[Battlemesh] Open Router Alternatives (Was: Chilling effect - Lockdown (FCC/EU))

[fboehm]

Am 18.02.2016 um 11:43 schrieb Linus Lüssing:
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:44:34AM +0100, Bastian Bittorf wrote:
>> generally speaking we need an OpenHardware design
>> for indoor 2.4/5GHz and outdoor 2.4 and outdoor 5GHz
>> with "standard" antenna connectors (RP-SMA/N)
>
> Was posted on the Freifunk WLANware mailinglist some months ago,
> a promising crowd-funded, open router:
>
> https://omnia.turris.cz/en/
>
>> so first there is an design needed and so we need
>> to crowdfound the developement of the open design
>> and the approval (FCC and EU).
>
> For the Omnia Turris, no FCC/ETSI approval needed: The board
> itself has no radios but miniPCIe slots instead :).
>
>
> Unfortunately, they are more expensive of course... with two
> miniPCIe radio cards and a case they would cost about 150 USD.
>
> So "economically speaking", you can build maybe only five
> to seven times smaller community mesh networks as compared to
> ~20 USD routers.
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Turris is definitely interesting. Unfortunately the whole product seems 
to follow the jack-of-all-trades design. Like most electronic products 
these days. I'm honestly not a big fan of this concept.

A basic ath9k PCIe card costs in bulk quantities (1k) around 10USD. 
Maybe as low as 5USD if you plan to buy a million in total.

Market ready products based on MT7621 (without WiFi) are sold for about 
50USD. That includes software, housing, power supply, packaging and 
"brand-value". In this respect a OEM board with zero software and zero 
support should be doable for USD50 as well. Plus a PCIe card and 
pigtails to have a similar feature set as a TP-Link router.

Has somebody ever considered opening an OpenWRT shop for such barebone 
products? If yes, please let me know.

Franz