected the Rx from the router to Tx on the Pi? and Tx from router to Rx on the Pi?. You must also connect GND on the router to GND on the Pi or you will just get jibberish.

Good luck

[#3]

Personally, I had a lot of trouble using my Raspberry Pi to install OpenWrt to my HH5A, I bricked two. But found first time success installing the LEDE version of OpenWRT using a Windows PC, Putty and Solarwinds TFTP server software. I had to do a bit of searching online to find the correct guide to use, but once I did the whole process went really smoothly.

I presume you are using a USB serial cable to connect to TX and RX? I might be wrong, and someone might well correct me here, but I think the 'picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyAMA0' needs to be 'picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0'

Also when shorting out the Boot_sel2 on power up, you really don't want to short it out for any more than it needs, I think I shorted mine out for literally a second.

Don't know if any of that helps you out, but I'm sure someone else can give you some advice on this, they are a very helpful bunch!

[#4]

Thanks for your quick reply.

I have connected Rx to Tx and Tx to Rx.

I'm confused by the picocom terminal, from what I understand I should be able to type in the box and I cant.

Is this meant to happen?

I read on another forum that updating my Pi might help so just doing that.

Thanks again

[#5]

I assumed you are trying to use the GPIO pins on the Pi?

Might be worth clarifying if you are or are you using a USB to Serial plugged in to the Pi as mentioned by bigshorty40

Can you post a picture of your setup, that may help.

[#6]

Hi

Recently installed the stable release showing as "LEDE Reboot 17.01.4 r3560-79f57e422d" on a fresh router with BT firmware.

However the wifi keeps dropping connection to my laptop. Have tried on the 2ghz band and the 5 ghz band but both are the same, regular dropouts. Have tried various encryption types but still the same. No issues over direct LAN connection.

Only issue during installation that when usinng the "prepare" command it asked for confirmation if i backed up the nand dump, which i hadnt. So i typed no and it aborted. I then removed the usb and saved the dump file on my computer,  Ran the prepare command again and everything else went smoothly. Later on i read in bil888 instruction manual pdf it warns only run the command once. What will happen if you run it twice?

Any ideas anyone why the wifi keeps dropping then reconnects after about 10 seconds?

[#7]

Forgot to add about the wifi issue the 5ghz connection shows connected at 6Mbit/s but 2ghz connection shows at 64 Mbit/s however i get dropouts while connected to any. Also seem to get a much weaker reception on the 5Ghz band compared to the previous hh5 running LEDE version from 2016.

[#8]

Hmm. I am having the exact same thing with Wi-Fi on my Compaq laptop. I was sure it was a hardware fault with a laptop, since all my iOS devices work just fine. Thanks for flagging this up!

For the record, I only use 2.4 GHz band for my Wi-Fi.

[#9]

6Mbit/s reported on 5 GHz band is a known red-herring. It's a reporting bug in the atheros driver.  Ignore it.

Your correct use of 'prepare' script would not cause the wifi problems you are witnessing.

Have you tested the wifi with anything else other than your laptop?

You could downgrade to LEDE 17.01.2 to see if it makes any difference.

Only suggestion is to restore stock firmware and check if the symptoms persist with your laptop and other wifi devices.

[#10]

Please help. I bought a BT Hh5 online with Openwrt pre installed. I started to configure my lan but something went wrong and now I'm unable to get it to connect to the Internet. I'm sure I've tried all options for annex, to net, encapsulation line mod and got vpi/vci values from the forums, but still no connection. Would someone be able to post either their network file or screenshot the LEDE screens for dsl and wan?

[#11]

I also once thought I tried every possible combination and it didn't work - until I realised the DSL settings didn't take effect until reboot.
What's your ISP and are you on ADSL or VDSL?

[#12]

I had been doing a mixture of save/apply and wait and reboot and wait. Neither seemed to help. I'm VDSL. Its as if the person I bought it from has put in some magic configuration in. It worked out of the box after adding my username/password. In hindsight I should have saved a backup when I first booted the device. 

[#13]

# LEDE 17.01.2 VDSL
# macaddres will be auto configured

config interface 'loopback'
 option ifname 'lo'
 option proto 'static'
 option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
 option netmask '255.0.0.0'

config globals 'globals'
 option ula_prefix 'fd42:6dda:4f5d::/48'

config dsl 'dsl'
 option xfer_mode 'ptm'
 option annex 'b'

config interface 'lan'
 option type 'bridge'
 option ifname 'eth0.1'
 option proto 'static'
 option netmask '255.255.255.0'
 option ip6assign '60'
 option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'

config device 'lan_dev'
 option name 'eth0.1'
 option macaddr 'xxxxxxxxxxxx'

config interface 'wan'
 option ifname 'ptm0.101'
 option proto 'pppoe'
 option ipv6 'auto'
 option metric '5'
 option username 'xxxxxxxx@plusdsl.net'
 option password 'xxxxxxx'
        option mtu '1500'

config device 'wan_dev'
 option name 'ptm0'
 option macaddr 'xxxxxxxxxxxx'
        option mtu '1500'

config interface 'wan6'
 option ifname 'pppoe-wan'
 option proto 'dhcpv6'

config switch
 option name 'switch0'
 option reset '1'
 option enable_vlan '1'

config switch_vlan
 option device 'switch0'
 option vlan '1'
 option vid '1'
 option ports '0 2 4 5 6t'

[#14]

Thank you so much. All working now.

[#15]

I managed to recover from the CFG 04 UART mode.

Basically, I used tape to cover the PCB around the points of interest to protect them while flashing. At some stage this caused resistors on the board to detach (3 in total), crucially the one at R45, the UART pin.

By using solder to short this point where the resistor was I was able to recover the router.

Can someone who is stuck in UART mode please check this R45 resistor or shorting this point with a small screwdriver?

My theory is that being near to the CPU, the board flexes and over time weakens the solder joints, causing them to break off easily which may be what others are experiencing.