[General Questions and Answers] toxo:
The more I play with this device the more I am convinced that it was built to be able to do dual band but it doesn't work. It's easy to get it to do 2.4GHz or 5GHZ but not both at once. I have mine running an instance of hostapd on interface wlan0 on channel 1 (i.e. 2.4GHz) and a second instance of hostapd running on interface wlan1 on channel 36 (i.e. 5GHz). This configuration has all been built by the web interface and the QCMAP software on the device (which in turn builds the XML file I mentioned above, which in turn builds the config files for hostapd). It's not me hacking it, although I had to hack it to find out how it worked, but this isn't a hacked config, it was built by their tools. I can even run hostapd in debug mode and see that it says it's broadcasting a beacon on channel 36, but nothing can see it.

My theory is that while it's quite happy to create wlan1 which is actually a fake device driven off wlan0, they both have the same MAC address and in all other dual band implementations I've seen the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios have different MAC addresses.

---------- Post added at 12:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 AM ----------

Chip spec is available as a PDF via google - single MAC/PHY so can only run 1 iface at once. I assume it's built the way it is to support 2 hostapd instances not to support 2.4ghz and 5ghz concurrently but to allow the broadcast of a second 'guest' ssid which is isolated from the main ssid. It can also run in AP-STA mode which makes it function as a wireless bridge, where one interface runs hostapd and the other bridges to another network over wifi.

I've switched mine to 5GHz for now.

These are all the options you can configure via the web interface javascript console, as detailed earlier:

wlanState - 0 to disable wifi, 1 to enable

wlanModeGhz - 0 for 2.4GHz, 1 for 5GHz, 2 for 2.4 & 5GHz which does not work :(

wlanMode - frequency to run the 2.4GHz radio on, leave this alone

wmode5g - frequency to run the 5GHz radio on, leave this alone

wlanSsid - Your 2.4GHz SSID with quote marks around

ssid5g - Your 5GHZ SSID with quote marks around

hiddenSsid - 0 to hide the 2.4GHz SSID, 1 to broadcast it

hiddenSsid_5g - 0 to hide the 5GHZ SSID, 1 to broadcast it

wlanChannel - channel to operate the 2.4GHz radio on, usually 1-13 but varies by country, 0 is automatic selection

channel_5g - channel to operate the 5GHz radio on, this is a big list, 0 is automatic selection

maxNum - maximum number of clients on the 2.4GHz radio - default is 10, I haven't tried changing this

maxNum_5g - maximum number of clients on the 5GHz radio - defailt is 10, I haven't tried changing this

securityMode - 0 is Disabled (no security), 1 is WEP, 2 is WPA-PSK, 3 is WPA2-PSK, 4 is WPA/WPA2-PSK

wepType - 0 is Open, 1 is Shared

wepKey - Your WEP key in quotes

wpaType - 0 is TKIP, 1 is AES/CCMP, 2 is Auto

wpaKey - Your WPA key in quotes

countryCode - Your ISO country code in quotes. Used to determine the correct channels to use. CN for China, US for USA, GB for Great Britain, etc etc

apIsolation - 0 to disable, 1 to enable

So if you wanted to set your unit to 5GHz only, set the 5GHz SSID to Bob and the country code to GB you'd open the javascript console and enter:

wlanModeGhz = 1

ssid5g = "Bob"

countryCode="GB"

submitValue();

With the device connected via USB it appears as 2 removable drives. The first one contains the drivers needed to set it up as a USB NIC, so that the PC connected via USB can connect to the same network as the wifi. Once you're connected like that you can use something like PuTTY to ssh to 192.168.1.1 with a username of root and a password of oelinux123

Once you're at the prompt, there is a command line program for configuring the entire box, LAN settings, WLAN settings, Guest WIFI SSID, Firewall, etc etc. Run:

/usr/bin/QCMAP_CLI

to get to the menu. Every option is selected via a 2 digit number. This builds an XML file which the whole of the rest of the configuration is built from every time the device starts. So this is where to make changes if you want them to persist.

Other useful shell commands:

iw reg get

This shows the current country code that the wifi is operating in (set via the hidden option in the wifi settings page). It also shows the channels that are available for use in that country that are supported by the device. Example output for GB:

root@mdm9625:~# iw reg get

country GB:

(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)

(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20)

(5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS

(5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS

iwconfig list

Lists the capabilities of the wireless device, again a good way to get a decent list of valid channels.

As mentioned earlier in the thread the device runs perfectly well just as a bare PCB. The battery is contained within a black plastic housing which also houses the wifi and mobile antennas, so if you remove the housing the device is fairly useless. Without the battery the device powers on immediately from USB power, which is ideal for using in a car for example.

All the website files are located in /jrd-resources/resources/webrc/www - /jrd-resources is where all the interesting stuff is really, config files, passwords, website etc. On startup there is some binary process (not a script so I can't see what it's doing) which generates the hostapd configuration files from a combination of the XML file generated by the QCMAP commands and the backups of files in /jrd-resources. When you do a factory reset it copies files back from /jrd-resources into the rest of the system, so these are like the master copies.