Banana Pi R3 - Serial debug connect OK, but what next?

So I’ve successfully connected my shiny new R3 over serial debug pins … but what now?

Switches are A U B D C U D D so I’m booting from NAND right ? It seems to boot to Openwrt and I can do stuff but I don’t think any changes I make will persist.

  1. What do I need to do to get it working in normal mode, booting from emmc and running openwrt with persistent storage? Is it already installed or do I need to actually install it to emmc before it will work at all? Can I get a serial connection when booting this way?

  2. Next I want to possibly update Openwrt. I’m pretty sure how to do that, but do the bpi openwrt images work without any issues or are there bugs? What’s the advantages of updating?