WiFi 5.0GHz support

1st Official Post

    I bought this:

    Amazon.com: BrosTrend 1200Mbps Linux USB WiFi Adapter for Desktop, Laptop of Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Kali, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Zorin, Raspbian, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10-XP, 5GHz / 2.4GHz, 2 X 5dBi Antennas, USB 3.0: Electronics

    and this

    Amazon.com: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 8GB Starter MAX Kit - 64GB Edition (8GB RAM): Computers & Accessories

    I loaded LibreELEC.

    It works on 2.5GHz but not 5.0GHz

    Is there a driver I need to install to get 5.0GHz working?

    All versions are latest releases and just recently installed.

    After contacting BrosTrend they offered this driver command

    sh -c 'busybox wget http://deb.trendtechcn.com/install -O /tmp/install && sh /tmp/install'

    I am not savvy enough to install or know if this driver would make a difference.

    Thanks for any help,

    Richard

    • Official Post

    ConnMan (the connection manager) will prefer the strongest signal for the SSID that you're connected to, so the solution is not installing drivers (which you cannot do on LE) but ensuring the 5GHz network has a better signal than 2.4GHz. The workaround is forcing the router to use a different SSID for 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels, allowing you to only connect to the 5GHz SSID. There is no way to force it to use 5GHz.

    NB: Their instruction is for installing a .deb package which I guess contains drivers, but this will not work on LE because most of the filesystem you look at is expanded at boot-time from two compressed and read-only files, and you cannot install things inside them.

    I picked LibreELEC because it is tailored to support Kodi. I use it as a HTPC (4K) and without external feeds in general, basically a video player.

    In the LibreELEC Network connections only one SSIDs shows up, the 2.4GHz. There are no other WiFi network connections available. The SSIDs are different for 2.4 and 5.0. I connected it with a wired connection and that shows up in Network.

    Why doesn't the network show up as available?

    Thanks for your help,

    Richard

    I sent the driver because I feel that BrosTrend is a good product and perhaps if needed it could be included in a revision.

    No one has commented on the hardware in use with the WiFi adapter. I have seen on the deb driver installer that your adapter needs to load the driver modules 8821cu or 88x2bu. I have two similar adapters, one uses the 8821cu module, and the other uses the 88x2bu module, both work perfectly with CoreELEC on arm Amlogic aarch64 processors, and I can use the 5GHz band without problems. When I connect these adapters to my LibreELEC device x86_64 stops working and the system only recognizes the internal Intel Wireless iw* adapter.