origin
This year, I went back to my hometown for the New Year, brought a router back to facilitate networking, and the current wifi6 router is really not small, so I came back to find a portable router after the year. Search on the Internet and found this mining disaster product, the interstellar treasure box CM520 in the era of wifi5, because there are many brushing and magic modification tutorials on the Internet, the volume is also very suitable, mainly the price is cheap, it took 70 oceans to buy one to experience it.
toss
Hardware configuration
According to the convention, let's first introduce the configuration of this slag, the CPU is Qualcomm's IPQ4019 quad-core ARM-A7 architecture, which is nearly twice as strong as the MT7621 of the same era, 512 megabytes of memory, 128 megabytes of flash memory, with 3 gigabit network ports. There is also a USB3.0 interface to facilitate the expansion of storage devices, which is also what I like about him, usually you can also use it to hang PCDN or PT, turn off wifi as a small box, after all, it was used to do this before.
Then is to talk about the precautions, first of all, the power interface problem, try to buy with power when buying, the power interface of this router is a little different is 5525, similar to the general used to power notebooks and the like. Usually, most of our routers, TV boxes and other power supplies are 5521 interface, which cannot be applied. If there is really no power supply, you can also buy an adapter for a few dollars is still very cheap. Then is to buy the kind of brush machine, the original system brushing is quite troublesome, but there should be very few original systems, if you happen to receive it, it is recommended to go to the Enshan forum to find a tutorial, you need to use TTL to brush in or more troublesome.
Get back to business and start tossing. After getting it, the first thing to do is to try whether the routing function is normal, the basic function of the router, and the USB port function are all tried, so as not to flash the seller does not recognize. After testing the function, the disassembly begins. When I first got it, I thought it was a snap design. As a result, I read the tutorial on the Internet, the screw is hidden under the foot pad, and its four foot pads are actually the same as the material of the router shell, I thought the foot pad was integrated with the shell. This saves money, and even does not give a soft point on the mat. Then I had to complain about the design of this mat, and its difficulty in buttoning down, which is extremely unfriendly to disassembly... The last mat I brought up with its self-tapping screws screwed into the mat, and it was wasted. If you don't want to make it like me, it is recommended to be patient and find a thin needle to slowly pry out, of course, if you are lucky, the foot pad is looser, and it doesn't take too much effort to buckle it down.
After disassembling, you can directly see the main components of the router, in fact, the back of the shell is the front of the PCB board. You can see that the seats, CPUs, antennas, indicators, etc. of various interfaces are on this side, and the pins are also soldered on the PCB board, which is relatively rare, which is conducive to tossing.
Let's take a look at the various chips, first of all, the CPU is Qualcomm's IPQ4019, which was very popular that year, and many routers are in use; South Asia's 512MB memory, this router can toss all by its "large" memory; Microlight's 128MB flash memory, slightly stretched, but it is enough to decorate daily applications; Conscientious soldering pins, TTL flashing machine has to rely on him, but also can lead out the power supply plus small fan does not need to change the power. There is nothing to say about the rest, it is the cooler of this CPU, which is extremely difficult to remove! The disassembly sheet I used little by little will pull out the dry silicone grease, it belongs to the text disassembly, the disassembly piece is still easier to find, replace it with a thin plastic card, as for the heating removed mentioned on the Internet, I haven't tried it, and I don't want to bother with the little partner can try.
Flash
The next is to brush the machine, if you buy the seller to brush the machine, and then brush the machine is more convenient, the original system seems to need TTL tools to brush but the original system is rare at present, do not buy this kind of is. Generally, the machine has opboot, the way to enter is that the computer is connected to the router LAN port, the router first disconnect the power, use a toothpick to poke the reset button without letting go, plug in the power for 10 seconds to release the reset button, at this time the computer browser input 192.168.1.1 can get to opboot.
There are many flashing packages in the interstellar treasure box, choose the bag that suits you according to your needs, I need to use docker to choose a stripping package path, select the flashing package path in opboot, click "Update", wait a few minutes to brush it.
After waiting for the router to restart automatically, enter the background address of OpenWRT on the computer, type the default password to log in to the background of OpenWRT, and the regular toss ends here.
Remake the shell
Considering the portability of the router and the problem of heat dissipation, I decided to change its case, plus a small fan, and it will do its job well. Let's take a look at the finished product first.
The material is an acrylic board, the drawing refers to the scheme of the big guy in Enshan, because the hole is not too accurate, so the drawing is not put up, and too lazy to change, can be stuffed in, draw a good drawing to find a Taobao merchant can cut out, very cheap I this even postage seems to have spent a total of 11 oceans, and then according to their own design to buy screws and copper pillars to put together.
A small fan is added here to blow against the CPU fan heater, so that the design does not have to painfully disassemble the original fan heater, which is still very friendly. The fan model can be referred to, and the original shell can also be put in. The power supply wiring can refer to the picture.
There is also the antenna changed to detachable, which is an important reason for changing the shell, compared to the built-in antenna, the signal can be better, plug it in when you use it, and take it off when you are not using it can also take into account portability.
summary
This cheap slag a few years ago has also fallen to my point of need, small size, good performance, and USB3.0 external memory, the focus is cheap, the flashing scheme is mature, it is the best choice for home travel.