ASUS RP-N53

Use the Asus Recovery Utility. No disassembly or soldering necessary.

Open the utility on a Windows computer. Point to the OpenWrt sysupgrade file. Connect the unit with an ethernet cable directly to the computer. Plug the unit in the wall while holding down the reset button. Release the button when the “led bar” light up (or blink). The flashing process then starts. You can do the same to revert to the Asus firmware.

To install OpenWrt on RP-N53 you need :

1. Soldering iron
2. USB to UART converter

1. First of all you need to disassemble RP-N53. There is 1 screw under the sticker on the back and latches around the perimeter of the cover.
2. Solder 2 wires (i used wires from an idc cable) to TP2(TX),TP1(RX) under the left antenna and 1 wire to the ground poligon.
3. Connect those wires to the USB to UART converter (RX to TX, TX to RX, GND to GND), and insert it to USB port.
4. Install Putty and any tftp server (i used “Open TFTP”). Place OpenWrt firmware file in to the folder where TFTP server is installed (in my case it was C:\OpenTFTPServer), rename it to firmware.bin and start the tftp server.
5. Run the Putty, select connection type Serial, select corresponding COM# (you can check COM number in device manager), set speed to 57600 and press connect.
6. Power on RP-N53, and if you did everything right, you will see bootloader output in Putty.
7. At some point you will see this menu:
   

      Please choose the operation: 
      0: Load System code then write to Flash via Serial. 
      1: Load System code to SDRAM via TFTP. 
      2: Load System code then write to Flash via TFTP. 
      3: Boot System code via Flash (default).
      4: Entr boot command line interface.
      5: Load Boot Loader code to SDRAM via Serial. 
      7: Load Boot Loader code then write to Flash via Serial. 
      8: Load Boot Loader code to SDRAM via TFTP. 
      9: Load Boot Loader code then write to Flash via TFTP.

8. Select “2: Load System code then write to Flash via TFTP”. You will have only 3 seconds to do this.
9. After this bootloader will ask you something like “this operation will erase flash memory. Are you shure? y\n” press y.
10. Now you need to set IP adress of RP-N53, enter IP adress of your TFTP server, enter name of .bin file with firmware (firmware.bin) and flashing process will start.

How to add tags