Meraki

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Contents 1 Meraki Mini Hardware Specifications 2 Firmware Flashing 3 Automagic flashing script 4 Upgrading OpenWRT

Meraki Mini Hardware Specifications

• 180MHz MIPS CPU (Atheros AR2315 SoC)
• 8MB Flash, 32MB SDRAM
• 60mW 802.11b/g radio
• External RP-SMA antenna connector, internal chip diversity antenna
• 10/100 Mbit/s auto-crossover Ethernet port
• Headers for 3.3v serial port, GPIO pins
• 5.6-18V DC tolerance, for use in developing countries or with batteries
• Power-over-Ethernet support (non-802.3af)

The Meraki Minis include one 2dBi antenna and a 7.5V DC power supply. The Meraki Mesh firmware is also configured to let users login over ssh and experiment with their own software. Custom USB-serial adapters designed for the Mini are available though the Summer Beta program.

Firmware Flashing

To flash a Meraki AP from their firmware see http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Meraki/Mini for lots of information.

To get the redboot command, set computer IP to 192.168.84.9 and telnet to 192.168.84.1:9000, wait for the second LED to come on after light up, and then flash 4 times and start telnet session. If you miss the 2 second window just retry.

Once you have a redboot command prompt run the following commands (the first three are possibly optional, but all were run to flash our Merakis. In total this process from start to finish should take just under half an hour)

fis create -b 0x80041000 -l 0x100000 -f 0xa8050000 -e 0x80041000 -r 0x80041000 -n /storage
fis create -b 0x80041000 -l 0x340000 -f 0xa8150000 -e 0x80041000 -r 0x80041000 -n linux
fis create -b 0x80041000 -l 0x340000 -f 0xa8490000 -e 0x80041000 -r 0x80041000 -n rootfs

Then to format run

fis init

Load the openwrt firmware etc...(requires TFTP server)

load -r -b 0x80041000 -m tftp -h 192.168.84.9 openwrt-atheros-2.6-vmlinux.gz
fis create -r 0x80041000 -l 0x180000 -e 0x80041000 linux
load -r -b 0x80041000 -m tftp -h 192.168.84.9 openwrt-atheros-2.6-root.jffs2-64k
fis create -r 0x80041000 -l 0x620000 rootfs

Then configure the boot script to run linux and execute it.

RedBoot> fconfig -d boot_script_data
boot_script_data:
.. whatever it currently is
Enter script, terminate with empty line
>> fis load -d linux
>> exec
>>
Update RedBoot non-volatile configuration - continue (y/n)? y

Then unplug it and plug it back in again. The first time it starts up it will take about 40 seconds to decompress and run. See OpenWRT for first boot details.

Automagic flashing script

Here is an expect script, which flashes meraki mini with OpenWRT

#!/usr/bin/expect
set timeout 30
spawn ./meraki-redboot
expect "RedBoot>"
send "\n"
spawn telnet 192.168.84.1 9000
expect "Escape character is"
send "\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
send "fis init\n"
expect "continue (y/n)?"
send "y\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
set timeout 900
send_user "\n\nFlashing Linux image... please wait...\n\n"
send "load -r -b 0x80041000 -m tftp -h 192.168.84.9 openwrt-atheros-vmlinux.gz\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
send "fis create -r 0x80041000 -l 0x180000 -e 0x80041000 linux\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
send_user "\n\nFlashing root file system... please wait...\n\n" 
send "load -r -b 0x80041000 -m tftp -h 192.168.84.9 openwrt-atheros-root.jffs2-64k\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
send "fis create -r 0x80041000 -l 0x620000 rootfs\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
send_user "\n\nConfiguring boot script...\n\n"
send "fconfig -d boot_script_data\n"
expect ">>"
send "fis load -d linux\n"
expect ">>"
send "exec\n"
expect ">>"
send "\n"
expect "continue (y/n)?" 
send "y\n"
expect "RedBoot>"
send "\nreset\n"
send_user "\n\n\n\n"
send_user "OpenWRT flash to Meraki successful!  The Meraki is now rebooting\n\n"
close

Upgrading OpenWRT

For upgrading OpenWRT all you have to do is scp the kernel and new squashfs image to the /tmp directory and run the following command:

mtd -e linux write openwrt-atheros-2.6-vmlinux.gz linux;mtd -e rootfs -r write openwrt-atheros-2.6-root.squashfs rootfs