Been wanting to upgrade the firmware on my TP-LINK Archer C8 router.  It was pretty old and having some problems, and I was also worried about security.  To top it off my neighbor quite a ways down the block mentioned she could see our (unlocked) WiFi from her house.  I do this on purpose, since I live in a relatively sparse neighborhood with friendly neighbors.  But maybe it was time to lock that down too.  What could go wrong?

I double checked everything, downloaded the correct file and sent it to the router over a wired connection.  I waited and waited and nothing came back. The unit was warm to the touch.  Not good.  Finally I power cycled it and nada. No lights, no nothing.  Bricked.

Ran off to Fry’s and bought the latest TP-LINK C90 since I couldn’t imagine going for too long without WiFi in this house.  It all went fairly well.  Decided to lock down the WiFi with a password.  Tried to figure out how many devices I would have to deal with. Pads, phone and PCs came to mind.  Maybe a dozen.  I’ll take care of my own and let the rest of the family deal with their own devices.

Oops.  Forgot the thermostats.  No big deal.  Uh oh.  IP surveillance cameras I have been playing around with.  Now they are cut off and I can’t even log in to them to set the new WiFi password.  They need to be taken down and plugged in to the router.  Damn.

No way was I going to take down these two cameras. I guessed I could have turned off the password for a while and reset them and then turned it back on, but that might mean resetting everything else I had just spent an hour typing passwords into.  I could run a long Ethernet cable.  Nah.  Or I could use this old power line Ethernet adapter I had!  And it worked! Sorta.  These powerline adapters need to be on the same circuit.  So I hauled a long extension cord out to the back yard to get the second one to work.

Of ourse the crazy Chinese software on the cameras got confused and had to be reset a few times before it worked.  Set some fixed IP addresses and maybe 4 or 5 hours later I was done upgrading my router firmware.

Oh, forgot the printer.  Had to log it in too.  I’m wondering what other devices might need to be logged in.  Ah, my Chromecasts.  Better go check them now.