Setup GL-MT1300 as access point

I’m not a networking person but I want to set up my device to connect wirelessly to a wired control system network, to access, configure, and program devices on the network wirelessly from my laptop.
I went to the control panel - Network Mode and clicked the button for Access Point and clicked Apply. It tells me “To set up Access Point mode, you need to connect an ethernet cable to the WAN port first”. I don’t know what this means but I plugged a cable from the WAN port to my network and then plugged it into my laptop, but it keeps just giving me the same message. What am I missing?

What firmware versison are you using?

Can you check if the WAN cable to your network is really working? I mean does the MT1300 get IP address from your main router before you set up as AP?

Can you give a photo of your setup to make sure your connection is correct?

No, there is no DHCP server or anything to give it an IP address. Just some industrial control stuff like a PLC, I/O nodes, etc. on a private isolated 192.168.1.X network. They connect through a managed industrial ethernet switch but it doesn’t dynamically assign IPs. I tried plugging a cable into the WAN port that connects to the network which works with a tplink travel router but that didn’t do anything.

Pls let me know the firmware version of MT1300. You can check this in admin panel->upgrade

The firmware version is 3.200

I upgraded to 3.203 but that hasn’t helped, it still says my dhcp server will give it an ip address but I want to set the IP because there is no DHCP. Jesus this thing is garbage.

Since there is no DHCP, have you manually set an IP address, subnet netmask, and gateway on your MT1300? If there is no DHCP server, how will the clients you want to attach through the Access Point get their IP addresses, netmask, and gateway?