RADIUSdesk

Xiaomi Access Points Running MESHdesk Firmware

Introduction

  • As of October 2021 we have MESHdesk firmware available for the following Xiaomi Access Points
    • 4A Gigabit Edition
    • 4A 100M Edition
    • 4C
  • The firmware is based on OpenWrt 21.02.1.
  • Instructions on how to flash the firmware onto the devices has their own dedicated Wiki page.
  • This page will just give an overview on how easy it is to use the firmware.

Identifying the Firmware

  • The MESHdesk firmware can be identified in two places
    • The Luci interface has a RADIUSdesk Logo.

  • The terminal banner shows it.
  _____            _____ _____ _    _  _____     _           _    
 |  __ \     /\   |  __ \_   _| |  | |/ ____|   | |         | |   
 | |__) |   /  \  | |  | || | | |  | | (___   __| | ___  ___| | __
 |  _  /   / /\ \ | |  | || | | |  | |\___ \ / _` |/ _ \/ __| |/ /
 | | \ \  / ____ \| |__| || |_| |__| |____) | (_| |  __/\__ \   < 
 |_|  \_\/_/    \_\_____/_____|\____/|_____/ \__,_|\___||___/_|\_\
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------- RD-21.02.1-03-NOV-21-0.bin -----------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Default Credentials

  • You can get to the Access Point initally by connecting to its LAN port and go to http://192.168.1.1
  • The default username and password is root and admin
  • The next section will describe how to activate central control of this Access Point.

Activating Central Management

  • The firmware by default is just running standard OpenWrt.
  • It does however feature a Luci add-on which allows you to put the firmware under the management of a MESHdesk server.
  • For this you only need to know the following three things
    • Protocol that the server uses. Choose between HTTP or HTTPS. If you don not know, use HTTP.
    • The FQDN of the server. If the MESHdesk server can only be reached using an IP Address, supply the following dummy value: cloudz.radiusdeskz.comz.
    • The IPv4 address of the server. This will be used as a fallback if the FQDN can not resolve.
  • See the following screenshot.

  • As you can see our MESHdesk server is on a private network and has an IP Address of 192.168.8.220. (This is running on a Raspberry Pi)
  • Once you made the changes click Save & Apply
  • After this you can reboot the Access Point while ensuring its WAN is connected to a network with a working DHCPv4 setup.