OpenWrt is a wonderful Linux based opensource router project that supports a lot of hardware devices, as many of these router manufacturers don’t really support their hardware for long with updates dropping off pretty quickly after a hardware refresh. Consequently, I originally replaced my hardware router with a Mikrotik device (WiFi access point is Ubiquiti) with the intention of switching to OpenWrt, but MikroTik’s RouterOS is so feverishly updated and works so great with their WinBox application that runs in Wine, I haven’t got around to trying OpenWrt quite yet. But being able to buy hardware the project designs is extremely intriguing and worth keeping an eye on.

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-one-celebrating-20-years-of-openwrt/183684/1

By ynezz

In 2024 the OpenWrt project turns 20 years! Let’s celebrate this anniversary by launching our own first and fully upstream supported hardware design.

If the community likes the idea outlined below in greater details, we would like to start formal vote 240.

The idea

It is not new. We first spoke about this during the OpenWrt Summits in 2017 and also 2018. It became clear start of December 2023 while tinkering with Banana Pi style devices that they are already pretty close to what we wanted to achieve in ’17/‘18. Banana PIs have grown in popularity within the community.

They boot using a self compiled Trusted Firmware-A (TF-A)and upstream U-Boot (thx MTK/Daniel) and some of the boards are already fully supported by the upstream Linux kernel. The only non open source components are the 2.5 GbE PHY and Wi-Fi firmware blobs running on separate cores that are independent of the main SoC running Linux and the DRAM calibration routines which are executed early during boot.

I contacted three project members (pepe2k, dangole, nbd) on December 6th to outline the overall idea. We went over several design proposals, at the beginning we focused on the most powerful (and expensive) configurations possible but finally ended up with something rather simple and above
all,feasible. We would like to propose the following as our “first” community driven HW platform called “OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY”.

Together with pepe2k (thx a lot) I discussed this for many hours and we worked out the following project proposal. Instead of going insane with specifications, we decided to include some nice features we believe all OpenWrt supported platforms should have (e.g. being almost unbrickable with multiple recovery options, hassle-free system console access, on-board RTC with battery backup etc.).

This is our first design, so let’s KiSS!

Hardware specifications:

SOC: MediaTek MT7981B
Wi-Fi: MediaTek MT7976C (2×2 2.4 GHz + 3×3/2×2 + zero-wait DFS 5Ghz)
DRAM: 1 GiB DDR4
Flash: 128 MiB SPI NAND+ 4 MiB SPI NOR
Ethernet: 2x RJ45 (2.5 GbE + 1 GbE)
USB (host): USB 2.0 (Type-A port)
USB (device, console): Holtek HT42B534-2 UART to USB (USB-C port)
Storage: M.2 2042 for NVMe SSD (PCIe gen 2 x1)
Buttons: 2x (reset + user)
Mechanical switch: 1x for boot selection (recovery, regular)
LEDs: 2x (PWM driven), 2x ETH Led (GPIO driven)
External hardware watchdog: EM Microelectronic EM6324 (GPIO driven)
RTC: NXP PCF8563TS (I2C) with battery backup holder(CR1220)
Power: USB-PD-12V on USB-C port (optional802.3at/afPoE via RT5040 module)
Expansion slots: mikroBUS
Certification: FCC/EC/RoHS compliance
Case: PCB size is compatible to BPi-R4 and the case design can be re-used
JTAG for main SOC: 10-pin 1.27 mm pitch (ARM JTAG/SWD)
Antenna connectors: 3x MMCX for easy usage, assembly and durability
Schematics: these will be publicly available (license TBD)
GPL compliance: 3b. “Accompany it with a written offer … to give any third
party … a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code”
Price: aiming for below 100$

How will the device be distributed?

OpenWrt itself cannot handle this for a ton of reasons. This is why we spoke with the SFC early. The idea is that BPi will distribute the device using the already established channels and for every device sold a donation will be made to our SFC earmarked fund for OpenWrt. This money can then be used to cover hosting expenses or maybe an OpenWrt summit.

SFC is committed to working with us in various ways on this project —including making sure OpenWrt’s trademark is properly respected, that this router is a beautiful example of excellent GPL/LGPL compliance, and that this becomes a great promotional opportunity for our project and FOSS generally!

FAQ

Why are there are 2 different flash chips?

The idea is to make the device (almost!) unbrickable and very easy to recover.

NAND will hold the main loader (U-Boot) and the Linux image and will be the
default boot device
NOR will be write-protected by default (with WP jumper available on the board) and will hold a recovery bootloader (and other essential data, like Wi-Fi calibration)
a dedicated boot select switch will allow changing between NOR and NAND

What will the M.2 slot be used for?

We will use M.2 with M-key for NVMe storage. There is a work-in-progress patch to make PCIe work inside the U-Boot bootloader. This will allow booting other Linux distributions such as Debian and Alpine directly from NVMe.

Why is there no USB 3.x host port on the device?

The USB 3.x and PCIe buses are shared in the selected SoC silicon, hence
only a single High-Speed USB port is available

What is the purpose of the console USB-C port?

Holtek UART to USB bridge with CDC-ACM support on USB-C makes the device ultra easy to communicate with. No extra hardware or drivers will be required. Android for example has CDC-ACM support enabled by default.

What MAC OUI will the device have?

We plan to register an OUI block for OpenWrt which can also be used for
other vendor extensions such as Wi-Fi beacon IEs.

What is the purpose of the mikroBUS connector?

mikroBUS was chosen as we wanted to make the hardware extendable. There are dedicated pins for UART, SPI, I2C buses and RST/INT signals. The standard uses regular 2.54 mm pitch connectors (you can use available mikroBUS modules or just connect to it something else, with 2.54 mm jumper cables).

Why have the RTC on board instead of a mikroBUS module?

We believe there are many things a Wi-Fi (or networking in general) device should have on-board by default. Always having a correct time on the device is crucial in many applications, like VPN, DNSSEC, …

Timeline of events leading up to this e-mail

Forgive us for the lack of public communication during the initial phase(which as you can see was short and quick). We wanted to ensure that this project is feasible before disclosing it to the community. It would be a real shame if we announced something that we later found out to not be feasible thus failing expectations raised within the community.

03.12 – initial idea
06.12 – ping pepe2k, dangole, nbd
07.12 – ping MediaTek and ask if this sounds doable
08.12 – ping jow, Hauke
08.12 – request for call with SFC, we want them involved as soon as possible
09.12 – MediaTek replies and says they can help
09.12 – ping apacar, ynezz, dwmm2, lynxis, rsalvaterra
12.12 – MediaTek spoke with Banana Pi, they also like the idea
18.12 – call with SFC (Hauke joined, we found no prior slot to talk)
20.12 – started writing the U-Boot PCIe driver, made recovery from USB and
android fastboot recovery work.
… and then the end of year celebrations started and not much happened for 2
weeks.
03.01-08.01 – write this text

Thanks,

Signed-off-by: Alexander Couzens <lynxis@fe80.eu>
Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Golle <daniel@makrotopia.org>
Signed-off-by: David Bauer <mail@david-bauer.net>
Signed-off-by: Denver Gingerich <denver@sfconservancy.org>
Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd@nbd.name>
Signed-off-by: Hauke Mehrtens <hauke@hauke-m.de>
Signed-off-by: John Crispin <john@phrozen.org>
Signed-off-by: Jo-Philipp Wich <jo@mein.io>
Signed-off-by: Paul Spooren <mail@aparcar.org>
Signed-off-by: Petr Štetiar <ynezz@true.cz>
Signed-off-by: Piotr Dymacz <pepe2k@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Steven Liu <steven.liu@mediatek.com>