Banana Pi BPI-R4 BPI-BE14 Wi-Fi7 NIC module

As far as I know, the OpenWrt One PCB sample has just been received, and it’s taking a lot of time to verify it. BPI has dedicated their efforts to contributing to the community, and I believe we should encourage them for their hard work. :grinning:

1 Like

I also think that bpi helps openwrt team here…i’m not sure that this slows down anything for r4 or be14 here…be19 yes,but be thankful it gets produced again.

i’m focused on router boards with multiple interfaces and sfp for fibre support. So openwrt one is less interesting for me. But i appreciate the work that is done from bpi and openwrt guys for the community.

Btw. Because of openwrt one we have nvme support for filogic (r3,r3mini,r4). Without johns work we still don’t have this driver…

As said above there some work to do to get r4 and the wifi board(s) working. It will be great if some more people get a wifi board to help getting it running in mainline.

2 Likes

If I can get one of those early 30-40 boards, I’m happy to help.

When you say mainline you mean Linux kernels 6.1 and 6.6, right? And porting the work from mediatek’s 5.4 kernel?

Mainline is currently 6.9-rcX :slight_smile:

I have been helping @frank-w with the wifi work, but I don’t have a wifi card. If I was given a wifi card, I think we would make more progress. If there are any wifi 7 cards going, please put me on the list.

Profitable for whom? (if I may ask)

If you want to fund work on the WiFi driver, it is likely there are people willing to work on it, given they are provided with documentation and a working reference implementation. Also note that 802.11be is not really ready for the show yet in hostapd/wpa_supplicant which barely support Wi-Fi 6E features at this point. So it’s a bit more than just the driver, because specification (and regulatory) demands for the 6 GHz spectrum can’t be met by just treating it the same as 5 GHz (sending beacons or probe-request is prohibited in 6 GHz band, it must be used as a side-band for an existing 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz AP. And that’s just one example…).

So if you want to volunteer to make things happen faster, please go ahead and work on cfg80211/mac80211 infrastructure support for MBO, or work on 11ax or 11be features in hostapd/wpa_supplicant.

Anyway, I’m mostly busy on other things (not related to the R4 WiFi module but not related to the OpenWrt One either).

There is a new info about the release of the board:

https://twitter.com/sinovoip/status/1790331961963401630

:face_with_monocle:

I wouldn’t say it is very informative … but better than nothing!

3 Likes

Can we get some more information about tx power of this module?

I would rephrase: maybe there is at least some information about the module that a lot of people are waiting for?

Simply no.

We can just hope that maybe Simon finds some time to hand out more information once the card releases in public sale.

Though, once it is available, first-time buyers can and will probably share additional information, like power usage or the antennas they use.

I can hardly wait to get one of these modules. :slight_smile:

BPI-R4-NIC-BE14_report(20240613).pdf (273.8 KB)

There are some news about the WiFi board. I asked the devs to share the news on forum but they were very nervous about it because they can’t promise the release any time soon. They have to send the first batch to MTK and other partners for testing. If things go smoothly they’ll probabily release for purchase in early August.

The price of BE14 is probabily gonna be around 504RMB ($70), with 6 antennas (SMA150mm *3,SMA 230mm *3).

These are just rumors. Nothing can be confirmed yet. I’m just another customer eager to buy their products :grinning:. Hope the devs won’t get mad at me for posting here :rofl:.

4 Likes

Hopefully they will not sell it with antennas - I plan to install external antennas for dump aps in special outdoor enclosures so this is a waste of material in my case… Thanks for sharing!

BPI-BE14 WIFI 7 NIC is coming~

with MediaTek MT7995AV , support latest WiFi7 and IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be standards. on the 2.4GHz&5GHz&6GHz bands,BPI-BE14 delivers exceptional performance and stable connectivity.

https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-R4/BananaPi_BPI-R4-NIC-BE14

5 Likes

Great News Boss

Can we see new update of Sinovoip For BPI-R4 firmware for router system SD card? the one on site is 2023 …

1 Like

Why do you want a banana pi firmware update?

Did you not use the Open WRT snapshot?

https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=SNAPSHOT&target=mediatek%2Ffilogic&id=bananapi_bpi-r4

I think the openwrt people are already on the work for a working version. As a “most time end user” I wouldn’t spend the time for checking after the banana pi firmware version … .

But it is on you! :wink:

For me, the interesting thing starts AFTER the release of the NIC Board! The time when the price will be acceptable. And more important: after the community in this chat gives a positive feedback for the official open wrt implemantation.

Until that, I have much fun with the R3! :slightly_smiling_face:

What about Firmware of wifi which one you will install on OpenWrt ?

Becuase with Banana BPI openWrt wifi package built in

It depends what you want:

If banana pi release a new firmware update for the wifi board, and for some reason you can not wait for the “officail” openwrt implementation! Then install it! But as you can see, this banana pi firmware it is not often updated. As I understand it right, it is the proof of concept.

Dangowrt wrote about this version. It is VERY special! In relation to the wifi 7 NIC board you will may be drive better at the first time (But even that I can guarantee you). But in a long time view you will loose. Becase the diver support for hardware should be better in official open wrt.

The best is watching this chat! Looking for posts from dangowrt, frank-w and the other who develop or support with patches … I know the last posts of frank are not very positive! But with the time it will be solved (hopefully).

The question is, did you need in the next months a solution? Buying, trying or waiting …

because of that dude I asked SinoVoip to update their firmware or add it on the offical one where if you searched on packages you can’t find WiFi package for R4 on offical OpenWrt packages

So if they dropped their new wifi board mostly you need to go to use the old firmware 2023 of SinoVoip

Which I don’t like it but mostly we need becuase all test conducted by SinoVoip on old Firmware 2023 OpenWrt 21.3

1 Like

“something” appeared on aliexpress :wink: