BPI-R4 and BPI-BE14 Wi-Fi7 NIC module

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4/BPI-R4 Pro(MT7988)
1

Hi all,

I just got this module for my BananaPi R4. But I notice few things using Kernel 6.19.x on my Debian OS:

  1. From tine to time the module response with:
[84500.371631] mt7996e 0000:01:00.0: Message 001a0034 (seq 12) timeout

To get the module back I need to power off the router and then power on.

The firmware version is the one from Debian firmware-mediatek:

[84459.396429] mt7996e 0000:01:00.0: WM Firmware Version: ____000000, Build Time: 20251111003337
[84459.436183] mt7996e 0000:01:00.0: DSP Firmware Version: ____000000, Build Time: 20251111002821
[84459.455121] mt7996e 0000:01:00.0: WA Firmware Version: ____000000, Build Time: 20251111003249
  1. I’m getting only one Wireless interface with mt7996e: wlan0. I was able to create 2 more interfaces with:
sudo iw dev wlan0 interface add wlan1 type __ap
sudo iw dev wlan0 interface add wlan2 type __ap

Change the MAC addresses and run hostapd for one frequency (2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz) on each interface:

sudo hostapd -B /etc/hostapd/hostapd-wlan0.conf
sudo hostapd -B /etc/hostapd/hostapd-wlan1.conf
sudo hostapd -B /etc/hostapd/hostapd-wlan2.conf

But is strange board shows only 2.4GHz LED on even the other AP are vizible on my phone.

Is normal bevavior or there is a bug in driver and/or Firmware?

2

Led handling is broken after MLO patches. Reported multiple times to felux,but got no response

3

wireless-next (7.1) will have a lot of fixes… @EasyNet suggest you copy the firmware files from the mtk-openwrt-feeds

4

Thanks for suggestion. Looks a little bit complicated to get the firmware from mtk-openwrt-feed. I will take a look. But regarding the number of interfaces available in system, is normal to have only one present and not 3?

5

After mlo patches you have only 1 interface where all bands can be used. My current way is to create vietual interfaces (i used managed type)

6

Thanks for info. Similar like I do it?

Because the documentation for this card is still the old style using 3 independent interfaces.

7

https://www.fw-web.de/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=en:bpi-r4:start#mlo

yes, this is the way i know so far…but only 1 led works with this way

1 Like
8

Thanks a lot for yiur Wiki page!