ASUS Lyra MAP-AC2200 Flash To OpenWRT

(Refer to initial post HERE )

The IPQ4019 SoC quad-core @717MHz is capable enough to run current OpenWRT without much issue :

Firstly, refer HERE on how to flash the ASUS Lyra MAP-AC2200 to OpenWRT.

Basically, the pre-requisite :

• PC/laptop need to have WinSCP & PuTTY
• Download the Lyra OpenWRT 2 files (the xxx.itb and xxx.bin) from either the Stable release or SnapShots, target branch is IPQ40xx
  
• Can rename the long filename xxx.itb / xxx.bin to shorter like openwrt-ipq40xx.itb / openwrt-ipq40xx.bin

Steps involved :

• On stock firmware, go perform Factory Restore first, wait for the router to fully boot up
  
• Login to stock firmware, go enable the SSH access (under Administration tab)
• Use WinSCP login, copy the "openwrt-ipq40xx-.itb" file to /tmp/ folder
• Use PuTTY login, run command :
  mtd-write -d linux -i /tmp/openwrt-ipq40xx.itb
  reboot -f
• DO NO NOT power off the device, close both WinSCP & PuTTY, wait patiently for at least 5mins
• Use WinSCP login again (use default root, no password), copy the "openwrt-ipq40xx.bin" to /tmp/ folder
• Use PuTTY login (use default root, no password), run :
  sysupgrade -n /tmp/openwrt-ipq40xx.bin
  
• DO NO NOT power off the device, close both WinSCP & PuTTY, wait patiently for at least 10mins for the new kernel/firmware to settle down first.
• After the device rebooted succesfully, login the OpenWRT 192.168.1.1, normally I'll perform another clean upgrade via webgui without any save setting.
  (Note in future any new release just use the webgui to upgrade will do)
• If you are using the SnapShot, then you need to PuTTY login to install the necessary LuCI packages.

Voilà, another nice looking Lyra round toy with my favourite OpenWRT packages

Btw off topic a bit, I believe currently only OpenWRT has ready package to support DoH with various DNS selection, I understand AdGuard setup another DNS node in Singapore around last year.  I have been using the OpenWRT DoH package with AdGuard (Standard) since early of this year, also setup similar for few other locations, so I don't need to install/run any AdBlock package, lesser pressure/overhead on the router gateway itself.  Except for an incident happened around end of May'2020 which cause the AdGuard DNS blackout for few hours, so far it has been running great on my few OpenWRT setup locations.

Since the Lyra only has 2 ports (1xWAN 1xLAN) and I want to have Unifi IPTV, so I didn't setup any vlan on Lyra and just use my old RB250GS to untag both Vlan500 (PPPoE) and Vlan600 (IPTV).  In terms of wireless, I did some tests, as expected OpenWRT doesn't runs well compared to stock firmware , so just forget about running wireless on this device until further patches.

I use the other 2 Lyra setup and run as AP+AiMesh on stock firmware, overall setup looks like below diagram :

Alternatively, if you wish to, can just flash all 3 Lyra to OpenWRT and get other better wireless radio to serve as AP

One thing I do notice, after flashing to OpenWRT even when I turned on the wireless radio during testing, somehow it does not feel not that hot compared to when runs on stock firmware, temperatur under OpenWRT just feel normal to me.  Could it be due to somekind of overclock/burst setting under stock firmware, or it's because better OpenWRT kernel/firmware/efficient ?! Hmmmm .....