OpenWrt One - celebrating 20 years of OpenWrt

Tue Jan 9 20:36:49 PST 2024

Pretty interesting idea, Well done to all involved so far.
I have two quick comments about the hardware specifications:

- Initially I see as a little downside having only 2 Ethernet ports. In 
order to have at least 4 (1 x 2.5 GbE + 3 x 1 GbE for example) would 
require a embedded switch and increase too significantlly the cost ?

- Is this SoC able to do some kind of NAT offload ? I believe on most 
modern router and with higher broadband speed this has became a must on 
SoHo routers now a days.

Regarding the 5Ghz and 6Ghz discussion about Wifi I don't see 6Ghz as a 
must really.

Regards
Fernando

On 09/01/2024 07:49, John Crispin wrote:
> 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:
>
> * SOC: MediaTek MT7981B
> * Wi-Fi: MediaTek MT7976C (2x2 2.4 GHz + 3x3/2x2 + 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 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
>
> * 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 at fe80.eu>
> Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at sfconservancy.org>
> Signed-off-by: Daniel Golle <daniel at makrotopia.org>
> Signed-off-by: David Bauer <mail at david-bauer.net>
> Signed-off-by: Denver Gingerich <denver at sfconservancy.org>
> Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>
> Signed-off-by: Hauke Mehrtens <hauke at hauke-m.de>
> Signed-off-by: John Crispin <john at phrozen.org>
> Signed-off-by: Jo-Philipp Wich <jo at mein.io>
> Signed-off-by: Paul Spooren <mail at aparcar.org>
> Signed-off-by: Petr Štetiar <ynezz at true.cz>
> Signed-off-by: Piotr Dymacz <pepe2k at gmail.com>
> Signed-off-by: Steven Liu <steven.liu at mediatek.com>
>
>
>
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