La Fonera, La Serial Port

I'm sure a lot of people have heard of the FON internet access system. If you haven 't heard of FON, click here to hear from the CEO of the company. After you review the video, you will see what the general plan is and will have been introduced to the "La Fonera social router." As many already know, the La Fonera routers were available a couple of years ago for $5 and were even given away for free in San Francisco. I ended up buying one of the $5 La Fonera routers after reading an article at the "Nerd Vittles" website. I installed the router at the house and patiently waited for my clients to start making me rich. Well, two years later I was still waiting for my first customer.

I never had a single user for the entire two years I had my La Fonera connected. Granted I live in a residential area, but I would have assumed with all the new construction around me I would have had at least one client. Ok, not big deal. I still have the Linksys-built, La Fonera router that only set me back five bucks. The problem was the original FON firmware is very limiting. A Google search found that the La Fonera could be reflashed with the wildly popular DD-WRT firmware.

I also found that a serial port could be added to the La Fonera in basically the same manner described for the Linksys WRT-54G. I didn't expect to gain much by adding a serial port to the La Fonera, but mainly just wanted to experiment. I planned to use a Compsys serial port kit left over from a project that never got off the ground.

Adding the serial port is pretty easy. I just followed the Rod Whitby guide and made a few changes to the connections. I also made my connections to the rear of the header pins. The use of a Dremel tool made quick work of mounting the 9-pin connector in the case. The Comsys serial board will fit inside the case as the pictures show. The easiest way to insulate the board is just to wrap it in electrical tape. You can then button up the case, fire up your favorite terminal program, and see if it works. Don't forget your port settings will be "9600-8-N-1" with the stock FON firmware.

Flashing the DD-WRT firmware is simple with the added serial port. I followed the guide found here at the DD-WRT WIKI. The baud rate setting will need to be changed to 115200 after flashing to DD-WRT. The screenshot on the right is of the Windows HyperTerminal program and shows the command-line login screen after the DD-WRT flash. Also note the screenshot shows the "cpuinfo" of the La Fonera.

The modifications to the La Fonera router turn what would be a very limited piece of hardware into something that is usable. The device is limited by its single ethernet port, but I intend to mainly use mine for creating a wireless bridge.