You know that feeling when you find old tech lying around and think, “I could probably do something cool with this”? That’s exactly what happened when I stumbled upon an old TP-Link TL-WR850N v2 router tucked away in a drawer at home. Instead of letting it gather more dust, I thought, “Why not give it new life with OpenWrt?”
The Hunt Begins
Like any good adventure, this one started with research. I wanted to flash OpenWrt on this router, but there was a catch – my router’s version wasn’t officially supported yet. However, hope wasn’t lost! After some digging, I found an existing pull request (PR #3113) that aimed to add support for exactly my model.
Plot Twist: The Abandoned PR
But here’s where things got interesting. The original PR had been abandoned, leaving the router support in limbo. A comment from a maintainer caught my eye:
As it appears, the initial author mostly had problems with handling git. Nothing has happened for two months here, so if you are interested, just pick up what’s there, bring it in proper shape (squash into one commit, add proper description) and submit a new PR for it. No developer with commit access will care about a closed PR that does not meet formal requirements.
Challenge accepted! 🎯
Taking Up the Torch
Instead of letting good work go to waste, I decided to pick up where the original author left off. The changes needed were already there – they just needed some tidying up. I:
- Cherry-picked the necessary changes
- Cleaned up the commit history
- Took care of a minor review comment about sorting GPIO Nodes by their GPIO number
- Created a fresh pull request (PR #3355)
Success! 🎉
After some review and minor adjustments, the changes were finally merged into OpenWrt! You can find the final merge commit at git.openwrt.org
Took a while to be included in a release, but the router from my dusty drawer now officially has OpenWrt support
Final Thoughts
What started as a simple “Hey, what can I do with this old router?” turned into a meaningful contribution to the OpenWrt project. Now, anyone else with a TP-Link TL-WR850N v2 can enjoy the benefits of OpenWrt too!
Remember, every contribution to open source, no matter how small, helps build a better ecosystem for everyone. Sometimes, all it takes is finding an old router in a drawer to start your next open source adventure.
Have an old router gathering dust? Maybe it’s time to give it new life with OpenWrt too!