Dissapointment continues

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4(MT7988)
1

So, the misery and disappointment of this company’s utterly, catastrophically, nuclear holocaust grade bad communication continues…

I received my WiFi7 NIC about a month or so ago, but didnt have time to play with it. That’s OK. I finally got a chance, so I dutifully assembled it into it’s case, which went well (if a bit fiddly, which I can live with).

Having done that, I hopped onto the wiki to find the firmware (I want to run OpenWRT), and I found this page:

https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R4#OpenWRT_MTK_MP4.0_wifi_SDK_wifi_driver_for_BE14000_Wifi_Card

Which lists two “Release images”.

Ok, Lets read…

Version 4.0: Kernel version: 5.4.271 MTK vendor’s MP4.0 wifi image package name: BPI-R4-BE1350-WIFI_MP4_0-SDK-20240620， fixed MP3.1 wifi SDK wifi route performance issue.

Yay! a fixed thing, this is good! My hope started to return…

  MTK vendor’s MP4.0 wifi driver sourcecode can’t be open source. only release Image.
  (support Quectel RM500U-CN & RM520N-GL 5G Modules, EC25 EM05 4G Modules)

Wait. WHAT?!

I BOUGHT THIS PIECE OF CRAP BECAUSE ITS SUPPOSED TO BE 100% OPEN SOURCE. WTAF?

I dont recall seeing this dire warning last time i looked at the wiki.

What the hell guys?

Anyway, it gets worse…

So I download the image (what choice do I have? the 3.1 image clearly has a performance bug according to the same page).

Pop it on an SD card, and, to its credit, it booted!

I logged in, my hope once again starting to soar…

I clicked on the wireless menu…

Wait - why can I not choose any options for encryption? whats going on?

Hmmm… What’s this “MTK” menu then?

Ohhh, I see - not only do I have a proprietary driver, I also have a proprietary user interface for configuring the wifi. How fucking wonderful.

Ah well. I’ve already spent hundreds of pounds on this piece of crap. I might as well try it out, right?

The “MTK” web interface is absolute shit. Everything you do makes it pop up some kind of “Please wait” dialogue that doesn’t ever actually finish spinning round and round. Refreshing the page “fixes” that, but gives no indication of wether “whatever it is doing” has worked or not.

After quite a lot of slow, frustrating, ANNOYING, trial and error, I finally get the thing to work.

Apparently, my perfectly fine WiFi6 phone can’t see the thing, nor can my kids.

In fact, the ONLY device I have that can see this piece of shit is my AX200 equipped debian PC.

Ok, lets do a side by side basic test by pinging it… BT Homehub5a (WiFi5) located in the attic, two floor up directly overhead (ie. worst case antenna location) - 1.47ms ping, rock solid reliable. (total cost, £5 from ebay with shipping and power supply included) BPI-r4 (WiFi6) located 4m away across the room - 2.4ms (total cost, well over £200 by this point, and didnt even come with a power supply).

Really impressive work guys – You’ve taken faster hardware, and a nice open source OS, and then ruined everything with:

  • a proprietary driver.
  • a proprietary nonstandard, and shit configuration gui.
  • worse performance (latency-wise) than my 10 year old garbage router.

But why should I care? It oly cost 40 times as much.

I hope someone can tell me that all the above is some kind of huge mistake on my part, and I’m somehow missing the wonderful, up to date, properly implemented, and OPEN version of it on the website somewhere.

Anyone? Is it me? Have I just got it all wrong?

Or have I just fallen for a bunch of Chinese promises, lies, half truths, and crappy marketing AGAIN?

God I feel like a fool for ever believing the promises made of the BPI-r4.

2

In fact, the main reason for the problems is due to the driver for the be14 module; it requires a driver, which is closed source, and therefore is not included in the official openwrt assembly. Because of this, you have to use a non-official assembly with this driver, due to the fact that the firmware was assembled by enthusiasts, they added functions that they considered useful. Yes, I also didn’t like the assembly because of the extra “garbage”. In the end you have 2 use cases: 1.Use the official version from the openwrt.org website (OpenWrt Firmware Selector), it is very fast, stable, has nothing extra, but does not support wifi be14 module. 2. Continue to use the assembly you installed and put up with the functions you don’t need, the old version of the firmware (The assembly is based on v21 and the current one is v23) But you (like me) need to be patient, because… someday soon v24 will be released with be14 support and I’m sure they will give us a clean build, with basic and functions for ordinary users, like me and probably you

3

Good afternoon, if it helps you, none of the OpenWRT on the wiki works, it’s a real shame what’s posted, I bought it because Metiatek was behind announcing that they go hand in hand with the Banana Pi kit, I certainly don’t see them very close together.

I was with the person I bought and the creator of banana pi, who I bought everything from and it is advertised on the wiki, compiling without success any openwrt version with ubuntu 18.04 from a disk dedicated to it, the engineers that he called them got into my computer, which I let them in to see what was happening, they did nothing, they went in several times and just said nonsense, they didn’t fix anything and the only thing they said was that I should go to the wiki and try the mtk-bpi-r4-SD-20240620 version, which doesn’t work like any of the ones on the wiki, knowing about openwrt they think we are.

I asked the creator of bananapi to please send me an image that would work on openwrt in 21.02 wifi 7, that he would please send me one that would work directly, that I only wanted the 2 interfaces, that I would then install the packages that I wanted. I never got it, he gave me a thousand excuses but he never gave me anything.

I have asked actively and passively those who say they have openwrt working with wifi7 with 21.02 to post it on the forum and nobody does it because there is nothing that works in that version of openwrt.

This is a joke what they have announced,

debian and ubuntu are in the same situation as those of openwrt or so I think, they should say that.

but we have paid for something that is not true, that was wifi7,

4

To make matters worse, you have this thread opened by me, because of the box they have sold us and how it heats up. I am currently solving the problem and my brother is making me vents that I will upload the photos to the forum.

Currently having everything they have sold us 24/7/365 is throwing money away, which is not a small amount, the board, the wifi7 module that is what they call it but who doesn’t go, the 2 sfp+rj45 + the antennas + the box, plus a heatsink that I bought so that the sfp+rj45 would heat up as little as possible.

But once the box is closed and with an hour of operation it is crazy, it looks like a toaster. Currently everything is being dismantled and fixed in the box to be able to put some fans in and so that the famous be14000 wifi7 module does not burn, plus the rest which is the board.

Here you have my post

5

It’s tragic.

The main board actually seems to work really well. It’s fast and seems stable (I havent done extensive testing).

The WiFi module is just a total scam. There is nothing open about it, and it’s expensive as hell. If they had been honest about their junk proprietary card, complete with nonstandard form-factor, I’d have just slammed a couple of intel WiFi modules in it, and it would have cost FAR less, and allowed me to run a bog-standard OpenWRT install.

This kind of scam project really makes Open Source look bad. Open Source in name only.

I’ve been working on real open source projects for 30 years, and I totally understand that we (as a community) have to reverse engineer proprietary toys to have our fun - but when I buy a toy that CLAIMS to already be open source, its because I DON’T WANT to do that - I just wanted to actually use what /promised/ to be a world-leading product.

BPi’s false advertising makes me sick. This sort of scam product removes money from real hackers who actually produce useful projects and tools. It poisons the well.

6

My BPi board actually runs acceptably cool.

The NIC runs a bit warm, but it is intended to dissipate heat via the case.

The case is reasonably well made, but the MASSIVE thermal pads are really a poor show.

It’s also seriously unimpressive that despite the board being designed to have cans shielding it on both sides, these have been completely omitted, including their mounting lugs.

The antenna cabling is a total afterthought and really difficult to fit nicely in the case. The actual cables seem fairly nice - the connectors snap on nicely, and the antennas seem ok quality.

The nonsense about requiring their “special” antennas is just that though - all 6 antennas are bog standard dipoles and the diplexed outputs do not connect to special antennas. they all appear to be identical, so there is no special tuning for the 6GHz ones.

Scam written all over it.

7

A 300 euro scam, they promised wifi 7, what’s really on the wiki is a disgrace, where is wifi 7?

The best thing is that for this great project there was mediatek + the banana team.

Mine was really a toaster, with the money I spent my brother is working on making me some vents to put some fans so my money doesn’t burn.

I hope that one day they release what they promised and that for now they haven’t made it real

Regards

1 Like
8

I wonder if anyone has it actually working?

I think the OpenWRT project needs to distance itself from this crap as fast and as soon as possible.

9

Uhm OpenWRT is using banana pi as an odm for their OpenWRT one router

10

I’ve just done some testng on the WiFi5 side - which actually works, hitting about 1.05Gbits to my AX200 card in my PC.

Unfortunately, its still utterly unusable as a router because it doesn’t integrate properly with ANY of the standard openwrt configuration tools.

Besides, I just dont trust it - the software is so utterly alien and modified so much, that to be honest, it makes me wonder that it isnt infested with all kinds of malware. I have zero confidence / trust in this thing.

11

I know - the fact that OpenWRT are doing so is a total embarrassment that makes me wonder why I don’t just buy a ultra low power X86 machine and just run debian on it to use as a router - at least I could trust that.

BPi are not only making me lose confidence in themselves, but also their partners.

12

Are you using the OpenWRT from the wiki? That’s nothing but a Proof of Concept that the hardware works.

Are you using the OpenWRT snapshot + patches? Well, that’s obviously work in progress and not a stable release.

Do you want a stable, out of the box router? Don’t pick R4. Pick R3.

Do you want support? Pay for it.

3 Likes
13

Well silly me for thinking that the BPi project wiki doesnt provide links to the proper software to run on it.

I suppose you wouldnt mind telling me WHERE to find the proper software then? Or are you just posting useless comments?

Also, I HAVE paid for it - If I buy a product for WELL over £200, I EXPECT the documentation to tell me how to get it working properly, including all features claimed at the time of sale.

This isn’t a £5 microcontroller devkit - this is an EXPENSIVE product.

14

X86 would still suck more power and everything is done on CPU where as arm has dedicated hardware for each function

15

Yes - but a few watts is just a tiny fraction of my electricity bill, and in return, I get a machine that can route WiFi6 packets at wire speed whilst the CPU chills out at like 5% whilst using about 8W. I’m talking small low power PC, not a gaming desktop.

This BPI Piece of crap is low power, but it DOESN’T FUCKING DO ANYTHING OF USE.

16

Dude chill out, it’s a development board and for the most part it is fully open-source on OpenWRT github theyre just waiting on the FW for the card, the factory BPI OpenWRT is proprietary but that doesn’t matter since you can just flash mainline on it

2 Likes
17

You should have learned to read first, before buying, instead of coming here and randomly insulting people.

You paid for the hardware. You didn’t pay for the software nor the support.

2 Likes
18

I’m using it but it’s with unofficial images, with kernel 6.6.49 I think I remember, I’m telling you from memory, because I have everything disassembled now, obviously it works perfectly, only you don’t have wifi7,

you have wifi 6, but really the rest is openwrt working perfectly.

The only thing is that you can’t put links in the forum, or send private messages with the links, or ask for email, the messages have been filtered.

But there are images in all the parts that work perfectly except for wifi 7, which don’t work.

But in the ones we have here it didn’t work either, so it’s the same.

19

“Well silly me for thinking that the BPi project wiki doesnt provide links to the proper software to run on it.”

→ You paid for the hardware!

“I suppose you wouldnt mind telling me WHERE to find the proper software then? Or are you just posting useless comments?”

→ YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT that the community develops the software (Daniel, Frank …).

AND It is still not finished. :melting_face:

Please load the software from here: https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/

→ as far as I know, the wifi 7 BE14 NIC driver are not YET implemented!

For the open-source community, Wi-Fi 7 (from MediaTek) is cutting-edge. They need time! This is “the price” we have to sell! But it is open scource :upside_down_face:

It could be that everything you do was right! :+1: You just have to wait! I think after I read your text it is better to came back next year!

Perhaps it’s better for you to sell this on eBay! As long as you get “good money” for the Wi-Fi 7 board, you’ll quickly find someone who is willing to pay for it! This board is for makers, software developers, and hardware developers …

After your intervention, I was on the side of Banana Pi:

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But now you know about Banana Pi. They take the newest microchips and solder them onto a PCB, creating a single-board computer for people who want to play with it! :slightly_smiling_face:

If you criticize that this information is not on the R4 site! → Yes, you are right. But that’s it!

I think you didn’t understand the environment you’re in. Some things in your comments above are really NOT okay!

→ “nuclear holocaust grade bad communication”

→ “PIECE OF CRAP”

→ “absolute shit”

I do not want to read this again!

4 Likes
20

If there had been HONEST information out there about it, I would not be pissed off.

If it had been advertised as an ARM SBC with a bunch of ethernet ports and some PCIe slots, I wouldnt be annoyed.

But it isnt.

I wouldnt have bought the useless wifi card with unfinished proprietary firmware - If I wanted that, I could have bought literally any other PCIe WiFi card.

I’ve said plenty of positive things about the product, but no-one from BPi is willing to acknowledge the bad. This kind of Terrible Communication ™ is the sort of thing that makes it imossible to trust Sinovip, or is it BPI - so many names, so little real information.