Is anyone still using these? I’ve got one that I pull out now and then when I’m having trouble getting connected to a router, except for the last several years it has not once successfully launched the terminal window on any computer I’ve tried to connect to it such that I can actually send commands to the remote device (I can see the console output, just not interact with it, so it’s still somewhat useful at times). It seems to have been related to some update on the computer / browser, but I can’t even pinpoint which year the problem first occurred.
These devices could also really be useful if you could program them to be emulate a interface to be able to plug in a woobm and it just appears as a wired (or wireless) interface to the device that supports network connectivity over the little USB radio.
WOOBmAP works fine here.
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Some client devices are not happy if a wifi connection does not give access to internet, a browser may stall on this.
This connection does indeed not have internet access.
The device for wireless/wired conversion is the Mikrotik MQS. Well not via USB.
I still have 2 other tools in my little toolbox: USB LTE modem (Huawei E3372) and a wifi dongle
And a mAP Lite, to complete the set.
Anyone has any info that device or similar will be available in the future?
Until now most of my devices had console port (RJ45/RS232), so I didn't need that. As the RB5009 and the newer switches has USB, maybe it will be useful on a accidentally made wrong setting.
A "common" USB to serial converter ( a pair if you haven't a serial port on the PC) would (should) replace the need for a console port, this (nice, too bad it has been discontinued) little device is handy if you don't have the possibility of running a cable to the device.
The issue is that there are more of these inexpensive converters than stars in the sky, and how well they are supported by the Mikrotik device.
The most common ones use FTDI or Prolific chips, of which there are both original and several different fakes/replicas, to which you add the now almost ubiquitous CH340, but it is the single adapter/converter, most of the time they are no-name or no-model, so you may buy today one from a shop, verify that it works, order another one to the same shop - say - 3 months later and get a completely different, this time not working, device.
When using a converter to replace a serial port on a PC (for example, I have a "Raspberry Pi Debug cable" that is 3.3V TTL output), I can use this with Putty to connect to the serial pins on my lab Ubiquiti ER-X mother board and that all works fine. But I have to go into Putty and set the baud rate to 57200 (for the ER-X).
If connecting these back to back, what speed does the serial adapter connected to the USB on the RouterBoard get set to? Is it the same for all models? Is it possible to change it?
It is nice they added a serial console to the L009. It is disappointing that the RB5009 "The ultimate heavy-duty home lab router" does NOT have a Cisco compatible RJ45 serial console connector. As far as I know, it is the only "Lab router" that does not. (RB2011, RB3011, RB4011) all have serial consoles.
Probably there are some stuff lost in translation.
You CAN use serial<>usb adapters to connect to your RouterOS, IF: that adapter is properly recognized and configured under RouterOS and if RouterOS is functional.
You CAN’T use serial<>usb adapters as a debug port, if RouterOS crashed for some reason and it doesn’t boot: RouterBOOT has disabled serial console output on the devices that have no serial port from the factory and it’s not configured to output to some random USB device anyway.
Better?
This was a disappointment to me because I am used to doing router recovery through serial access. Mikrotik seems to depend on using Winbox for access if the router is booting but inaccessible, or Netinstall if it is not booting correctly.
Is there any better/alternative open source firmware for the woobm-usb? It seems to be a fairly simple ESP8266-based device, has anyone reverse-engineered it yet?
I just tested this, and no, sadly you can’t see/interrupt the boot over the USB serial console. I’ve read that there’s an onboart UART and steps that can be done to enable it, but I haven’t felt like adventuring that far into the hardware. IMO the lack of a real serial console is the single biggest drawback to this router.
Yes there are some projects where, ESP32 boards (or similar) acts as a wireless-serial bridge, but MT’s device is more compact. And I have no experience with ESP32, but due to lack of other possibilities maybe I’ll try this way.
If woobm-usb is no longer supported by MT, could we ask nicely for some hardware documentation (like which GPIO is used for what purpose) so we can put alternative firmware on existing MT hardware?
