OpenWrt One - celebrating 20 years of OpenWrt

[Dave Taht]

You should talk about this project at FOSSDEM!

Two potential funders off the top of my head:

https://nlnet.nl/funding.html
https://www.ardc.net/apply/
Ardc funded the latest round of the librerouter project in argentina,
which is also openwrt based, but intended for outdoor.

a 10 year design life would be nice. Gpon support instead of a 2.5Gbit port?

The A53s are pretty weak. I would certainly like to see people squeeze
more performance out of these...

I am more a software guy than hw,  I would like to see "matter" begin
to matter. 802.14 anyone? Also:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/cerowrt-ii-would-anyone-care/110554

Otherwise, I applaud. We could really use a reference router. I still
use (and love) my wndr3800s. Have not seen much reason to upgrade.
There´s still improvements to the ath9k feasible!

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 5:52 AM John Crispin <john at phrozen.org> 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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> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
> https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel



-- 
40 years of net history, a couple songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9RGX6QFm5E
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos