Have you been able to do anything useful with the routers like flash new firmware to turn them into embedded dev boards? I suppose those things have rather specialised peripherals, not the GPIO ports most people want, although the I2C port might be useful. I saw a lot of discarded routers in e-waste which is a shame. Also they're power hungry as they get warm with use and require 12V at a couple of amps, compared to modern dev boards. Oh well, what a waste.

Hey ken, about using the router as a development board, for example, I believe it's not the best option, even though I was able to control the GPIO, extract and inspect the data from the external flash memory... it's like you already mentioned, there are development boards nowadays that consume much less power and are cheaper and with many communication and I/O features (digital and ADC).

I updated the firmware of this router using an open source project called OpenWRT, I didn't think of trying to customize a firmware to run on this card, but you gave me an idea now. My intention was just to understand a bit about the interfaces exposed on these routers and evaluate their security aspect. Soon I will post other projects related to these hacks on routers and other devices. Thank you

Ok that's what I thought. Looking forward to seeing any hacks you come up with. One thing that would be nice is to use dd-wrt or OpenWRT to turn a router into a wireless bridge, i.e. extend a wired LAN via WiFi. Only a few routers have included this as an option.