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OPENWRT System 1: A1 Board Introduction and Development Environment Setup

· 11 min read
Yuxuan
Yuxuan
100askTeam yuxuan.
DShanPl-A1 Education is deeply optimized for artificial intelligence education and project development. Based on Rockchip's RK3576 processor, it integrates 4 Cortex-A72 and 4 Cortex-A53 cores with NEON instruction set support, supports 8K@30fps H.265, VP9 AVS2 and AV1 decoders, 4k@60fps H.264 decoder and 4K@60fps AV1 decoder; it also supports 4K@60fps H.264 and H.265 encoders. The built-in 3D GPU is fully compatible with OpenGl ES1.1/2.0/3.2, 0penCL2.0 and Vulkan 1.1. The embedded NPU computing power reaches up to 6TopS, supporting INT4/INT8/INT16/FP16 mixed operations.

The board has rich peripheral interfaces, and the onboard SOC delivers strong performance, providing a mid-to-high-end performance SBC (Single Board Computer) experience, smart router, etc. Below are some corresponding application scenario examples:

  • Smart standalone mini computer, with office, education, programming development, embedded development and other functions
  • Personal git repository, server, NAS, soft router, private cloud
  • Robot, drone and other projects
  • TV box, smart home hub, home security monitoring, smart speaker and other smart devices
OpenWrt is an open-source Linux-based embedded operating system, mainly used for network devices such as routers. Compared with traditional router firmware, OpenWrt is not a fixed-function firmware, but a freely extensible software platform. Users can install various components through the opkg package system to implement routing, firewall, VPN, NAS, intranet penetration and many other functions. It provides an SSH command line and LuCI Web interface, with flexible configuration, supporting advanced network features such as VLAN, IPv6, QoS, and multi-WAN. OpenWrt has a clear, modular structure, with the core including the UCI configuration system, netifd network management, dnsmasq, hostapd, and the firewall framework. With its high customizability and strong community support, OpenWrt is suitable for home and enterprise networks as well as secondary development, making it an ideal choice for building high-function routers and network application platforms. Lean's OpenWrt LEDE repository is an open-source project maintained by Lean, aimed at providing stable, efficient and feature-rich support for the OpenWrt system. As a combination of the OpenWrt and LEDE projects, the Lean version provides optimized firmware and enhanced features for a wide range of routers and embedded devices, and is widely used in home, enterprise and laboratory environments. The Lean repository contains numerous patches, optimizations, drivers, and various third-party applications from the global open-source community, greatly enhancing the customizability and performance of the OpenWrt system.

The goal of this project is to build a lightweight NAS (lightweight NAS) application based on the DShanPl-A1 Education single-board. The best implementation path is to adopt the mature and highly extensible open-source routing system OpenWrt LEDE. With OpenWrt's complete Linux environment and rich ecological plugins, we can install storage services, network services, intranet penetration, secure access and other functional modules in the system as needed. Through the collaborative configuration among these plugins, combined with OpenWrt's powerful network management capabilities, a lightweight NAS solution based on a soft router architecture can be built.

Development Environment

Environment Description​

The official OpenWrt build recommends using the native GNU/Linux environment, but it also supports building using Windows WSL mode. Using a WSL development environment on Windows eliminates the need to configure a virtual machine environment, and can also be used in environments where installing VMware is restricted. Therefore, the author's build and development environment mostly prioritizes using WSL.

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) provides a native-level Linux environment on Windows, suitable for developers to carry out cross-platform or Linux-related project development. Its main advantages include:

  1. Lightweight and fast: No virtual machine or dual system is needed. Startup and running are almost as fast as native Linux, with low resource consumption.
  2. Seamless integration with Windows: Can directly access the Windows file system, and use Windows tools (such as VSCode, browser) together with Linux tools.
  3. Native Linux experience: Supports most Linux commands, package managers, and build tools. You can directly compile, debug, and run services.
  4. Easy to install and maintain: One-click installation from the Microsoft Store. System updates and environment switching are very convenient.
  5. Excellent development experience: Supports mainstream development environments such as Docker (WSL2), Git, Python, Node.js, C/C++, suitable for embedded, server, network, AI and other fields.
  6. Good cross-platform compatibility: Can build Linux-runnable software on Windows, such as compiling OpenWrt, building drivers, generating cross-compiled packages, etc.
Overall, WSL allows developers to obtain near-native Linux capabilities on Windows at minimal cost, greatly improving efficiency and flexibility. We use VSCode remote access, which makes it very convenient to complete development work. Below are some WSL environment configurations that need to be set before building. Copy this part to

Environment Variable Configuration​

Refer to the official documentation: Build system setup WSL

In the WSL environment, in the build user's .bashrc, add the corresponding configuration information according to the instructions below to solve the problem that Windows environment variables are also effective by default in WSL. After this setting, the environment is basically consistent with the native GNU/LINUX environment, and there will be no issues with WSL's import mechanism.

# GO build configuration, if it cannot be built, open this
#export GO111MODULE=on
#export GOPROXY=https://goproxy.cn

# proxy, replace this with the proxy service IP:PORT of your own Windows environment
export http_proxy=http://192.168.31.50:6080
export https_proxy=http://192.168.31.50:6080

export REPO_URL='https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/git/git-repo'

# Filter Windows PATH stuff
export PATH=$(echo $PATH | sed -e 's|:[^:]*WindowsApps[^:]*||g')
export PATH=$(echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | grep -v NVIDIA | tr '\n' ':')
export PATH=$(echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | grep -v 'Files' | paste -sd ':' -)
export PATH=$(echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | grep -v 'VS' | paste -sd ':' -)
export PATH=$(echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | grep -v '/mnt/' | paste -sd ':' -)

WSL Network Proxy Settings​

Since some tool packages are on GitHub, default network downloads may often fail. We can choose to run the corresponding proxy software on Windows, then enable allowing other devices to connect, and then configure the corresponding http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables in WSL, which can conveniently accelerate GitHub access.

Below are some configuration examples:

  1. Proxy software enables LAN device connection

  1. Set the network mode to Mirrored in WSL Settings

For more details, please refer to Microsoft's official documentation: Access network applications with WSL - Mirrored mode networking

  1. After configuration, first run wsl --shutdown, and then restart wsl ubuntu
  2. Check whether the environment variable WSL_PAC_URL has been configured successfully. A successful example is as follows:

  1. Configure terminal http and https proxies, with automatic PAC filtering
export http_proxy=$WSL_PAC_URL
export https_proxy=$WSL_PAC_URL

Tips: You can directly write this into the current user's .bashrc, so you don't have to execute the proxy settings every time.

Flashing Test Method

This section introduces the basic method of flashing the LEDE image. You need to master the method of flashing the image in advance. Below is a detailed step-by-step introduction.

Hardware Connection​

To flash the system image, in addition to the dshanpi-a1 board, you also need to prepare TypeC USB cable, 30W PD power adapter (recommended to purchase from Weidongshan store), as shown below:

Install Driver and Flashing Software​

The tool packages and image files that need to be downloaded are as follows:

Find the driver installation tool package DriverAssitant_v5.1.1.zip in the previously downloaded materials, extract it, then open and launch the download program DriverInstall.exe, click driver installation, as follows:

Extract the flashing tool RKDevTool_Release_v3.32.zip downloaded from the previous link, and then directly double-click RKDevTool.exe.

Start Flashing​

After the preparation is complete, follow the steps below to make the device enter the MASKROM flashing mode:

1. Connect the usb2.0/3.0 otg cable (i.e., the type-c flashing data cable, the other end of the data cable connects to the computer's USB2.0/3.0 blue port);

2. Press and hold the **<font style={{color: 'rgb(28, 30, 33)', backgroundColor: 'rgb(246, 247, 248)'}}>MASKROM</font>** button, do not release it first ;

3. Then connect the power supply, and the dshanpi-a1 will enter the **<font style={{color: 'rgb(28, 30, 33)', backgroundColor: 'rgb(246, 247, 248)'}}>MASKROM</font>** flashing mode;

Open the flashing tool, select the interface parameters as below, configure the flashing image and parameters, then click execute, and wait for the download to complete. After flashing is complete, the board will automatically restart, and then the LEDE pixel LOGO will appear, indicating that flashing is complete.

OpenWrt EMMC flashing parameter configuration example

System boot shell prompt

Note: After OpenWrt compilation is complete, the flashable image will be compressed into a zip format file. You need to perform the decompression operation first before it can be used as the flashing image for the flashing tool. An example is as follows: 
jason@ubuntu24:~/LEDE/bin/targets/rockchip/armv8$ gunzip -k openwrt-rockchip-armv8-100ask_dshanpia1-squashfs-sysupgrade.img.gz -f
gzip: openwrt-rockchip-armv8-100ask_dshanpia1-squashfs-sysupgrade.img.gz: decompression OK, trailing garbage ignored

# Wait for the img image file input
jason@ubuntu24:~/LEDE/bin/targets/rockchip/armv8$ ls -lh openwrt-rockchip-armv8-100ask_dshanpia1-squashfs-sysupgrade.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 jason jason 640M Nov 28 02:24 openwrt-rockchip-armv8-100ask_dshanpia1-squashfs-sysupgrade.img

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