First sysupgrade from v 21.x bpi on BPI-R3 Mini

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R3/R3 Mini(MT7986)
1

Hi, I am very new to this Hardware and am looking for Help.

I have a new BPI-R3 Mini.

Powered by LuCI openwrt-21.02 branch (git-22.130.58625-78a8c67) / OpenWrt 21.02-SNAPSHOT unknown

Before I start configuring OpenWRT, first I wanted to upgrade to the current firmware, therefor I searched on https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org for the current snapshot for my device. Looking for Bananapi BPi-R3 Mini I found:

Model: Bananapi BPi-R3 Mini
Platform: mediatek/filogic
Version: SNAPSHOT (r32413-a6eb3d9536)

I downloaded the Sysupgrade image and tried to Flash it to my device.

After upload I get the following Warning:

Fri Dec 26 23:33:46 UTC 2025 upgrade: Device bananapi,bpi-r3mini not supported by this image

Fri Dec 26 23:33:46 UTC 2025 upgrade: Supported devices: bananapi,bpi-r3-mini Image check failed.

The uploaded image file does not contain a supported format. Make sure that you choose the generic image format for your platform.

I tried some other Images from the firmware-selector page, but none worked, all failed with the same Warning. Before I Force updating with this image I thought I ask here what to do, is this the right image? Can I find a better one for my Hardware?

Please give me some advice what I should do.

2

As told multiple times in this forum already: Do not do sysupgrade from 21.x bpi wrt to upstream openwrt

Make clean install by booting from nand and flash emmc and then boot from emmc and flash nand based on instructions from openwrt documentation.

https://openwrt.org/toh/sinovoip/bananapi_bpi_r3_mini#installation_instructions_for_emmc

3

Yes, thank you for your quick response.

Now I am on the track!

I changed the Title so hopefully this important Information can be found better.

I already read the documentation you sent the link to: " Sinovoip BananaPi BPi-R3 mini" but did not realize, that this is the only way to go in case of upgrading from 21.x version. Maybe you could add some remark mentioning that.

Again Thank you, Hannes