I recently managed to find a job. Not a great job, but a job. I had some money that I decided to purchase a fon with. Of course, the purpose was to gain another router. The purpose was to make a jasager device. The Jasager is custom firmware for the fonera by Robin Wood, aka digininja.

Background

So, when a computer boots (if it has a wireless network card) it will send out broadcasts looking for networks it know. The idea behind the jasager firmware is that after installing you now have a device that will answer, “yup, that’s me!” anytime it receives those probe requests. If someone is looking for their home network at a coffee shop, they shouldn’t find it. The jasager is kind enough to say, yup, connect to me anyway.

Why?

Because after a client connects to your router, its YOUR client on YOUR network. Think of the fun.

Order a Serial Cable

Seriously

Or, why it took me five weekend to get this thing to work

Its taken me about 5 weeks to finally get jasager actually installed on the damn router. Partially because I had 0.7.1 r2. The tough cookie firmware. The first week I tried setting up a local version of Kolonfonium. Didn’t work. I even tried the hosted. It still didn’t work.

So I ordered what I had hoped would be the correct cable from ebay. For reference, a TXDATA1046 is not the cable you’re looking for. It was dead. I received a replacement. That was when I found out it was the incorrect cable.

I finally ordered an FTDI Friend from lady ada. I didn’t get it that weekend, so I didn’t work on my fon. As a statement, no I am not receiving funds for endorsing this product. I just think it does the job well and has the most flexibility I have seen of the various USB serial products available. You’ll also want this cable because you only need the three pins (GND, TX, & RX).

Some people have tricks and what not that they use. I’m just saying that, by the time you try those tricks and they (possibly) fail, you will still need the serial cable. If you brick your fon, you will need a serial cable. If you get a UK fon from ebay, you will have to have a serial cable. Just buy one. Update: Also, if you forget your password or screw up one of the network configuration files, you can fix it without reflashing the fonera.

The week after that I managed to get openwrt flashed. I skipped the week after that (I think). Tonight I installed the firmware package from the jasager website. I just followed the guide that digininja posted. So really, the hardest part in the whole process was figuring out how to talk to the little bastard.

Get the serial cable.