A few days ago I bought an TP-Link Archer C50. Hoping I would get a v3 or v1 which are supported by OpenWrt OpenWrt – TP-Link Archer C50

What I got was an Archer C50 v4 😐
At first I thought what the f***. But then I started to search the forum an found this post OpenWrt Forum – Support for Archer c50 v4

Since then I have been trying to learn how to compile my OpenWrt images and thankfully I found most of the documentation on the official OpenWrt pages.
After giving all this a try an following the description on the commit of blocktrron I finally believe to have done the wright thing.

What I have done

1. Download/Clone the commit from blocktrron ant switch to the „hopefully“ correct branch.
   git clone https://github.com/blocktrron/openwrt.git/
cd openwrt
git checkout c50v4-noboot
2. Update stuff from OpenWrt to start the creation process (source)
   ./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a
3. Call the make menuconfig and make your changes
   make menuconfig
   1. Target System -> MediaTek Ralink MIPS
   2. Subtarget -> MT76x8 Based Boards
   3. Target Profile -> TP-Link ArcherC50 v4
   4. Exit -> Save
4. Compile/make your files make
5. After the compiling completed I got a file named „openwrt-ramips-mt76x8-tplink_c50-v4-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin“
6. Following the description on what to do in the commit message
   1. Copied the made file to a new empty dir
   2. downloaded the newest TP-Link firmware for the Archer C50v4
   3. did the dd and cat stuff as described in the commit message
      dd if=Archer_C50v4_EU_0.9.1_0.2_up_boot-180313-rel54477.bin of=SelfMade-Archer_C50v4-OpenWrt.bin bs=131584 count=1
cat openwrt-ramips-mt76x8-tplink_c50-v4-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin >> SelfMade-Archer_C50v4-OpenWrt.bin
      and this is the file I got at the end.
      SelfMade-Archer_C50v4-OpenWrt-blocktrron_c50v4-noboot – sha256 - 48e6174efda8405462b489f37ad4d21626fcef4885234232e7221f2034add363 (VirusTotal Check of file)

Install the image to the device

This was how I installed the image to the device:

1. connect the Archer c50 v4 (wired)
   1. Set your network to dhcp
2. called the default ip (192.168.0.1)
3. renamed the firmware file („SelfMade-Archer_C50v4-OpenWrt-blocktrron_c50v4-noboot.bin“) to „firmware.bin“
4. installed the new firmware through firmware upload in the browser
5. waited for the Archer c50 v4 to reboot
6. connected via ssh (192.168.1.1)