Tux Machines

OpenWrt One - celebrating 20 years of OpenWrt

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 10, 2024,

updated Jan 14, 2024

Regression tracking: state of the union early 2024
Today in Techrights

tl;dr

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 a vote.

---

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 nonopen sourcecomponents are the 2.5 GbE PHYandWi-Fi firmware

blobsrunning on separate cores that areindependent of the main SoC

running Linuxand 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

unbrickablewith multiple recovery options, hassle-free system console

access, on-board RTC with battery backup etc.).

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

Hardwarespecifications:

third party ... a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding

source code"

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 ourSFC 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'strademark is properly respected, that

this router isabeautiful example of excellent GPL/LGPL compliance,

andthatthis becomes a great promotional opportunity for our project and

FOSS generally!

FAQ

- 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

- 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

- the USB 3.x and PCIe buses are shared in the selected SoC silicon,

hence only a single High-Speed USB port is available

- 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

- we plan to register an OUI block for OpenWrt which can also be used

for other vendor extensions such as Wi-Fi beacon IEs

- 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 textRead on

↺ Read On: LWN

Also:

The OpenWrt One project

↺ The OpenWrt One project
The rest of the message describes the proposed OpenWrt-native network-routing system, based Banana Pi boards; the project is being organized through the Software Freedom Conservancy. (Thanks to Dave Täht).

Linuxiac:

OpenWrt One: OpenWrt’s First In-House Hardware Design

↺ OpenWrt One: OpenWrt’s First In-House Hardware Design
Given the immense popularity of the project among home users, it’s natural to wonder why such brilliant software hasn’t ventured into offering its hardware platform. This question, which I’ve often pondered, has finally found its eagerly awaited answer!

CNX Software & Liliputing:

OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY is an upcoming router board developed by OpenWrt and Banana Pi

↺ OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY is an upcoming router board developed by OpenWrt and Banana Pi
As of the OpenWrt 23.05 release, close to 1,800 routers and other devices are officially supported by the lightweight embedded Linux operating system, and many more claim to be running OpenWrt through a fork of the OS. But none of those are made by OpenWrt developers who have now decided to create their own router board in collaboration with Banana Pi since they’ve done such boards including the BPI-R4 WiFi 7 router SBC.

OpenWrt developers consider launching their first hardware design

↺ OpenWrt developers consider launching their first hardware design
Now some of the developers behind the project have put together a proposal for the first hardware designed specifically for OpenWrt, with full upstream Linux support. It would be called OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY, and the goal is to produce a router board that would sell for less than $100.

Late coverage:

OpenWRT To Mark 20 Years With Reference Hardware

↺ OpenWRT To Mark 20 Years With Reference Hardware
The OpenWRT project is now two decades old. The project has come a long way since Linksys was forced to release the GNU-licensed code for the original WRT54G router from which the project takes its name. They’ve marked the occasion in an interesting manner: by proposing that the plethora of devices supported by the OS be joined by a fully upstream-supported reference hardware platform.
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