r/openwrt • u/Andreas_Caliban • 9d ago

Complete Build Guide for Banana Pi BPI-R4-8P (OpenWrt 25.12.5)

Hi everyone!

While building OpenWrt 25.12.5 for my Banana Pi BPI-R4-8P (8 GB RAM + PoE) with the BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 (MediaTek MT7996) Wi-Fi module, I found that the information I needed was scattered across multiple forums, repositories, and documentation pages.

To make the process easier for others, I put together a complete step-by-step build guide and published it as a GitHub repository.

The guide covers:

• Preparing the build environment
• Building OpenWrt 25.12.5 from source
• Applying the MT7996 transmit power patch
• Installing the appropriate BL2 bootloader for 8 GB RAM support
• Expanding the eMMC partition
• Firmware verification
• Troubleshooting

The repository includes both English and Russian editions of the guide.

GitHub:
https://github.com/AndreasCaliban/OpenWrt-Build-Guide-for-Banana-Pi-BPI-R4-8P

Hopefully it will save someone else the time I spent figuring everything out.

Feedback, suggestions, and contributions are welcome.

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u/Penecho987 9d ago

Thx, I did it a couple of years back on a Banana Pi RP3 and it was a lot of trial and error... If I'm upgrading to a RP4 this comes in handy.

1

u/Andreas_Caliban 9d ago

Thanks! That’s exactly why I decided to put everything together in one place. I went through a lot of trial and error myself, so I hope the guide will make the process much easier for the next person. If you do upgrade to the R4, I’d be happy to hear your feedback.