Forgive the brevity. I don't want to waste much more time on this subject
- I have WiFi.
- I have a device that is old and doesn't support WiFi
- I have experience mucking around in OpenWRT and have setup a few devices.
I figured I'd take this bullet list and put it to good use.
I went on eBay and found an $8 piece of hardware that uses OpenWRT. The Vonets VOPWRT. You won't find much information on Google about it. That should have been a red flag.
The first step of this project was to get this VOPWRT box on my WiFi. Start it up. Connect to the config as listed on the bottom of the box and try.
Try it again. Reset the firmware to factory. Try again the next day. Try again a different way. Try again a third way. Try a couple more different ways and fail. Try via command line stuff. Try again. Give up.
Decide to try upgrading the firmware. Checking the OpenWRT wiki where it lists the device. No supported version of it, but what ever. The version with mt7620a_mt7530 in the name sounds promising as it aligns with the specs listed. Download that and attempt to upgrade.
Flash the image to the device. Notice the upgrade seems to go fine. Watch as the device reboots and it is bricked. Open up the box. Notice no screws so you know it is a high quality product. Note the 3 empty antenna structures clearly designed to make you think it pumps out a great signal.
Take out the 8GB MicroSD card.
Throw everything else away.
Vow to not waste your money on more piece of garbage electronics
