A couple of years ago I picked up a WRT150N in a fire sale for $49 and quickly set about maximizing this device by flashing to the latest DD-WRT firmware.
I was mainly interested in upgrading my home wireless to WPA2-Enterprise certificate based authentication with a Freeradius backend. After upgrading your WRT150N series router to DD-WRT you can install the Freeradius package and allow your little consumer router to not only handle the wireless, but also the enterprise authentication.
For anyone not running a full time server this is perfect, everything is integrated into the one package, low cost, low power usage. The one key drawback is the space, with a modest 16MB of usable space to store the your programs and logs, it certainly is limited.
The SD card mod
Investigating possible solutions to my problem, I came across the SD card mod, allowing a hardware modification of the WRT150N to add a SD card for extra space.
The modification involves taking an existing SD card reader casing, and connecting it to the WRT150N main board with a series of wires. I could not find any correct wiring diagrams for the WRT150N on the internet, so my wiring diagram is available below.
I would suggest using a 512MB or 1GB SD card as I have numerous issues getting larger cards to work consistently, at least while you get everything initially set up a smaller card is a good idea.
Performing the modification
Before we get started make sure you device has the DD-WRT firmware of your choice, I have settled on the "DD-WRT v24 (05/24/08) std" firmware as it fits my requirements.
1. Crack open your 150N to expose the mainboard and components.
2. Start by cutting out a slot in the back of your 150N for the SD card to be inserted into. Alternatively you can simply mount the SD card inside your 150N but then of course you have to remove the cover if you need to access it.
3. Follow my below wiring diagram to connect the SD card reader to the appropriate GPIO points, the SD card has 9 gold connectors but we are only using 7. Please excuse my absolute lack of soldering skills.
You need to connect all the numbers from the above SD card connector diagram to the appropriate PCB locations below, for example 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc. The only exception is a jumper wire needs to run between point 2 and 5 on the SD card reader, as indicated above in purple. The "5" point will have the jumper wire and another wire going off to the PCB connected to the single point.
4. Insert your SD card, turn on your WRT150N and log into the web GUI menu. Navigate to the Administration tab and find the "MMC/SD Card Support" menu. You need to configure your settings as mine are below.
- MMC Device - Enabled
- GPIO pins select - Manual
- GPIO pins
- DI: 5
- D0: 4
- CLK: 3
- CS: 1
5. Apply your settings and then reboot your 150N.
After your device has rebooted, log back into the web GUI and navigate to the Administration tab. If all is well you will see the "Total / Free Size" value under the "MMC/SD Card Support" menu populated with the size of your SD card. As you can see above, my 1GB card shows a total size of 952.96 MB and a free size of 888.52 MB.
Troubleshooting
If your "Total / Free Size" value is not reading correctly, first try removing the SD card and manually formatting it with the ext2 file system. After the format is complete, re-insert the SD card and reboot the 150N.
If you are still having issues, please recheck your wiring is perfect. As a last resort I did find some SD cards (especially cards larger than 1-2GB) may not work in the reader. If you have a larger card, try and get your hands on a small 512MB or 1GB card and try again.
Hopefully you don't do the same thing as I did and snap the top of your SD card reader mount off, nothing a big old chunk of hot glue couldn't fix though!
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