Banana Pi BPI-M4 ZERO standard support

[ScoreABSM]

I really like this small board but with new revision firmware choice is a nightmare...

Looking for Debian or Ubuntu with XFCE and support for wifi (usb eth at start if needed ok), bluetooth, HDMI sound, QHD display resolution (2560x1440) 

Main tests results:

- Standard Armbian (V25.2.2 Linux 6.6.75 Ubuntu noble XFCE + overlays=bananapi-m4-sdio-wifi-bt)

   -> wifi OK, bluetooth NO, HDMI sound NO, bad display perf, buggy screen size (display 1920 when choosing 2560) 

- Official BPI (V24.8.2 Linux 5.4.125 Debian XFCE + overlays=i2c0 spi1 uart4

   -> wifi OK, Bluetooth NO, HDMI sound NO, bug in screen size (limited to 1920)

- Other rolling releases, starting from minimal, ...: not better ou worse.

 

Any build you know with better results? Please help.

 

[c0rnelius]

The GPU node needs to be enabled.

There has been adjustments made to the patching for 6.12.y and above, but I haven't messed with yet. Basically nodes need to be added for sound.

As for  Bluetooth. I haven't figured out yet why it doesn't work on Armbian. In my personal builds it works fine. I believe there is some patching or service preventing it from loading. But I can't be sure.

 

I've put a lot of time already into the DTS to get this working on both REVS. To much time in my opinion. Anyone is welcome to do a PR and add and enable the bits if they like. Otherwise peps are just gonna have to wait till I get around to it again.

 

[going]

04.05.2025 в 14:18, ScoreABSM сказал:

Any build you know with better results? Please help.

Try some of these images.
https://github.com/armbian/os/releases/tag/25.5.0-trunk.507

 

And please post here what doesn't work with the download link to the image.

[ScoreABSM]

Thanks for replying c0rnelius, going, sorry for the delay.

 

Testing 507 (2 Bananapi M4 Zero images available, minimal Trixie and minimal Plucky) I got same result:

- no wifi adapter found

- adding an ethernet usb I was able to activate network/ssh install/upgrade from another computer

- no HDMI sound (no sound cards found)

- no bluetooth adapter

- no GPU

- no change with overlays available (sun50i-h616-bananapi-m4-sdio-wifi-bt, sun50i-h616-gpu) 

 

Do you know about other overlays available elsewhere?

 

Thanks

Denis

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Edited 20 hours ago by ScoreABSM

[c0rnelius]

@ScoreABSM Should fix part of the problem; https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/8191

 

As for Wifi, it works fine for me. Make sure you have an antenna attached or it may not find anything on the network to connect to.

 

As one user already discovered; 

 

[ScoreABSM]

Many thanks @c0rnelius but I need clarifications. 
I agree that for standard build, using overlays (bananapi-m4-sdio-wifi-bt and sun50i-h616-gpu build), wifi (with or without antenna) and GPU are ok, but it is not true for rolling release 570 suggested by @going  , and I never got HDMI sound (no sound cards each time). 

Are you refering to another recent build? If HDMI sound is also available it’s great! And what about bluetooth? When you write wireless do you include bluetooth? 
 

Denis

Edited 12 hours ago by ScoreABSM

[c0rnelius]

There are big differences between the two revisions. The biggest one is, one is using Wifi/BT over USB and the other SDIO, which requires the sdio overlay. The reason for BT not working on Armbian, I have yet to figure out. Like I said before, it works on (my personal) a more minimal build;

 

   Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid 6.12.26 #1 Sun May 4 17:50:23 EDT 2025 aarch64

                                                        BananaPi BPI-M4-Zero v2

── DISK
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcblk2p2   29G  2.8G   26G  10% /
/dev/mmcblk2p1  466M   74M  363M  17% /boot

── NETWORK
Hostname:    bananapim4zero
Wireless:    wlan0 UP 10.0.0.XX 
Bluetooth:   hci0 AC:6A:A3:3B:D9:D6

── SYSTEM
Processor:   Cortex-A53 @ 1416MHz 52°C
Frequency:   1416MHz
Online:      0-3
Governor:    performance
Memory:      3.8G 199M
Entropy:     256
Uptime:      15:13:05 up 4 min, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.06, 0.

 

It is hard for me to determine the reasons BT doesn't work, as the patching is very extensive. If it is even the patching?

 

And yes I include the BT node in the overlay; https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.12/patches.armbian/Add-BananaPi-BPI-M4-Zero-overlays.patch#L267

 

As for HDMI audio and GPU, the PR I posted a link to corrects this. In future releases and rolling (give it a day) it should now work. Although I think I need to now add my changes to the 6.14.y branch? I'll check.