A while back, my wife noticed that the HooToo HT-TM02 was on a special deal at Amazon. So she bought me another one. This is the second one I have. The one I got before is in daily use as an internet radio and is doing a fantastic job. But the problem is that I don’t want to mess about it, because I might break my radio! So this *second* one gives me something to actually play about with…
As before, I immediately installed OpenWrt on it. The installation procedure involves adding some extra storage which gives some additional space during the installation process. So you need to plug in a correctly formatted USB thumb drive. The instructions advise you to check whatever USB storage you have added is working before proceeding. But when I did it this time I forgot to check, so there was a slightly tense moment! Anyway, it must have been fine because the installation went without a hitch. Phew.
Then I upgraded to the latest released version of OpenWrt (which was Chaos Calmer 15.05.1) and reset it to the default configuration. I like to work from a clean starting point. So this gives me a good hackable little Linux toy to play with. I expect that most of my effort will continue to be programmed in Nim and cross-compiled.
So here are my notes on configuring the basics when setting up a HooToo HT-TM02 with OpenWrt. This should make it easy to repeat if I need to do a factory reset. It assumes that there is a home router with an address of 192.168.1.1, so works around that. Obviously, it assumes that OpenWrt has already been installed on the HooToo. The aim is to have the HooToo connect to an existing wifi network, so you can get to it wirelessly, and it can download packages and updates. But also, a network cable still works if required. Here goes:
- Start with OpenWrt defaults. Connect with a network cable and get an IP address from DHCP
- Don’t connect to any other networks, because it will clash with the router
- Now point a browser to 192.168.1.1
- Log in without a password and then set a new password straight away
- Edit the LAN address of the HooToo to 192.168.0.1 but leave DHCP on
- Save and then reboot the HooToo, it now should not clash with your router
- After the reboot, unplug and re-plug the network cable, just to be sure
- Point your browser to the new address, 192.168.0.1, and log in again
- Now, scan for your own wifi and click “Join Network”
- Enter your wifi passphrase
- Assign the wifi connection to the firewall zone “LAN”, but otherwise, use the defaults and save
- Check that HooToo has an internet connection (eg go to System->Software and click “Update Lists”)
Connecting via a cable should now give a DHCP address in the 192.168.0.x range, so using a cable is also possible in case wifi is not an option. For me, this is a pretty good starting point; now the fun stuff begins.
