Hello everyone,
While setting up OpenWrt 25.12.5 on my Banana Pi BPI-R4-8P (8 GB RAM + PoE) with the BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 (MediaTek MT7996) Wi-Fi module, I found that much of the required information was scattered across different forum posts, GitHub repositories, and documentation.
After successfully building and validating the firmware on real hardware, I decided to consolidate the entire process into a single guide and publish it on GitHub.
The guide includes:
- Preparing the build environment
- Building OpenWrt 25.12.5 from source
- Applying the MT7996 transmit power patch
- Installing the appropriate BL2 bootloader for 8 GB RAM support
- Expanding the eMMC partition
- Firmware verification
- Troubleshooting and additional notes
The repository contains both English and Russian editions of the guide.
GitHub repository:
I hope this guide will help other BPI-R4-8P users save time and avoid some of the trial and error I went through during the build process.
Feedback, suggestions, and corrections are always welcome.
Many thanks to the Banana Pi team for developing the BPI-R4 platform, and to the OpenWrt community for making projects like this possible.