Posted by Intro
This is actually a pretty decent access point, hardware wise. It has 2 radios and reasonably high gain external antennas. It claims to be waterproof and, looking at the unit itself, I don’t disbelieve it. Mine came with a pole to mount it to, outside.
You can pick up this unit for about £40 on Amazon, or probably cheaper on AliExpress etc. Amazon ominously calls it “AdaLov Outdoor Wi-Fi Access Point with Bracket Mount” and it turns up with an AdaLov logo on the front. It is, however, categorically a COMFAST CF-EW84.
The firmware that comes on it is pretty basic. You get a wizard to configure the AP in the desired mode but you can’t configure much else. Handily, though, you can very easily flash OpenWrt onto this unit. After doing so, you will have a plethora of configuration options.
Flashing OpenWrt
The more observant amounst you will see that OpenWRT wiki doesn’t reference this model number directly. However, it appears to be identical to the CF-EW72v2 as described on the OpenWrt Wiki.
Flashing instructions are on the wiki. tl;dr:
- Unplug PoE from the AP
- Hold down the reset button
- Plug PoE into the AP (whilst continuing to hold down the button)
- Wait for LED to flash slowly 10 times and then rapidly for 1 second
- Release button
- Connect your computer to the LAN port of the PoE adapter, set a static IP on your computer of 192.168.1.2 and then access the AP’s web interface at http://192.168.1.1
- Once inside the “Mediatek U-Boot System Recovery Mode” just upload the OpenWrt *-factory.bin, for the CF-EW72v2, from the OpenWrt wiki
Now what?
Go wild! OpenWrt is super powerful. You can make this unit an AP, router, repeater, bridge or any combination of these. You can access the OpenWrt web interface at http://192.168.1.1. Username is root, password is blank by default.