Upgrade Bananapi BPI-R3 MINI

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I have a Bananapi BPI-R3MINI (i am a complete new user to OpenWRT). The version of the installed OpenWRT is (shown on status page):
OpenWrt 21.02-SNAPSHOT unknown / LuCI openwrt-21.02 branch git-22.130.58625-78a8c67

I used the firmware selector to find a suitable update for this device. It shows up the version 24.10.4. I downloaded the SYSUPGRADE. I was triggerd from the text "Use a Sysupgrade image to update a router that already runs OpenWrt. The image can be used with the LuCI web interface or the terminal."

This image was rejected with:
Image check failed:

Fri Oct 24 10:28:54 CEST 2025 upgrade: Device bananapi,bpi-r3mini not supported by this image Fri Oct 24 10:28:54 CEST 2025 upgrade: Supported devices: bananapi,bpi-r3-mini Image check failed.

I assume that i have done it wrong. Can anyone tell me what is the right way to update the Bananapi BPI-R3MINI?
Thanks in advance!

2

you're most likely running a vendor SDK, and need to start from scratch: https://openwrt.org/toh/sinovoip/bananapi_bpi_r3_mini#installation

3

Dear frollic,
thank you for your kind and fast response. Now i am struggling with the UART Connector. Neither on the board nor in the documentation i could find which pin is GND, TX, RX. Is there a ressource where i can find that?

4

are you sure you need it ?

5

Dear frollic,
in the meantime i am a bit further. With UART i was able to use mtk_uartboot.

./mtk_uartboot -s /dev/ttyUSB0 -a --payload bpi-r3mini_ram_bl2.bin --fip bpi-r3mini_ram_fip.bin 
mtk_uartboot - 0.1.1
Using serial port: /dev/ttyUSB0
Handshake...
hw code: 0x7986
hw sub code: 0x8a00
hw ver: 0xca01
sw ver: 0x1
Baud rate set to 460800
sending payload to 0x201000...
Checksum: 0x769a
Setting baudrate back to 115200
Jumping to 0x201000 in aarch64...
Waiting for BL2. Message below:
==================================
NOTICE:  BL2: v2.9(release):v2.9.0-359-g7154cf66405c ram
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 13:53:22, Jan  6 2025
NOTICE:  WDT: Cold boot
NOTICE:  WDT: disabled
NOTICE:  CPU: MT7986 (2000MHz)
NOTICE:  EMI: Using DDR4 settings
NOTICE:  EMI: Detected DRAM size: 2048MB
NOTICE:  EMI: complex R/W mem test passed
NOTICE:  Starting UART download handshake ...
==================================
BL2 UART DL version: 0x10
Baudrate set to: 921600
FIP sent.
==================================
NOTICE:  Received FIP 0x5e4f1 @ 0x40400000 ...
==================================

It stops here.