Tbh, I’m not interested in the 6 antenna version. I was looking forward to purchasing a BPI-R4 so long as a 14 or 10-antenna version of the Wifi 7 module was available, since that would make the BPI-R4 basically one of the best APs hardware-wise on the market for insane value. That is not the case for the 6 antenna version which gimps out on the crucial 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, and does not allow us to test Mediateks claims about 4T5R on the 6 GHz band.
I will continue to hold off getting a BPI-R4 until the 14 or 10 antenna version of this module is released with the full-fat support for 5 GHz and 6 GHz spacial streams.
Imho we need to do first tests before it will be made public. Currently i have the problem that only 2.4g and 6g device is created…5g is missing…i guess this is a firmware issue.
I don’t know timeline so far…maybe firmware issue is fixed soon,but last week was chinese new year and there was no further information on this. I don’t think this is hardware issue so it can be fixed in software which mostly needs less time as driver is already upstream
I don’t think, this is how it works here! “You” have to take off the end customer view!
To have the hardware is just half of the journey. This means not very much!
Now is the time for dangowrt, frank-w and all the others who work on the software …
And it looks like mediatek and bananapi still also has software work to do!
If you compare time which was needed for a stable R3 you can estimate the time for R4:
There was a comment of a guy which is still in my mind. He said about the relese date of the Wifi Nic boards something like “this is to late”.
It looks for me that some people are not here because of openwrt. They are here because of wanting a high end router board (which is not wrong reason!). But the expectation to get this even faster than the common routers producers are able to, is unrealistic … but I understand the excitement
However, it’s a snapshot of OpenWrt main, not a stable release, release candidate, or even a release branch snapshot. Those won’t happen until the next major OpenWrt series branches off from main, which might not happen until 2025, due OpenWrt developers on the mailing list choosing to go with a 6.6 kernel for the next release instead of a 6.1 kernel. The last time they did kind of thing (scrapping their previous work and master and skipping an LTS kernel version) that was in 2020 and it ended up delaying the release about a year. Notice how the version number went from 19.07 to 21.02, with no 20.xx release.
Is there a case design that uses patch antenna instead of dipoles?
When using patch antenna, it would probably be best for the 14 antenna design so that the various patch antennas can be placed with exactly the right spacing and arrangement to optimize the RF pattern.
It is far more difficult to get dipole antennas arranged for the best RF pattern as the dipole positions are not fixed and can move a bit.
For better RF reception, would it not be better to put some shielding round the RF components?
Thanks !!!
I could swear I’ve looked three times for the snapshot of R4.
shame on me …
