LEDE/OpenWRT on a MiFi with Quectel EC25

Technical Support for Routers
1

I have some issue to get the above modem recognized by the LEDE/Openwrt. I have tried different firmware:

  • binary LEDE 17.01.2 from the LEDE repo
  • compiled LEDE 17.0 from the https://github.com/domino-team/lede-1701
  • compiled OpenWRT from https://github.com/domino-team/lopenwrt-cc
The wwan or any other possible 4G device doesn't show in the /dev/ directory Any clue or howto for troubleshooting?

Thanks.

2

You need to choose the modem related kernel modules. I think this is the reason.

EC25 should already be supported in LEDE but no QMI.

3

If you’re building using the GLi/Domino git hub it should build and recognize the hardware without issue (this is the stock firmware that comes on MiFi anyway); as pointed out just make sure you have the proper device profile set in your build tree (Select Mifi as target device), and the proper modules should automatically get built and pulled in.

If you are trying to use the main (non- GLi) LEDE it will not work. Versions 17.x (and even current trunk last time I looked) still use Kernel 4.4 for Ar71xx targets and do not contain the appropriate patches to get the QMI interface of the EC-25 working (or to even detect the chipset ID at all). I have seen in numerous places online that the non-QMI interface is basically garbage to due buggy Qualcom firmware on the card, and so to get trunk running you would need to port the patches that GLi did over to LEDE trunk. It’s doable but not trivial since GLi is a much older version and uses Kernel 3.x so patches there do not line up with what 4.4 needs.