The LibreRouter has the capacity of powering devices that you connect to it over ethernet cable with a feature called “PoE Passthrough”.
PoE passthrough works as folows when activated:
- If the LibreRouter gets its power supply through the DC connector then both ethernet ports act as PoE power supplies.
- If the LibreRouter gets its power supply through an Ethernet connector port then the other ethernet port acts as a PoE power supply.
The ethernet power supplies voltage are the same as the input. So if the device is powered from a 24V supply then the PoE passthrough is of 24V.
There are two ways of enabling the PoE passthrough depending on the LibreRouter board version:
- The latest version have a switch near the power ports to activate the PoE passthrogh. It can also be activated through software config.
- The old version can be activated only through software activation (see below software activation).
BE VERY CAREFUL when enabling this functionality, as it will make power run over the ethernet cable that you connect to it, and if the device that is on connected to the other side is not POE capable, you might end up burning its network adaptor.
Software activation
LibreRouterOs version 1.4 or newer
Add the following config in /etc/config/lime-node.
config generic_uci_config gpio_pass
list uci_set 'system.poe_passthrough.value=1'
and then add the following line to /etc/rc.local:
devmem 0x1804006c 32 $(($(devmem 0x1804006c 32) | 0x2))
and finally run lime-config and reboot.
LibreROuterOs version 1.3 or older
To do so, connect to the device over SSH, and add the following lines to the file `/etc/rc.local:
echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo "out" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio1/direction
echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio1/value
and reboot.
