The Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini is a compact router board with 2G and 5G antennas. Compatible with OpenWRT, the BPI-R3 Mini supports Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, has 2 GB of DDR4 RAM, 8 GB of eMMC flash storage and a MediaTek MT7986 chipset.

This post is similar to the brilliant thread Cheap but effective DIY WiFi Mesh Setup for my home by BHPian @NaXal, with an important difference - this how-to is for a purely WiFi mesh (as against wired connection between router and APs like the linked thread).

I use OpenWrt on x86. I use this build but added a WiFi card and antennas. At first the WiFi performance was very good giving me great speeds and range. Some time ago performance degraded. The signal range is extremely limited giving me disconnects on my phone when I'm 4 meters away.

How could I debug what the cause might be. Any ideas?

I’ve been running OpenWRT on my routers for a while now. It started off as just an experiment on my Mi Router 3c, but it now forms a very integral part of my homelab.

I’ve since helped set up OpenWRT on a lot of different routers for my friends’ home networks, giving old routers a new lease of life and making it more secure.

Of the different routers I’ve come across that support OpenWRT, Xiaomi ones tend to stand out to me:

• They’re fairly cheap
• Easily procurable in most markets
• Have very very decent specs for the price point, and,
• Aren’t hard to put OpenWRT on

I think I’ve only seen routers from TP-Link come close to this level of support for OpenWRT, but their hardware variations often throws an axe when it comes to OpenWRT support.

What are your thoughts, and what do you run OpenWRT on?