TP-Link WL-740Nv4 is a great piece of hardware for hackers. It’s a low end home WIFI router that can run OpenWRT. It’s based on Atheros AR9331 SoC (which is hacking friendly as there is a lot of information about it on Internet), has MIPS CPU clocked at 400MHz, 4MB of flash, 32MB of RAM (clocked at 400MHz). What’s most important, however, is it’s price - you can easily buy it for about 16 USD here in Poland.

The project

I had to create cheap Ethernet based thermometer. While you can buy commercial products like this, they tend to cost more than 300 USD here in Poland. That’s strange, providing it’s so simple to create such device. I guess there’s not much demand on such devices and low production scale makes price high. more ...