Following instructions are provided without any warranty, and may even get you in trouble legally. The instructions are provided for testing, and should be use with care. We (including commentators) are not responsible for any damage to your device(s).
For this Method #1. You have to be okay with using channel 12-14 for 2.4ghz. Method #2 on the bottom requires no nvram settings and allows for better carving, but requires more manual work.
One of the biggest pain points of AiMesh is the inability to change channels for the mesh nodes so for example if your main router is using channel 6 and 36, all the mesh nodes will too. You probablly read online how you can ssh to the mesh node and change the channel but this never ends up working because the mesh nodes always sync with the main router and going back to the main router channels. There is a way to trick it by making your main router do channels that the mesh nodes can not do, when this happens the mesh nodes default to auto channel.
This was tested with a RT-AX86U as the main router and XD5's as the mesh nodes. You do not need firmware which allows jffs script at startup but it helps if you want to preserve settings after a reboot. Also you can not ever make wireless changes in the gui as it will most likley overrite any of the changes you make.
First ssh into your main router and change the country code. This removes all the channel restrictions by picking the wildcard region code so you have access to all regions
nvram set location_code=#a
nvram commit
service restart_wirelessWhat you can do now is set channe 12 on your main router and reset wifi
nvram set wl0_chanspec=12
nvram commit
service restart_wirelessAfter doing this you will see your main router be on channel 13, but the mesh nodes which do now have the location code #a set will not be able to set 12 and they will switch to auto picking a random channel. You will have for example All mesh nodes on Channel 1 and the Main router on Channel 13.
Lets say you want to make another mesh node on channel 12 so you have even spread of nodes on channel 1 and 12, simply ssh in to the node and do the same steps. To make the changes persistant make the above commands in a jffs script in "/jffs/scripts/init-start"
Since 2.4ghz for most contries is 1-12 and only exception is 13/14, there is no way to carve it out better with definition, but if you go to one of the aimesh nodes after they are on a seperate channel of the main router and restart the wireless it will auto find another channel since the main router is noisy, the aimesh nodes are noisy, and might pick something like channel 6. As for 5ghz we can look up which channels each country uses like for example https://w.wol.ph/2015/08/28/maximum-wifi-transmission-power-country/
For example IS does now allow 100 and anything above 140 so we can set one aimesh node to IS so it cant pick up 100. We can see TW does not allow any channels under 56 so we can set one node to TW. When you set channel 136 on the main router, one node with IS will have to pick a channel that is not 136 and anything over 140. The TW node can not pick anything in under 56.
IS a 36, 40, 44, 48
52, 56, 60, 64
104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 140
TW a 56, 60, 64,
100-140
149, 153, 157, 161
The result would be 136 on the main, 36 on the IS mesh node, and 56 on the TW. using 80mhz we have zero overlap.
ENJOY!
First set the Main Router to whatever you want as your main channel. Lets say 1.
SSH into each AImesh one by one.
Run the following command changing the channel to what you want.
service restart_wireless; wl -i wl0.1 channel 6; wl -i wl0.1 channel
Quickly after keep pasting the following command into the ssh console
wl -i wl0.1 channel 6; wl -i wl0.1 channel
Do this until you see your target channel stick. You will see how AImesh is fighting to switch the channel but with enough spams of the previous command it will stick!!
If you were unable to get it to stick with your channel, retry from step one. Do this for each Aimesh node.