Getting Started BPI-R3 (2024)

Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini Router board with MediaTek MT7986(Filogic 830) quad core ARM A53 chip design ,2G DDR RAM ,8G eMMC flash onboard,It is a very high performance open source router development board,support Wi-Fi6 2.4G wifi use MT7975N and 5G wifi use MT7975P, support 2 2.5GbE network port.

¶ MediaTek MT7986(Filogic 830)

The MT7986(Filogic 830) integrates four Arm Cortex-A53 cores up to 2GHz with up to 18,000 DMIPs of processing power and 6Gbps of dual 4x4 Wi-Fi6 connectivity. It has two 2.5g Ethernet interfaces and serial peripheral interfaces (SPI). Filogic 830‘s built-in hardware acceleration engine enables fast and reliable Wi-Fi offloading and wireless network connection. In addition, the chip supports Mediatek FastPath™ technology, which is suitable for games, AR/VR and other low-latency applications.

Wi-fi 6 has many advantages over its predecessors, including lower latency, larger bandwidth capacity and faster transmission rates. Wireless network devices supporting the 6GHz band mainly use 160MHz wide channel and 6GHz uncongested bandwidth to provide multigigabit transmission and low-latency wi-fi connection, providing reliable wireless network for streaming media, games, AR/VR and other applications.

More Infomation: Banana Pi BPI-R3

¶ Specifications

MediaTek MT7986(Filogic 830) Quad core ARM Cortex A53
Wifi 6 2.4G/5G（MT7976C）
2G DDR RAM
8G eMMC flash
128MB Nand flash
2x 2.5GbE network port
1x M.2 Key B USB inerface
1x M.2 KEY M PCIe inerface
1x USB2.0 interface

¶ Prepare

Prepare 8G/above TF card, USB-Serial interface.

Using your USB-Serial Connect debug console on BPI-R3.

Debug Uart 3.3v TTL,Baud: 115200.

Default IP address for LAN port:192.168.1.1

User name/password: pi/bananapi ,root/bananapi.
Or the user is root without a password.

WIFI: Operwrt

R3 bootstrap and device select Jumper Setting

SW1-A and SW1-B is for boot strap selecting;
SW1-C is that SPI-Nand or SPI-Nor Device is connected to CPU’s SPI bus;
SW1-D is that SD Card or EMMC device is connected tp CPU’s EMMC bus.

¶ Install Image to SD card

Please low level format the SD and clear all data of SD. It’s very important.Otherwise, you will encounter a "jffs2" error during the startup process.

Windows PC

Install Image with Balena Etcher.
Balena Etcher is an opensource GUI flash tool by Balena, Flash OS images to SDcard or USB drive.

Click on "Flash from file" to select image.
Click on "Select target" to select USB device.
Click on "Flash!" Start burning.

¶ Install Image to NAND

Let’s take OpenWrt image (mtk-bpi-r3-SD-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img, mtk-bpi-r3-NAND-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin) for example, the steps are below:

Insert the flashed SD card and power on to start the board.(the image "mtk-bpi-r3-SD-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img" on the SD card can be OpenWrt or other linux OS like ubuntu…)
Copy Nand bootable OpenWrt image(mtk-bpi-r3-NAND-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin) to USB disk, if the image is compressed please uncompress it before copying to USB disk.
Plug in USB disk to the board, and mount the USB to /mnt or other directory as follows: (you can skip mounting if it is mounted automatically)
```
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt
```
change your directory to the mounting point, here is :
```
cd /mnt
```

Execute following command to enable and copy image to nand flash:

mtd erase /dev/mtd0dd if=mtk-bpi-r3-NAND-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin of=/dev/mtdblock0

Remove SD card, change the switch to boot from nand flash, reboot the board from Nand Flash.
Enable device, boot strap is from nand

¶ Install Image to eMMC

Note: SD card and EMMC device share one SOC interface

Switch the button to NAND and then start BPI-R3

Insert the USB drive with bl2_emmc.img and mtk-bpi-r3-EMMC-xxx.img into BPI-R3.

Mount the USB drive to/mnt, and then execute the following command to burn the image to EMMC:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mntcd /mntecho 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_rodd if=bl2_emmc.img of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0dd if=mtk-bpi-r3-EMMC-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img of=/dev/mmcblk0mmc bootpart enable 1 1 /dev/mmcblk0

power off R3 board, remove u-disk driver, change bootstrap to boot from emmc device.
Enable EMMC device, boot strap is from EMMC.

¶ Install Image to NOR

Insert the flashed SD card and power on to start the board.(the image "mtk-bpi-r3-SD-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img" on the SD card can be OpenWrt or other linux OS like ubuntu…)
To boot from SD card, pull the C jumper to enable SPI-NOR.
Copy NOR bootable OpenWrt image(mtk-bpi-r3-NOR-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin) to USB disk, if the image is compressed please uncompress it before copying to USB disk.
Plug in USB disk to the board, and mount the USB to /mnt or other directory as follows: (you can skip mounting if it is mounted automatically)
```
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt
```
change your directory to the mounting point, here is :
```
cd /mnt
```

Execute following command to enable and copy image to nand flash:

mtd erase /dev/mtd0dd if=mtk-bpi-r3-NOR-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin of=/dev/mtdblock0

Remove the SD card and change the jumper to NOR boot.

¶ Network-Configuration

Network-Configuration refer to: http://www.fw-web.de/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=en:bpi-r2:network:start

Network Interface: eth1, lan0 is for WAN; lan4, rax0, lan2, lan5, ra0, lan3, lan1 is for LAN, ra0 is for 2.4G wireless, rax0 is for 5G wireless.

root@OpenWrt:/# ifconfigbr-lan Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::eca1:57ff:fe81:ca19/64 Scope:Link inet6 addr: fd63:8bea:d5ce::1/60 Scope:Global UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:2418 (2.3 KiB)br-wan Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 inet6 addr: fe80::eca1:57ff:fe81:ca19/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:8538 (8.3 KiB)eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 inet6 addr: fe80::eca1:57ff:fe81:ca19/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:4408 (4.3 KiB) Interrupt:124eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4A:BB:84:B4:5D:3F UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:8674 (8.4 KiB) Interrupt:124lan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)lan1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)lan2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)lan3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)lan4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)lan5 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr EE:A1:57:81:CA:19 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:2418 (2.3 KiB)lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:56 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:56 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:4368 (4.2 KiB) TX bytes:4368 (4.2 KiB)ra0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:43:26:60:38 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:6rax0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 02:0C:43:36:60:38 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

root@OpenWrt:/# brctl show br-wanbridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br-wan 7fff.eea15781ca19 no lan0, eth1root@OpenWrt:/# brctl show br-lanbridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br-lan 7fff.eea15781ca19 no lan4, rax0, lan2, lan5, ra0, lan3, lan1

¶ GPIO

26 Pins Definition

GPIO Control

echo xxx > /sys/class/gpio/exportecho in/out > /sys/class/gpio/gpioxxx/directionecho 0/1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpioxxx/value

Check the base gpio, you could see mine is 411

For example: if you want to change gpio 22 as out highlevel, you need input commands like this：

echo 433（22+411） > /sys/class/gpio/exportecho out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio433/directionecho 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio433/value

¶ FAN

R317 for 5V FAN and R318 for 12V FAN.

CN23 supports PWM control while CN22 does not support.

¶ PWM FAN Control

echo 0 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip0/exportecho 10000 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip0/pwm0/periodecho 5000 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip0/pwm0/duty_cycleecho normal > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip0/pwm0/polarityecho 1 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip0/pwm0/enable

¶ MiniPCIe slot

Currently, miniPCIe slot only support one USB 4G module, example: EC25 when you insert one EC25 module, you may check it.

¶ SFP

After high and low temperature test, the following modules are suppoted by BPI-R3:

¶ 4G&5G

BPI-R3 supports 4G LTE EC25.

If you want to use 5G on BPI-R3:

Insert 5G dongle into USB3.0.
Connect RG200U-CN to mini PCIe, connect SoC through USB2.0(speed limited).
Make an RG200U-CN LGA adapter board and insert it into M.2 KEY M.

Note: The availability of 4G/5G depends on the local carrier frequency band.

¶ Ap mode on BPI-R3

ra0 is MT7986a 2.4G wifi

rax0 is MT7986a 5G wifi

¶ Wifi & Serial cable

If the chip type of serial cable is pl2303, the driver fails to load the firmware apparently and thus the wifi can’t work.

Other types including cp2102,ch340 and FDTI are all available, serial cable vlotage must be 3.3v LVTTL standard.

UART_TX0 is the Boot Strapping PIN and must be kept low during power-on.

MT7986a Reference Manual for Develope Board(BPi)Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1biSJmxnIpNzQroYDg9mtPtSTAv4i0DFf/view?usp=sharing

TTL Voltage

The debug-uart TTL is tolerant to 3.3V.