mtpoe

PoE port control for MikroTik boards running OpenWrt (ATtiny V2/V3, SAMD20 V4). Provides per-port force — power without 802.3af/at negotiation — which the standard PSE-PD path does not cover.

Supported boards

Board, protocol and SPI device are auto-detected from /tmp/sysinfo/board_name (override with --board / --proto / --dev):

• rb-750p-pbr2 — V2, 4 ports, /dev/spidev0.2
• mikrotik,routerboard-960pgs — V3, 4 ports, /dev/spidev0.2
• mikrotik,rb5009upr — V4, 8 ports, /dev/spidev2.0

Installation

Build the OpenWrt package yourself (see BUILD.md) and install the resulting .apk. It is unsigned, so --allow-untrusted is required:

apk add --allow-untrusted ./mtpoe-0.1.0-r1.apk

Requires kmod-spi-dev (pulled in as a dependency). On first boot a uci-defaults script creates /etc/config/mtpoe with every port set to auto.

Commands

mtpoe status                # firmware, voltage, temperature, all ports
mtpoe show fw|voltage|temp  # a single reading
mtpoe port                  # all ports and their state
mtpoe port <N>              # a single port (1-based)
mtpoe port <N> <mode>       # set a port
mtpoe apply                 # apply the configuration from UCI
mtpoe probe <cmd> [b1] [b2] # read a raw SPI register (debug)
mtpoe version

Global options: --json (machine-readable instead of text), --dev, --uci-key, --proto, --board, --verbose.

Port modes

• off (0) — port off
• auto (2) — standard 802.3af/at; power only for a negotiating PD
• force (1) — power unconditionally, without negotiation; for passive or non-standard devices (e.g. a Reolink doorbell)

Ports are 1-based throughout (matching the chassis labels) — in the CLI, UCI and JSON.

Configuration (UCI)

/etc/config/mtpoe:

config poe
    option port1 'auto'
    option port2 'off'
    option port3 'force'
    ...

Values: off / auto / force or 0 / 1 / 2. mtpoe apply writes them to the controller (only changed ports, where the current state can be read back).

Notes

• V4 (RB5009): the admin state of all 8 ports cannot be read back (register 0x45 only covers 4 ports), so poe_config is null on V4 and apply writes every port. Live per-port status and current work normally.
• Persistence: the controller stores port states across reboots and power loss — ports are active before the OS starts. With force this means power is applied before OpenWrt is running.
• probe: sends a correctly framed command (CRC + retry) and shows the raw response in hex and decimal, without interpretation. Known brick opcodes (flash/reset) are refused without --force-dangerous.

Credits

• adron-s — original mtpoe_ctrl author
• prudy — RB5009UPr research and adaptations
• Sm00shed — maintainer of this Rust rewrite

License

GPL-2.0