infix/board/aarch64/bananapi-bpi-r64

Banana Pi BPI-R64

Overview

The Banana Pi BPI-R64 is a networking board based on the MediaTek MT7622 (dual Cortex-A53, AArch64) SoC.

Hardware Features

• MediaTek MT7622 ARM Cortex-A53 dual-core processor @ 1.35 GHz
• 1 GB DDR3L RAM
• 8 GB eMMC storage
• microSD card slot
• MT7531 Gigabit Ethernet switch (4x LAN + 1x WAN)
• MT7622 WMAC built-in 2.4 GHz 802.11ac WiFi
• USB 3.0 port
• 2x Mini PCIe slots

Default Network Configuration

Infix comes preconfigured with:

• LAN ports (lan0-lan3): Bridged for internal networking
• WAN port: DHCP client enabled for internet connectivity
• WiFi (wifi0-ap): Bridged to LAN (MT7622 WMAC, 2.4 GHz; or MT7615 PCIe card if fitted)

Boot Switch Reference

The BPI-R64 has a 2-position DIP switch (SW1) for selecting the boot device. The MT7622 Boot ROM always tries SD first if a card is present, so you can leave SW1 in the OFF (eMMC) position and simply insert or remove an SD card to control boot device selection.

SW1	Boot device
OFF	eMMC
ON	SD card

Getting Started

Quick Start with SD Card

1. Flash the image to an SD card (the filename includes the version, e.g. infix-25.01-bpi-r64-sdcard.img):

dd if=infix-*-bpi-r64-sdcard.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress

2. Insert SD card and power on
3. Connect console: 115200 8N1 — use the dedicated Debug UART header just below the 40-pin GPIO header; pins are labeled GND, RX, TX on the board
4. Default login: admin / admin

Installing to eMMC

Unlike the BPI-R3 (where SD and eMMC share a bus, requiring a NAND intermediate step), the BPI-R64 has separate controllers for SD (mmc1/MSDC1) and eMMC (mmc0/MSDC0). You can write directly to eMMC while booted from SD.

eMMC Boot ROM Behaviour

Important

The MT7622 Boot ROM reads BL2 from the eMMC BOOT0 hardware partition (offset 0), not from the User Data Area where the main disk image lives. The installation procedure below writes BL2 to BOOT0 separately to handle this.

Procedure

Boot from SD and write the eMMC image from U-Boot using a FAT32-formatted USB drive.

Step 1: Boot from SD card

1. Insert SD card with Infix
2. Power on and break into U-Boot (press Ctrl-C during boot)

Step 2: Write the eMMC image from U-Boot

Place infix-bpi-r64-emmc.img and bl2.img on a FAT32-formatted USB drive, then from the U-Boot prompt:

usb start
fatload usb 0:1 0x44000000 infix-bpi-r64-emmc.img
setexpr blocks ${filesize} / 0x200
mmc dev 0
mmc write 0x44000000 0x0 ${blocks}

Step 3: Write BL2 to eMMC BOOT0

fatload usb 0:1 0x44000000 bl2.img
mmc partconf 0 1 1 1
setexpr blkcnt ${filesize} + 0x1ff
setexpr blkcnt ${blkcnt} / 0x200
mmc write 0x44000000 0x0 ${blkcnt}
mmc partconf 0 1 1 0

Step 4: Boot from eMMC

1. Power off the board
2. Remove SD card and USB drive
3. Power on

Platform Notes

WiFi

The MT7622 SoC includes a built-in WMAC that provides 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n/ac (2×2) — there is no 5 GHz capability from the onboard radio.

For dual-band operation, a PCIe card can be fitted in one of the two Mini PCIe slots. The Banana Pi BPI-MT7615 is a purpose-built dual-band (2.4 + 5 GHz, 802.11ac 4×4) module designed for BPI router boards and is a natural fit. With it installed, Infix will use it in preference to the onboard WMAC for the wifi0-ap interface.

mmc0 = eMMC, mmc1 = SD

On MT7622, MSDC0 (mmc0) is the 8-bit eMMC controller and MSDC1 (mmc1) is the 4-bit SD card controller — the reverse of many other platforms.

Building

# Bootloader only (SD)
make O=x-boot-bpir64-sd bpi_r64_sd_boot_defconfig && make O=x-boot-bpir64-sd

# Bootloader only (eMMC)
make O=x-boot-bpir64-emmc bpi_r64_emmc_boot_defconfig && make O=x-boot-bpir64-emmc

# Compose SD image (pass the Infix rootfs output directory)
utils/mkimage.sh -b x-boot-bpir64-sd -r x-aarch64/images bananapi-bpi-r64

# Compose eMMC image
utils/mkimage.sh -b x-boot-bpir64-emmc -r x-aarch64/images -t emmc bananapi-bpi-r64