Inside a cheap burner WiFi router/repeater

This thing was ridiculously cheap (less than £10 shipped from eBay). Literally to the point where it can be treated as a burner device and abandoned after it has served its purpose. It's a dual purpose WiFi repeater that can either be used to extend an existing WiFi network or convert a wired LAN (Local Area Network) into a WiFi one for convenient access. Some honest uses would be extending coverage in a home with thick walls, where the original WiFi router couldn't quite reach all areas. Or perhaps adding WiFi functionality to an older wired router. Some nefarious uses might be to steal WiFi from a location by extending its reach or diverting around RF blocking obstacles. Or perhaps adding a WiFi link to an existing wired network for access from outside a building. I'm not sure how easy it is for a network administrator to detect rogue nodes like that. In the past I used to carry a tiny pocket router for various purposes. When travelling with work one needs to maintain a connection to the 'net... This unit is based on a Qualcomm dedicated router chip with flash ROM for firmware and storage of settings, and a chunk of RAM for faster program execution. The setup menu at 192.168.16.1 is very basic but functional. It does not have a visible firmware update option. It's possible that it uses a very basic version of openWRT. Security with something like this is a completely random variable. You're basically putting a node of unknown security status onto your network. The cybersecurity experts can indicate how much of a risk that really is. With secure communications to critical sites the risk is probably low. Various things come to mind like substituting fake sign in pages to a few key sites to harvest passwords. I'll guess that the mystery missing chip might possibly be for LAN isolation. Given the unknown electrical separation of the power supply transformer, maybe that would be beneficial. The unit could be considered as a cheap source of the main module. A 5V powered router with four antenna connections. The case is actually pretty solid, with good physical separation between the power supply PCB and the router PCB, with plenty of ventilation despite just dissipating 1 to 1.5W of power in use. To find these on ecommerce platforms like eBay, just search for WiFi repeater. If you enjoy my videos, the easiest way to support the channel is to subscribe and enjoy watching more videos. You can also help keep the channel independent from the quirks of the YouTube algorithm by supporting the channel on Patreon, which lets me link to my content on other platforms if YouTube uses the ban-hammer (again!) I release content for critique and feedback on Patreon as soon as it has been made. https://www.patreon.com/bigclive Alternatively, for a single contribution you can use PayPal:- https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/bigclive #ElectronicsCreators