Mudi E-750 Router & Server for The Portable Hybrid Local Area Network (PHLAN)
Why the Mudi
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The hardware
The battery
There have been a few users who have had their batteries swell up and become dangerous spicey pillows. Unfortunately there are no readily available replacements and gl.inet doesn't seem to offer replacement devices out of warranty. All hope is not lost -- the battery is removable and not too difficult to rebuild. Ask me how I know. The full threads are in the links section and recommended reading and in there are any new bits of information. The key takeaways for a rebuild are:
The battery has 2 strips of double side tape Attached to the visible tabs, but the tabs are not helpful to remove the pack.
DIY removal at your own risk. Things get risky from here.
i pried up the battery with a lot of force without damage. If i were to try it again, i would try a solvent or some piano wire to use less force. There is no electronics under the battery.
The pack is is 2 8.3mm * 49mm *64mm lithium packs (3500mah * 3.7v) with tabs welded to a custom pcb. The pcb routes each battery to a single black/red pair on the 5pin connector. The yellow pin is ties to a sensor thar was kapton taped between the 2 backs. The board has pos/neg clearly labbeled.
Carefully snipping and lifting away the blue shrinkwrap and kapton tape, you'll find the 2 battery packs are also double side taped to each other. Leave them. Instead, snip the tabs off the PCB (space as needed, i snipped closer to the battery to give me more working space.
In theory, you can rebuild the pack with 2 new 834964 batteries. I haven't found those yet, but have gotten it to temporarily work with a pair of smaller battery packs i bought for another project.
Currently i am looking for more exact replacement packs or info on how the charging circuit works to make sure i find something safely compatible. I've sent out a few inquiries, but the only source i have found wants orders of 1000pcs.
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FYI, the closest batteries I have found so far are 3.7v 605065 2800mAh packs. The extra 1mm in either direction is a snug fit, but works fine. You can pick these up for 10-12$ each on Amazon (you want 2) or less on other sites.
This is using the original battery connector + the board and temp sensor.
So far so good. I haven't had any charging issues.
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I've managed to rebuild the battery pack by using 2 of the following batteries:
GEA35001STXJR
The Software
I'm using the stock firmware
Configuration Notes:
- I use Repeater mode set to automatically switch to saved networks. This lets the PHLAN router connect to known wifi networks automatically when they are in range and fall back to cellular when not.
- If you plan on using wired ethernet, be sure to set the Ethernet port to WAN mode
- Be sure to go through the cellular "manual settings" for personal choises. I enable international roaming. Having easy access to set the TTL is helpful with some carriers.
- It is important to set the priorities according to your needs in the Network -> Multi-WAN menu. I use: Repeater, Ethernet, Tethering, Cellular
- The built-in WireGuard client works really well and the switch on the side can be set to quickly toggle it on and off. I get consistent 10-20mbps up and down with WireGuard enabled.
- The OpenWRT web interface is available as well on /cgi-bin/luci/ or via the System -> Advanced Settings menu
- The hardware is limited, but I do install a few additional packages and services (using the CLI as I don't have the patience for the web package manager)
- samba4-server, samba4-utils, samba4-admin, samba4-libs, luci-app-samba4
Windows filesharing server, with the luci web interface plugin because it is sometimes handy to have
- screen my prefered tool for CLI session swapping
Feel free to contact me if you need any help or have any advice.
[Coming Soon]
Mudi E-750v1 teardown photos and battery discussion #1
Mudi E-750v1 battery discussion #2/a>
GitHub repository for E-750 MCU firmware