A new {cheap? 26$} bpi ax3000 router

allegedly with openwrt (no source code as no support for this SOC exists yet in git)
$26 WiFi 6 router board features Triductor TR6560 & TR5220 chips
let's see how long it takes to get official support (forever :smiley: ?)

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Never.

never say never :slight_smile: - all it takes is one of the devs to get it hands on the device and of course be willing to invest the time.
In openwrt codebase there are a lot of "exotic" devices that are bought in almost each new release cycle.
I think it's cheap enough for someone to buy && ship it to the willing dev

  • no source provided
  • unsupported SOC, no mainline contributions of this vendor
  • unsupported WLAN chipset, no mainline contributions of this vendor
  • rather low-end specs

We already had a popular device using Triductor chipsets in the past, the AVM Fritz!Box 7390. Opensource support for it never materialized, the hardware was 'quirky' (if not to say bugridden and running hot), even their commercial customer (AVM) had to declare defeat (despite this being their previous flagship model).

You want another example?
Huawei AX3 (also unsupported SOC and WLAN), they were early on the 802.11ax market, very cheap (around 30 EUR, when the competition was still in the mid 3-figure range), plenty (much more than this Triductor device can ever hope to be) and available worldwide - what (unsurprisingly) didn't happen, was opensource support.

If you want cheap wifi6 devices, mt7621a+mt7915DBDC is already there - probably very similar performance and specs as that Triductor based board, fully supported. The first factory sealed and brandnew devices start at 15 EUR shipped (DE), D-Link DAP-X1860, D-Link COVR-X1860, ZyXEL WSM20.

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no, all it takes is to get the SoC and radios into mainline kernel, it has nothing to do with "devs".
this will never happen.

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Or to add another example, Realtek.

  • cheap
  • plenty, particularly in developing markets
    • a favourite among ISP branded devices in South America and India
  • also available in cheap devices worldwide
  • full source (for everything, SOC and WLAN!) available
    • the vendor drivers are convoluted and crap, but fully open and GPLv2 licensed
  • very low-end specs (performance, flash, RAM)
  • exotic hardware (traditionally lexra, now normal mips and ARM)
  • fast hardware turnaround (multiple new chipset generations per year)
  • they are typically late to the market, 2-3 years after Broadcom and QCA, 1-2 years after Mediatek, but they're cheap
  • very little mainline (and toolchain-) contributions for SOC- and wireless (this is slowly improving, for newer designs, but very slowly)

Despite full source availability, their ecosystem is 'difficult' (very, very much to do on the driver side, very quick hardware deprecation) and 'boring' (developers are much more likely to spend their time on 'interesting' and high-end affordable hardware, even if it costs more, it also lasts longer).

'All it would take', is a group of motivated university students from Brazil or India (where these devices are basically without competition on the market) to dive in head deep into the drivers and working on re-writing them to mainline standards, albeit, this doesn't happen either.

4 Likes

you don't happen to know any of those, do you, @maurer ?

well I don't - do you ?

Nope, but I also recognize an unclimbable mountain, when I see one.

probably you're right - time will tell

Can you share where you can buy these devices for this price ? I can’t even find them for triple the price that is stated here.

Prices vary from day to day, but 15-18 EUR per device (keep in mind that the later two are sold in packs of two or three) are reached regularly in their special sales.

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Never.

You know how much of a Banana Pi fan I am. Their work on the BPI-R2, R64, R3, and R4 has been fantastic. However their boards that aren't Mediatek based have a very poor record of being supported in OpenWrt and Linux in general.

One big example of the is the BPI-R2-PRO. It was billed as a replacement upgrade for the R2 that could fit into the R2's case (the external port/light/switch design was identical). Lots of people bought it, and it turned out it used a very problematic Rockchip SoC. It has never had proper OpenWrt support.

Boards like the one you posted, they aren't intended for you and me. They are intended for Chinese garage vendors to make ultra quick and dirty routers for domestic and third world markets. They make a kitbash version of OpenWrt for the board with hack-and-slash kernels and kludged-together drivers for the chipsets that are often cobbled from a mix of open source and proprietary bits. Their versions barely work, or have such a terrible hack job code it can't make it into any mainline kernel.

Banana Pi's Mediatek line of boards are, for the most part, quite excellent (though that has been a progression), and have good vendor, Linux, and OpenWrt support. But outside of that line, be very, very careful. Those boards are often auditions for a greyer market than you are interested in.

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Truductor seem to be another anti-sanction name for Hisilicon/Huawei chips, which in turn are Broadcom licensee (as far as I remember).

The file /lib/modules/5.10.138/wifi_debug.ko inside firmware’s squashfs contains the following string:
[HCC_TEST][WIFI]########Hi110x SDIO Test## Used %llu seconds##########

4 Likes

Ohhh, is that all :joy: :wink: