Project "VanAssistant" - Setting up the Teltonika RUTX50

By Rob Litjens

The what?

Ok. The Teltonika RUTX50 is an industrial grade router with good, very good characteristics for a CamperVan.

I have choosen this one because:

  • 5G network availlable
  • Two sim slots
  • Good Wifi Coverage
  • Has 4 lan ports
  • Running on OpenWRT (!)
  • Several specific packages like TravelMate, MQTT and more
  • Power range from 9 to 50V, which means you can connect straight to campervan power (with a fuse off course.)

Next to that, I could buy a new one at a good price. Cable for the Van came from Conrad.

I still need to find a good external antenna. Any Ideas? Poynting

If you open the box of the router you will find the router, a box with a network cable, a card with two Sim Adapters and a tool, a GPS mouse, a power adapter 12v/1,5a, two wifi antennas and four mobile adapters.

To get it starting I think it is a good advise to place a sim in slot one. So i used the tool to open SIM 1. The plastic lid that came out has place to use one of both adapters from the card. I need to use the NANO one. Be carefull: the gold plated part of the SIM must be pointing to the upper side. Otherwise you will need surgery on your device to remove it and place it correct (I needed this).

Next step for me was to connect the laptop, network cable, connect poweradapter to a wall outlet and watched what happened.

Nothing… :)

Nothing? not really. When i switched my Anker Adapter to the primary USB-C port my ethernet network came up. All is set to default values in the 192.168.1.0/24 network which means the router is on 192.168.1.1.

Login goes easy… Take a photo of the back of the RUTX50 where the username and password are located. Use them to login when you go to http://192.168.1.1. Type a new password twice and the username and passwor is set to yours.

A wizzard opens. I choose to keep it basic and sync Date and Time with my browser. The router detects that I am in the Amsterdam Region. For the time etc he is right, but people do know that I am not living there. I press next. I will change the LAN configuration in such a way that it does not hurt my local network. I decide to go for 192.168.221.254 for the router. I also change the DHCP scope to 192.168.221.10-100, so that i have place to assign my RPI a static IP and probably some other devices as well. The next page of the wizzard is the page with the APN. I needed to look it up..

For your convenience: the list is under additional information.

The next page of the wizzard is for Wifi. I changed the defaults to match my requirements. On the last page of the wizzard I disabled the RMS settings and pressed Finish. The router will be rebooting.

Updating and Additional package installation

I already said this is one of the reasons I wanted to use this router. It is easy to install packages like travelmate. I will do this after the needed firmware updates.

In the menu of the Router go to System => Firmware => select Update Firmware. If you select Server it will pull the firmware from the Teltonika site. After validation you need to press proceed to start upgrading the firmware. This can take a minute or so…

You should also do this for the modem firmware. So: System => Firmware => Update Firmware => Update from Server & Firmware type Internal Modem and press Update. A warning about unavailability of the internet is appearing. I think it is normal.

After this, I wanted to install TravelMate, but it disapeared from the package installer. I will find out why and install it. I read that it will take one antenna, which will reduce the speed of your WLAN. Not sure if i want this at this moment. My SIM is having unrestricted internet (indeed till FUP). So I will leave this one for a future post.

My next blog

My next blog will be: VanAssistant: Setting up MQTT and Zigbee - Prepare the Router - Setup the Raspberry Pi to use MQTT - setup some sensors.. - Install the Zigbee Stick

I hope I can do this from Sankt GallenKirch, but I am there to Snowboard, Ski and walk… so dont sue me when it is not there next week.

Aditional Information

  • (TravelMate)[https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/wifiextenders/travelmate]
  • (APN settings dutch providers)[https://www.iculture.nl/tips/apn-instellingen-iphone-ipad-nederlandse-providers/]

Materials used in this post

  • Teltonika RUTX50
  • 12V cable for thr router