Sam Knows closure - repurposing white boxes

Townman · ‎22-08-2007

I have just received the following communication for Samknows ... looks as though they are being killed off by their new American owners...

" ... on February 27, 2025, we will be terminating the Program and your SamKnows Whitebox will be disabled and the corresponding SamKnows One account will be deleted. You may unplug your Whitebox and dispose of it via your local electronic waste provider."

Seems like a horrible waste of good tech, to say nothing of the consequential landfill.

Anyone got any easy to implement suggestion for repurposing these devices?

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G3WYP · ‎26-10-2014

A couple of months ago my whitebox stopped working properly and when i emailed SamKhows they said they couldn't replace box and just disppose of it.

Townman · ‎22-08-2007

Ditching a broken device is one thing ... but ditching something which might be repurposed seems wasteful!

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outcast · ‎11-01-2025

SamKnows wrote:

... your SamKnows Whitebox will be disabled and the corresponding SamKnows One account will be deleted.

I hope the Whitebox still acts as a dumb switch after next Thursday !

I use all four of the Whitebox's 1Gb ports as the wired backbone for my home network,

so if in seven days that box stops passing traffic then my entire network will fail until I can get hold of a new switch to replace it.

In the email they also say -

We recently launched a new version of our measurement software that can be integrated directly into home routers. This new direction means that rather than use a separate measurement device (Whitebox), we can gather the same internet performance data, directly from a router.

... but then don't give any information on how to do that !

It would be useful to know what routers support this new system, as on my router it is quite easy to run plug-in packages.

I would have thought it would have made more sense to see which customers wanted to upgrade to a new router in order to continue utilising the SamKnows monitoring system, rather than just blanket deleting our accounts with just seven days notice !.

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Townman · ‎22-08-2007

Me too - I use the ports for my NAS and the ethernet over power network. Hence my interest in (easy) reuse. I never did get on with the geekiness of unix and it is not something I want to invest time in to repurpose the box, hence the desire for an EASY solution!

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Protech · ‎26-09-2017

It seems possible to flash OpenWrt onto these.
Though not what I would call easy..
https://openwrt.org/toh/samknows/sk-wb8?s[]=openwrt&s[]=default

You can check out but you can never leave ( easily)

outcast · ‎11-01-2025

@outcast wrote:

I hope the Whitebox still acts as a dumb switch after next Thursday !

I've just submitted a support question from my SamKnows dashboard,

asking whether the box will act as a dumb switch, or block all traffic, after being disabled next Thursday.

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MisterW · ‎30-07-2007

It seems possible to flash OpenWrt onto these.
Though not what I would call easy..
https://openwrt.org/toh/samknows/sk-wb8?s[]=openwrt&s[]=default

Not too difficult if you've got a nice small soldering iron and a USB to TTL adaptor , something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203581713553

I use Openwrt on a TP Link ER605 which is a similar hardware spec. It runs my FF900 connection just fine as long as you have H/W Offload enabled and no QoS. Will handle around 250Mb with QoS enabled

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Townman · ‎22-08-2007

Ah!!

My Sam Knows "Whitebox" is not white, it is a black TP-Link device.

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MisterW · ‎30-07-2007

@Townman I think yours is a TP link TL-WDR3600 then, https://forum.openwrt.org/t/samknows-tl-wdr3600/208304?page=2

Probably not much use unless its one of the later versions https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr3600_v1#installation

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outcast · ‎11-01-2025

@Townman wrote:

... it is not something I want to invest time in to repurpose the box, hence the desire for an EASY solution!

Perhaps selling it on eBay ? - listed as "flashed with SamKnows firmware".

That way, you'd get rid of it without waste and just minimal effort.

You might get £10 to £20 from an electronics enthusiast (as a cheap project item, or for spare parts), or to some person with a side-hustle unlocking and reselling TL-WDR3600 as functioning routers.

Alternatively, seeing as SamKnows have remotely updated my TP-Link TL-WDR3600 v1.2, several times over the years,

I'm wondering if it's worth (you) asking SamKnows support whether they can remotely re-flash yours with the stock TP-Link firmware ?, then at least you'd have an unlocked device to play with - even if only to configure a wireless access point etc.

To message SamKnows support, login to your Whitebox's dashboard analytics - https://samknows.one/analytics

click on "Your account" symbol (top right), then on "Contact Us", and submit your question.

Fortunately for me there is a walk-in local charity that takes electronic items and does it's best to upcycle what they can, or make a little money from separating out valuable components (like gold connectors, CPUs, RAM, etc) and making the most of what they collect. So I won't have the remorse of chucking out a working device.

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