Openwrt on custom hardware

Un bel giorno pozz digitò:

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What about Raspberry Pi? Many models are supported, including Zero and compute modules (easier to integrate into other designs):

You might like to try these people. Have been using a 3 port box of theirs, nanopi, running a variant of openwrt, for a while now. Just worked out of the box.

Not expensive and arrived within a few days. Usual disclaimer etc...

Chris

Are any of these platforms any good to you?

There's a SBC page:

some of those are SOMs.

Also searching 'openwrt som' turns up some products.

Theo

These are usually directly accessible on any platform with solid OpenWRT support - regardless of how esoteric the components are.

For the cheapest SOM's, look for Raspberry Pi compute modules. If you want something very solid with good long-term support, industrial reliability and continued production for a decade or more, folks like Toradex are a good option - but they cost significantly more.

An alternative might be to view the Linux board more flexibly, and have your base board connected by USB. Put a USB hub chip on it along with a couple of USB-Ethernet adaptors (combined devices exist, I believe), a USB 4G modem, and an FTDI 4232H or other FTDI chip (for UARTs and GPIOs). Then you can use any board running Linux - all the hardware you need is on your board, and it is all controlled the same way from the Linux system. USB2 based Ethernet is easily an order of magnitude faster than you need for VOIP, and none of this needs drivers or OS support outside of the standard kernel for the last decade or more.

Just got this in my inbox today - sorry, no english page:

Manufacturer page:

They claim armbian support - that should work OK as a starting point, unless you are fixed on OpenWRT.

Depending on volume, you might take one of their SOMs and put it on a custom base board that adds power-over-ethernet and other add-ons as required.

cu Michael

Il 25/10/2023 16:33, dalai lamah ha scritto:

Thanks for suggestion, as usual Raspberry is helpful for hobbyst and prototype, but I'm worried about serious productions where you need a product that can be purchased for several years.

In the past (around 3 years ago) I designed a product around CM1 that now is not available anymore.

Yeah, I found these folks too in my researches. I will try their products a try. Maybe they could be available to re-design one of their product with some custom hardware I need.

Un bel giorno pozz digitò:

As far as I know, CM3 should be backward compatible with CM1, or at least very easily adaptable.

However, this is quite usual for these kind of modules, it doesn't matter who makes them. I still remember some very disappointing experiences I've had many years ago with some Bluetooth modules made by so-called "respectable" manufacturers, and disappeared from Earth from one day to another. Unless you use some very standard form factors such as PC-104 or VPX (usually bigger and more expensive), you will face phase out.

At least the Raspberry foundation gives you an obsolescence statement for their compute modules, for example they say that CM3+ will remain in production until at least January 2028:

Besides, I believed that it was possible to buy the "bare" CPUs (in this case the Broadcom BCM2837B0) to build your own boards, but apparently this is not the case. These CPU do not even pop out if you search for them in the Broadcom site! You can find some very sparse information online, but basically it is all locked in between Broadcom and the Raspberry foundation. Bummer.

pcengines.ch may have what you need.

Bye Jack

They end-of-lifed their APU boards since AMD EOLed the old SoC they were using. They seem to be going out of business, at least the low power x86 board business, so it's pretty much last time buys only now.

Shame. I finally got off my lazy ass during the pandemic and built a home router exactly the way I like it, with an APU board.