CLI control of LED on mt300n

Johnex · 2018-08-11T19:15:55.279Z

So on your device do

ls /sys/class/leds/

To get a list of the LEDs you can update.
Then to set an LED, you do

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/<LED_NAME>/brightness

For example for the Mifi i can do:

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/gl-mifi:green:lan/brightness

That will set the LAN LED to on, and use echo 0 to turn it off.

slowden · 2018-08-11T19:29:49.597Z

Sorry, I updated my text before you responded.

I see the following;

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 11 19:26 rt2800soc-phy0::assoc → …/…/devices/10180000.wmac/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 11 19:26 rt2800soc-phy0::quality → …/…/devices/10180000.wmac/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::quality
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 11 19:26 rt2800soc-phy0::radio → …/…/devices/10180000.wmac/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::radio

I am wanting to control the middle LED for example, which if I understand, is a configurable one. No idea if I can also change it’s color.

Is this what I am wanting to control then?

phy0::quality

slowden · 2018-08-11T19:33:24.829Z

No changes.

echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::quality/brightness
echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::quality/brightness
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/brightness
echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/brightness

Johnex · 2018-08-11T19:38:48.011Z

Hmmm. If you do

uci export system

and then see what the names of the LEDs are, use those names in the commands above.

You can also use the LED names that Luci has in the LED config…

See if that works for you?

slowden · 2018-08-11T19:42:12.229Z

There is only one reference to LED

config led ‘led_wifi_led’
option name ‘wifi’
option sysfs ‘gl-mt300n:wlan’
option dev ‘wlan0’
option trigger ‘netdev’
option mode ‘link tx rx’

I also tried;

echo 64 >/sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/max_brightness

-ash: can’t create /sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/max_brightness: Permission denied

Not sure if I am getting closer or not.

Johnex · 2018-08-11T19:43:49.596Z

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/gl-mt300n:wlan/brightness

Does nothing?

slowden · 2018-08-11T19:47:18.939Z

Nope

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/gl-mt300n:wlan/brightness
-ash: can’t create /sys/class/leds/gl-mt300n:wlan/brightness: nonexistent directory

I’ve even tried

echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/subsystem/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/brightness

/etc/init.d/led restart

echo 1 >/sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/subsystem/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/brightness

/etc/init.d/led restart

Johnex · 2018-08-11T19:48:15.631Z

Hmm, then you will have to wait until tomorrow when the devs can help.

Let me call them for you:

@alzhao @kyson-lok

slowden · 2018-08-11T19:48:36.499Z

ls -la /sys/class/leds/

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 11 19:26 rt2800soc-phy0::assoc → …/…/devices/10180000.wmac/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 11 19:26 rt2800soc-phy0::quality → …/…/devices/10180000.wmac/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::quality
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 11 19:26 rt2800soc-phy0::radio → …/…/devices/10180000.wmac/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::radio

slowden · 2018-08-11T19:50:25.722Z

Thanks for your help. I’ll keep looking in the meantime.

I also found this information in another post;

alzhao Apr '16
The LAN LED is fixed as POWER in hardware. So it is always on.
The WAN LED and WiFi leds can be controlled.

Therefore, tested using another LED (If I am understanding the three LEDs)
echo 255 >/sys/class/leds/rt2800soc-phy0::assoc/subsystem/rt2800soc-phy0::quality/brightness

No change.

alzhao · 2018-08-12T01:16:41.225Z

Did you changed the firmware to a customized firmware? These LEDs names seems not bind to the physical LEDs.

There should only be three LEDs.
gl-mt300n:wlan/
gl-mt300n:lan
gl-mt300n:wan

kyson-lok · 2018-08-12T04:09:24.565Z

Nope, the color of the led isn’t configurable. You only can turn it on or turn it off. Those directory are located in /sys/class/led.

slowden · 2018-08-12T17:31:38.077Z

alzhao, the firmware was updated yes.
I posted the version in the first msg. If I recall, the /etc/config/system file was changed a little from factory. In the original, there is only mention of one.
config led ‘led_wifi_led’
Do I just need to put the old one back in and rebuild?
What else could I provide to help?

kyson-lok, I thought one of the LEDs is red which is the one I wanted to use.

alzhao · 2018-08-13T15:52:56.996Z

You may try the latest openwrt. I think openwrt standard the LEDs names to gl-mt300n:green:wan etc.

LED names is a little mess so if you have your own firmware.

So try latest openwrt or GL stock firmware for LED configurations. Cannot change LED color.

Don’t use usbpow because it is not LED. It is used to control the power of USB port.

slowden · 2018-08-13T22:31:27.578Z

ok but I am using my own /files directory. What must I leave that is factory in order to have the LEDs working as they should be? Not sure what I’ve removed that would cause this.

slowden · 2018-08-15T18:01:49.427Z

For future reference since no one seemed to have the correct answer, all I needed to do was to install kmod-leds-gpio kmod-ledtrig-usbdev in my build. Not sure if I need both but one or both allow me to control the LED.

Also, yes, there is a RED led, it is the WLAN.

Now this works.
echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/gl-mt300n:wlan/brightness
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/gl-mt300n:wlan/brightness

With the above, I can turn it on and off but how can i make it flash also for example? Any other controls?

Johnex · 2018-08-15T19:38:50.076Z

To make it flash you add a delay between on and off

slowden · 2018-08-15T19:56:58.293Z

I’m not sure about that. I’ve read that there is something else, using the kmod-ledtrig-timer if I understand correctly. However, I cannot find a way to send the LED a command to do anything but go on and off.

Johnex · 2018-08-15T21:55:30.372Z

kmod-ledtrig-gpio
kmod-ledtrig-heartbeat
kmod-ledtrig-morse
kmod-ledtrig-oneshot
kmod-ledtrig-timer
kmod-ledtrig-transient

are some interesting packages you can try.

Morse and heartbeat are basically just turning the LED’s on and off and predefined intervals, which you can do using sleep in a bash script with the commands above for on and off so…

You can either write your own bash script to do what you want, or make a c++ program and compile it for more advanced things.

This basically what the GL UI is doing for the reset blinking and other blinking apart from the automatic from OpenWRT (which is probably also just calling the LED’s to be on or off).

slowden · 2018-08-15T22:06:45.352Z

Thanks for the input.
I can see how the echo command is being used to turn something on and off but the next trick I’d like to see is how to make the LED blink at a certain rate without using a script to turn it on and off repeatedly. Meaning, one command to start the LED flashing at a s certain rate, one more command to stop it or change it to another rate.

From what I have read, the kmod-ledtrig-timer is the package I need to do blinking LEDs.

I am not a programmer so am trying to avoid writing a script unless there is something very simple to be found on the Internet somewhere.

I find this on the openwrt site but no idea how to use it.

opkg install kmod-ledtrig-timer

Name Type Required Default Description
default integer no 0 LED state before trigger: 0 means OFF and 1 means ON
delayoff integer yes (none) How long (in milliseconds) the LED should be off.
delayon integer yes (none) How long (in milliseconds) the LED should be on.
sysfs string yes (none) LED device name
trigger string yes (none) timer