Re: [Thumbgps-devel] [Cerowrt-devel] Bus Pirate for serial interfacing to the wndr and similar devices

[Stephen Woodrow <srwoodrow@gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 10:47 PM, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
> Given cero bug #379 it seems like I need to get
> a couple of these to truly debug it.
>
> http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate

Another cool thing I should mention about the bus pirate in the
context of Openwrt dev/debugging is that it has an auxillary GPIO pin
available, even when you're using it as a UART. This means that you
could replace the reset button on the bottom of the board with a
transistor (+ resistor if there isn't already one) and be able to
activate the reset button from the comfort of your terminal.

If you coupled this with a remotely switchable power supply, you could
easily put the router into recovery mode without being physically
present (or needing to fiddle with paperclips).

I presume it should be possible to enter the factory recovery mode via
the uboot prompt somehow (thus making the reset button redundant), but
I haven't figured that out yet. If anyone has suggestions I would love
to hear them, as the Openwrt wiki didn't prove as useful as I'd hoped
in this regard.

--steve