BPI-R4 Pro design with MT7988, update version for BPI-R4, any good idea?

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4/BPI-R4 Pro(MT7988)
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When you expect these to be production ready? And the be19 cards? What’s the expected price point?

Cheers!

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I’m interested in the R4 but I have a few questions after seeing this:

  1. What’s the difference between the R4 and R4 Pro? Is it just 2.5Gig ports over 1Gig ports, and more of them?
  2. What is the ETA / planned release date for the pro?
  3. What price point is estimated for the pro?
  4. Are there any U1 case options available? (I’m looking to rack mount next to a switch).

Thanks, Kieran.

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@Betonmischer interesting they seem to have mounting points for the emi shield around the SoC now

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Looks awesome! Two nvme and 2.5gb eth is killer option for me

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Hi

Idea is very good but of course I have to complain :wink:

  1. Why only 8GB eMMC? eMMC chips are cheap and I guess place here 64/128GB could be possible → I dont want to pay my collegue for soldering new unit later :wink:
  2. Why only GPIO 26 pins? Not possible to use full 40 pins? Are we limited by MT7988A? Especially we could imagine to add some small display via SPI :slight_smile:
  3. Why not implement bleutooth remote console connection? Maybe as option. I guess no intererence with any GSM/WIFI
  4. Why only 2 mPCIe slots (BE1900)? I guess there is an option to use other WIFI modules working on lower voltage? Maybe one more slot for future purpose 2.4/5/6Ghz:) Also to avoid problems with heating on 12V WIFI modules…
  5. We have a lot of components here. Intressted in tests results how it works from performance view, each unit takes a small portion of memory, small portion of CPU… also high load with data transfer between 5G modemes to WIFI modules or to Ethernet/SFP etc. Are you sure not bottleneck on main board buses?
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Only this time make sure that everything works, so that there will not be a repeat like with the 2.5G PoE version - [BPI-R4] No link on 2.5G interface

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Dude be careful, they have a great track of record with 2.5G ETH boards so it may rather be “killed option” than “killer option” :upside_down_face:

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I see a possibility for another product tier, something like a BPI-R4 mini.

Two SFP+ 10G Maybe one RJ45 or RJ45 combo port, any speed (for administration) No wifi Fanless/large heatsink design

Basically the use-case is being a router, and just a router. Given the R4 specs, it would be quite capable in this role. Lack of wifi would limit the market, but the fanless design would be extremely appealing for the market that remains.

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what project are you want to do with this board?

Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro 1
Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro 1800×600 122 KB

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If the emmc will be great if 128GB

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Why not just use NVME at that point?

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Nvme not booting the OS

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Is is a bit more work to setup the bootchain and copy rootfs to nvme. Not just flash image to adcard and being guided through complete install process.

But basicly it is possible. I have my r3 working with rootfs+kernel on nvme. R4 is basicly same.

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Hi Frank Since I dont have much experience how to do it so I wish to get learn how to do it At least firest step on path

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You should discuss this in different/ new thread.

Here are some insights using my image/uboot:

No idea how to do with openwrt,but afaik openwrt has problems using the 8gb from current emmc (afaik because of overlayfs needs to be backed up on sysupgrade - please correct me if i’m wrong). There are several threads on expanding rootfs, but some are reported to not (more) working.

But with all os you can boot from emmc and use nvme as additional storage.

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I would still use it first as a router board but would probably end up playing with it as some sort of ingest station.

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I need it in Debian11 I dont use openwrt

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Ok,then you can try the guide above

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Hi everyone, I’ve come to this topic as a bananapi-R4 (and previously R64) user, and can I somewhat try to give a bit of advice based on my experience?

  1. Provide documentation! explain what SFP modules you’d need to get it working properly. There are many SFP modules out there, only a few of them would provide me what I want (having EEE on RJ45)
  2. be clear about the board’s limits: I tried to add 4 wifi PCIe cards using the lanes provided by R4, but ended up having not enough power on the 3.3V line. If I knew, I’d have thought of that before starting to buy all kinds of wifi chips, M.2 adapters etc. 3 cards is fine, it was simply a waste of money because of the board’s limits.
  3. thermal limits. While I see you’re exposing a lot of PCIe slots (and it’s beautiful for several projects), I honestly have my doubts about the thermal limits: imagine you’d put a 10W regular operation card in all slots (and most of them do these days), You’ll end up having a heat dissipation of almost 50W on one side, and 20W on the other. Regular desktop CPUs start from 65W and they have a 90mm fan … are you sure the MT7988A has enough features to let PCI ASPM do its job?
  4. the USB port: would it be possible to have a 2-port variant? or flip the port and add a USB-C with role switching / PD / embedded serial support?

These are all wild ideas, and I’ll probably end up buying the board anyway, but it would be cool if they (especially option 4) could be added …

EDIT fixed some layout / grammar options

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Hello Janpieter Sollie,

could you please share which Wi-Fi cards you have tested, and let us know which ones worked and which didn’t?

Thank YOU!