In particular the Omnima SKU16140 from
http://www.omnima.co.uk/store/catalog/Embedded-controller-p-16140.html

Operating System : Squidge 1.7
Booted from USB.
Serial connection – telnet available from JP2, 115000,N,1,8. (USB to serial from Omnima works in XP HyperTerminal but not Vista). Pin 1 on JP2 aligns with dot on connector
Default IP address: 192.168.1.1  Change in /etc/config/system
HTTP running by default.  Create index.html in /www
Package installer: opkg
Package Location: /www/squidge/packages

Resources:
http://openwrt.org/
http://www.linux-mips.org
http://squidge.sourceforge.net

Turn on an LED
root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/export
root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio0/direction
root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio0/value

Full explanation of the above and further details to be found at:
http://squidge.sourceforge.net/gpio/

We’re told to scn the sources from the relevant http site which will create a folder called squidge.
Do not run the installation as root as it wont work. You have to be some other user.
Further, the authors advise the use of slackware 12.1, the problem being you need some sort of p2p like bittorrent to get it. So I tried with Centos 5. The following had to be done.
When you follow the instructions the process of building an image will break by not being able to find a file.
cd to  openwrt and run

%make V=99

If you don’t use the flag then make will appear to hang. This is because you are being asked a question.
Before you get to this, a configuration screen will be shown enabling you to configure the packages which can be included in the build. 

The rest of the process should continue and resolve missing packages by connecting to the internet – though I noticed one such connection could not be established.