Banana Pi BPI-R3 OpenWRT image

[frank-w]

Can you try another model?

[autiboy (Caleb Z)]

I did. It worked with a team32 GB Class 10 sdcard. Thank you for the help!!

[WigglerAway]

I can boot from sd card and flash and boot from NOR following the instructions here: https://openwrt.org/toh/sinovoip/bananapi_bpi_r3_v1.0_v1.1#installation

But flashing to NAND or EMMC is not working. NAND will boot cycle but when switching over will then just boot to the shipping firmware. EMMC does not flash nor boot at all. When looking at /dev/mmcblk0 I can see no partition table exists. Can anyone offer some advise of how to debug/fix or will I need to get a serial console running to see uboot debug output?

[frank-w]

Serial console is needed to determine what exactly goes wrong…all other is speculative

[invisible789]

Hi everyone, I’ve just received my Banana Pi r3 and just getting started with it, serial console is ready and connected, sd card burnt is ready with latest Snapshot from official openwrt Just to confirm, i should boot from sd card and install to nand in bootloader menu? After it’s done, power off device, switch boot switch to boot from nand? That’s it?

Few questions

1. Latest Snapshot is good to go?
2. Will it update my bootloader as well?
3. Nand vs nor , anyone using it on nor , what’s performance difference? What’s preferred
4. Please mention any additional steps needed for process above?

Thanks everyone

[Lorem_amicus (Michael Fischer)]

Congratulation for choosing the R3!!!

As you can see, it can be tricky to install openwrt on BPI-R3:

[Solved] [BPI-R3] Unable to flash on eMMC

I have successfully installed the sdcard.img from OpenWrt Firmware Selector on my SD card, booted from it and selected the “Install bootloader, recovery and production to NAND” option in the boot menu via UART. The installation was successful. Booting from NAND, I can pick the “Install bootloader, recovery and production to eMMC” option in the boot menu. Upon selecting it however, I receive this message: PARTITION_CONFIG only exists on eMMC eMMC not detected Press ENTER to return to menu How…

But you can always fresh start from sd card again.

The 23.05.3 for R3 is some days out (2024-03-23). Do what you want, but I would not prefer the snapshot!

The questions you have are good! I’m also interested in …

[dangowrt (Daniel Golle)]

@invisible789

Latest Snapshot is good to go?

If you want to use the device in production right away and not be bothered with (rare) bugs in snapshot images, I’d recommend to use the OpenWrt 23.05.3 release instead which is known to be stable and work well on this device.

@invisible789

Will it update my bootloader as well?

Yes, choosing to install via the bootloader menu will write the bootloader to the target media (and this is needed. you cannot run vanilla OpenWrt with SinoVoip’s loader which lacks features for uImage.FIT and device-tree overlays).

@invisible789

Nand vs nor , anyone using it on nor , what’s performance difference? What’s preferred

SD vs NOR vs NAND vs eMMC installation

I’m the author of OpenWrt support for this device. While many users here may use this device as-is, it also serves as a reference platform for this SoC. As such the goal is to support as many potential uses of the SoC as possible, while for a final product one may never actually use all of them at once. Which storage option(s) you will want to use really depends on your individual use case. Each storage option is more than large enough to store a production and recovery system when using OpenW…

@invisible789

Please mention any additional steps needed for process above?

It’s important to mention that most problems users have been reporting with the installation process were due to faulty or bad microSD cards. If anything doesn’t work, try with a different microSD card.

Also be aware that all 4 dip switches for choosing the boot device (A, B) and chip-select on SPI (C) and MMC (D) bus need to be in the correct position for each step of the installation:

So “Don’t care” isn’t really true, you do need to care also about those.

[pidrila]

hello there! i got R3 and i cannot boot it from microsd card to flash it to emmc, i download openwrt-23.05.4-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-sdcard.img from openwrt site (ether snapshot or 23.05 release wont boot) burn it to microsd card using bpi-copy tools also tried to burn it using dd it doesn’t matter, jumper all in high (up) position and this is what i get output in console:

NOTICE:  BL2: v2.9(release):OpenWrt v2023-07-24-00ac6db3-2 (mt7986-sdmmc-ddr4)
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 22:14:18, Jul 15 2024
NOTICE:  WDT: Cold boot
NOTICE:  WDT: disabled
OTICE:  CPU: MT7986 (2000MHz)
NOTICE:  EMI: Using DDR4 settings
plex R/W mem test passed
ERROR:   MSDC: Command has timed out with cmd=8, arg=0x1aa
ERROR:   MSDC: Command has timed out with cmd=17, arg=0x0
ERROR:   Partition 'fip' not found
ERROR:   FIP boot source initialization failed with -2
PANIC at PC : 0x000000000020533c

but if i insert sd card to pc i can see the fip partition there

and if i burn snapshot it says something about gpt partition error so i guess im stuck there but i can boot if all jumpers in low position then i get U-boot menu but not much to see there i can’t flash or install anything from there

[pidrila]

also the wiki Getting Started with BPI-R3 - Banana Pi Wiki mentions something about some kind of additional packages to have to be put in the usb stick in order to flash to emmc packages like mtk-bpi-r3-SD-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img, mtk-bpi-r3-NAND-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin, bl2_emmc.img, mtk-bpi-r3-EMMC-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img so what it all about i don’t really get it

[Lorem_amicus (Michael Fischer)]

Install OpenWrt (Snapshot) on BPI-R3

You need the USB serial adapter and puTTY just to see the debug console output and interact with the boot menu. Everything needed for installation is contained in the sdcard image. So, step by step: You need the USB end of the adapter plugged to your computer. connect RX, TX and GND signals of the adapter to the Debug UART of the BananaPi R3 download *sdcard.img.gz file decompress (gunzip) *sdcard.img.gz file write *sdcard.img to microSD card insert microSD card in BananaPi R3 board strart pu…

[pidrila]

yeah i guess this is what i did but it get me this also im not sure about this

put switches of the BananaPi into position to boot from SD card and select NAND flash with the SPI-chipselect switch

how did i select boot from sd card and NAND at the same time or this “spi-chipselect” is not what jumpers doing?

[pidrila]

or i get this (if i set up switches like - A=1 B=0 C=1 D=1)

but this is not looks like the right choose because there is no option to install anything

i get it that it suppose to be like this

[frank-w]

Try mainline openwrt, i’m not sure vendor image can install it the same way.

The wiki page (Getting started) you’ve linked above tells manual steps from linux.

[Lorem_amicus (Michael Fischer)]

Here you get the mainline version: https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/

[pidrila]

thanx for the reply guys,it seems that it doesn’t really matter where you download img from cause it’s all lead in the same url after all

idk maybe i doing something wrong writing img to sd card (i tried dd or bpi-copy it doesn’t matter)

[frank-w]

Bpi openwrt (21.02) does not result in same url…

Afaik boot from sd card boot with nand is 1-1-1-1 for boot switches. B=0 results booting from nand…so independ on what you have on sdmmc you do not boot from it

https://wiki.fw-web.de/doku.php?id=en:bpi-r3:uboot#bootmedium_selection

[White (White Shark)]

Hello, I am using version 21.02 and I want to ask if there is a newer version and where and which one to download specifically. I use (SPIM-NAND) Thank you

[f11]

https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.5&target=mediatek%2Ffilogic&id=bananapi_bpi-r3

[White (White Shark)]

I still have the old version after the update

[frank-w]

You have to install the mainline openwrt from sdcard the first time …sysupgrade from bpi image is not possible