This is my first blog—I am not very proficient in writing, especially not technical writing and my grammar sucks, but hey who cares. I will have a series of posts talking about how I managed to install OpenWrt on a Meraki MR18 access point. I will try to explain things as I go to not leave readers in the dark, but some background technical understanding/ability to research more in-depth confusing topics will greatly help the reader.

Overview

What am I trying to accomplish

A little while ago, I went to a second hand parts store in Houston, Electronic Parts Outlet, located at 3753 Fondren Rd B, Houston, TX 77063. When I was there I found an old Cisco Meraki MR18 on a shelf. My goal when shopping was to find some good cheap networking hardware that I could install in my sisters new house. I picked up a Fortigate 81E-POE and a Cisco Meraki MR18. In today’s standard for AP’s the MR18 is pretty shit, but at a price of around 10 to 15usd (I dont recall the exact price) it seemed worth it. The Fortigate was pure overkill, but since it was new ~4-5k and used ~800-1.2k getting it for 150$ was a steal.

I brought these 2 devices back to her place and started to install them. That’s when I ran into my first issue—the AP was locked, possibly bricked. After doing some research it made sense, the Cisco AP was proprietary and required a “valid Meraki MR License.” I was not about to purchase a subscription license and especially not for an AP that I won’t use and I’m not a company so their features will fall on deaf ears.

So, where does that leave me? I’m out like 15 bucks so who really cares, but I’m an “engineer,” and I’ll try to make something work. I have zero experience with OpenWrt, but I do know about it. I researched a bit found a guide and got immediately stuck on figuring out the “Firmware Version” I was on. There were 4 flashing methods that worked on different versions. I then proceeded to try the first 3 easiest ones and they didn’t work. To spare the details I tried and I couldn’t get it to work so my firmware version must have been “25.11 and Up”—because I could never have done anything wrong of course.

That’s where the story ended for the little MR18, I didn’t have my JTAG with my at the time, I spent 2 days already trying to get the other methods to work and I had to drive back home from my sisters place for school.

Spring Break ‘26

We are now at Spring Break, I thought to myself I could either A: study for control systems or B: not. I did B, and started to doom scroll, procrastinate by looking for cars, Mac Mini’s, etc. I then found the AP I put in one of my boxes (along side with the 81E router, which I left out earlier, but since my sister wasn’t getting the AP she doesn’t have a need for a proper POE router).

The story doesn’t end here (like this blog post does), in fact it is just getting started. I proceeded to spend Spring Break and some random weekend debugging, automating, coding, flashing, etc to resurrect this MR18. Surprisingly, I used everything “the best degree in the world”—not biased, totally true, but don’t fact check that—had to offer by even more surprisingly actually getting this AP flashed with OpenWrt.