Dragino MS12

This device is NOT RECOMMENDED for future use with OpenWrt due to low flash/ram.
DO NOT BUY DEVICES WITH 4MB FLASH / 32MB RAM if you intend to flash an up-to-date and secure OpenWrt version onto it! See 4/32 warning for details.

1) This device does not have sufficient resources (flash and/or RAM) to provide secure and reliable operation.
This means that even setting a password or changing simple network settings might not be possible any more, rendering the device effectively useless. See OpenWrt on 4/32 devices what you can do now.

2) OpenWrt support for this device has ended in 2022.
19.07.10 was the last official build for 4/32 devices.

The Dragino MS12 is based on an Atheros system-on-a-chip (SoC). It has a MIPS 4K processor, 8meg flash, and 32meg ram. Unlike most home routers, it also has 6 ESD shielded inputs, for connecting to any sort of sensor, and connectors for a daughterboard, that has access to the sensor inputs, and to the MIPS serial port, and some GPIOs that can be used as a SPI port. It is sold as an OEM device or offshore development kit, and comes with openWRT loaded, so you should have no difficulty using it. :)

MS12 with Flukso Sensor Board

At retail, you can get one of these as a Flukso Fluksometer, for home power measurement, or from Nodalis, where they are used as part of voip mesh networks.

Architecture MIPS 4K
Vendor n/a
Bootloader RedBoot
System-On-Chip Atheros AR2317
CPU Speed 180 MHz
Flash size 8 MiB
RAM 16 MiB/ changed to 32MB in v1.0
Wireless Integrated Atheros 802.11b/g
Ethernet 1x RJ45
USB No
Serial Yes
SPI simulated by GPIO
JTAG No
  • 12V power supply
  • Antenna
  • SPI-Bus
  • External ESD shielded inputs
  • daughterboard connector for personal projects (Arduino, avr, PIC etc.)

As an atheros board, the notes on Freedom CPE and Fonera are very relevant, and much more detailed.

Note, this is different from Fonera and Freedom...

RedBoot> fis list
Name              FLASH addr  Mem addr    Length      Entry point
RedBoot           0xA8000000  0xA8000000  0x00030000  0x00000000
vmlinux.bin.l7    0xA8030000  0x80041000  0x000D0000  0x80041000
rootfs            0xA8100000  0x8003E000  0x00260000  0x8003E000
FIS directory     0xA87D0000  0xA87D0000  0x0000F000  0x00000000
RedBoot config    0xA87DF000  0xA87DF000  0x00001000  0x00000000
RedBoot> 

generic.sysupgrade Has pretty good information for this, but at least as of Backfire, you don't really need to do any tricks with memory or dropping network modules.

user@homecomputer$ scp openwrt-atheros-combined.squashfs.img root@router.ip.address:/tmp
...
root@openwrt# sysupgrade -i -v /tmp/openwrt-atheros-combined.squashfs.img
Keep config files over reflash (Y/n): 
Edit config file list (y/N): 
Saving config files...
etc/nixio/.nixio_stamp
etc/sysctl.conf
etc/shells
etc/rc.local
etc/profile
etc/passwd
etc/inittab
etc/hosts
etc/group
etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key
etc/dropbear/dropbear_dss_host_key
etc/config/wireless
etc/config/uhttpd
etc/config/ucitrack
etc/config/timeserver
etc/config/system
etc/config/network
etc/config/luci
etc/config/firewall
etc/config/dropbear
etc/config/dhcp
Switching to ramdisk...
Performing system upgrade...
Unlocking vmlinux.bin.l7 ...
Unlocking rootfs ...
Writing from <stdin> to vmlinux.bin.l7 ...     
Writing from <stdin> to rootfs ...     
Appending jffs2 data from /tmp/sysupgrade.tgz to rootfs...
Updating FIS table... 
Rebooting ...
[ you will lose the connection here ]
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  • Last modified: 2020/12/23 21:34
  • by danitool