Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini Router board with MediaTek MT7986(Filogic 830),support Wi-Fi 6,2.5GbE

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R3/R3 Mini(MT7986)
87

This bad boy runs HOT!!!

You can say that again! My board reported 92°C on idle. Very much needs a heatsink.

89

Any update on when this will be a supported device on OpenWRT?

90

I also would like to know the status of official OpenWRT with this board. I see the BPI-R3 board is supported, at least in snapshot builds. I am wanting to replace my gl.inet slate plus with a wifi 6 and 2.5gbe board and this looks perfect. The gl.inet beryl ax is currently what I am looking to get, but if I can track the status of OpenWRT for this board I would prefer this because of the dual 2.5gbe and option for ssd network storage and 5G cellular. The only thing I would miss with this board that I would get with the beryl ax is a usb 3 port.

91

Perhapse use something like this:

M.2 NGFF NVME to USB 3.0 19pin Header Convert Card NGFF to 2 Port USB3.0 Expansion Card Transfer Adapter IDE 4PIN Power Supply https://a.aliexpress.com/_EHTT2B1

But need to check if it is supported in the used kernel.

92

?? Im not that concerned about it, and ur recomendation is wrong in lots of ways. bpi only support 2242, not 2280 that card would block 5g card, and probably the case. that header is for front io connectors, manually drilling and cutting a case to fit a usb port is way outside of what i want to do. the official case wouldnt work either, itd have to be wider.

94

@sinovoip Could you please fix the stock MTK driver EMMC image?

95

@sinovoip Any update on this? I’d like to start with the latest version rather than a version a few years old.

96

Bpi does not make upstream support. But if they release their dts it can be upstreamed (after small modify and testing). Basicly all drivers should be there from “big” R3.

Seem it’s there https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-R3MINI-OPENWRT-V21.02.3/blob/main/target/linux/mediatek/files-5.4/arch/arm64/boot/dts/mediatek/mt7986a-bananapi-bpi-r3mini-emmc.dts (+nand)

But this have to be done by someone having the board

97

thanks for sharing, i’ll look into getting the board.

98

I would like to get one of these and use a Quectel RM520N-GL. Though, I am really waiting for the BPI-R4.

Will the BPI-R3 Mini be able to use the Quectel RM520N-GL modem to the modem’s fullest capacity?

I currently have the RPI-R3. not mini, and it works good, though, as I’m told, the Quectel RM520N-GL modem would be “crippled”, not available to use it’s full capacity on the BPI-R3, sigh…

99

Why good on the R3mini and crippled on the R3?

100

Any actually using the ASIA RF AW7916-NPD?

Well it works. But wonky. It sometimes conflicts with the on board 5GHz . When using both one tends to stop functioning.

101

Perhaps I misunderstand, but the “regular” R3 uses old PCIe and USB? Is the R3 Mini better in this regard?

102

I am going from this reply to the R3 Mini:

103

Both using mt7986 soc,why should pcie/usb be different…only routing of pcie lanes and usb3 to the slots can be different…

104

Thanks for this information. So, they would both under perform for the modem’s full needs? No need for me to get the R3 Mini then, thanks.

Will the BPI-R4 be any better?

105

This is the routing i mean…if r3 mini has usb3 routed to mpcie/m.2 slot it may be better. R3 has only usb2 on the mpcie slot,m.2 has pcie only.

But this is no different pcie version/speed,only what busses are connected to the connectors…

Btw. I have changed my uboot repo so that it creates emmc image template (bootchain till uboot,no rootfs or linux) for r3 and r4

Maybe anyone can try the bpi-r3_emmc.img.gz on r3 mini. I guess uboot will need additional changes for r3 mini for peripherals,but basic bootup should work.

Edit: noticed that this release uses wrong end-offset of gpt partition,not bad because this partition is only used to prevent overwrite and have same partition count as sdcard,but fixed anyway now

2 Likes
106

i prepared with @ericwoud a basic r3mini linux…maybe anyone with the board can test it?

make sure booting the “conf-emmc-mini” config from fit

edit: added version var to my uboot which can be set in uenv.txt to load the right conf

107

I would be happy to test it but need some more detailed instructions on how to proceed.

THANKS!

108

Boot r3mini from nand and unpack + flash bpi-r3_emmc.img.gz to emmc user partition and flash bpi-r3_emmc_bl2.img to boot0 partition…then try to boot from emmc. Maybe you need to set partitionconfig to mark emmc as bootable

For bl2 and partconf you can look into my writeemmc function

Fip is already part of image and can be skipped when flashing image file (unpack first and put to usb and load from it)

If this works you can try to boot kernel itb you can compile from my kernel repo.

setenv bootconf "conf-emmc-mini"
fatload usb 0:1 $loadaddr bpi-r3.itb
bootm $loadaddr#$bootconf

Bootconf selects this from the fit image.

Maybe load initrd…you can also use some of commands i put in uboot environment,but they are not yet changed for r3mini. You can also add an initrd to the fit config (see disabled line).

Edit: i see i have still an error in emmc image creation as there bl2 should not be written to first partition…this breaks gpt…i fix this the start pipeline again

Done,pls use binaries here: Release Build for branch 2023-10-bpi (2023.10) · frank-w/u-boot · GitHub