I found my NanoPi Neo Air's could not list or connect to some wifi networks. Some investigating found this was because channel 12/13 are disabled by default.

Nothing in runtime had any effect on the output of iw reg get as it should have.

Patching in some firmware fixes worked for me.

 

wget http://ftp.be.debian.org/pub/software/network/wireless-regdb/wireless-regdb-2025.02.20.tar.xz
tar xf wireless-regdb-2025.02.20.tar.xz
sudo cp wireless-regdb-2025.02.20/regulatory.db /lib/firmware/
sudo cp wireless-regdb-2025.02.20/regulatory.db.p7s /lib/firmware/
sudo iw reg set AU #Australia

I can now connect to wifi channel 13.

Now for my question:

I read in this old thread that armbian-firmware-full is required for wifi. would that mean that the full firmware package is desirable for the Nanopi Neo Air?
When running apt-get install armbian-firmware-full it states it will consume an additional 1gb of disk space. Hardly desirable for a little device.

VERSION
v25.5.1 for NanoPi Air running Armbian Linux 6.12.30-current-sunxi

 

The way I understand it is that you only need the full firmware package in a few exceptional circumstances.  What is the wifi chipset on your SBC?

 

Do you have the wireless-regdb package installed?  "dpkg -l wireless-regdb"

@laibschThe nano pi neo air uses the Ampak AP6212.

Here are the modules loaded.

lsmod | grep brcmfmac
brcmfmac_wcc           12288  0
brcmfmac              192512  1 brcmfmac_wcc
brcmutil               12288  1 brcmfmac
cfg80211              618496  1 brcmfmac

I didn't see a change in this output before/after I installed the patch fix above.
 

dpkg -l wireless-regdb
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-======================================
ii  wireless-regdb 2022.06.06-1 all          wireless regulatory database for Linux

 

 

 

OK, can you do the following for me, please, to be sure this is properly fixed?  Kindly share the console output for me to have a look at.

 

sudo apt reinstall wireless-regdb
dpkg -S /lib/firmware/regulatory.db*

 

Then reboot and see if your problem remains fixed.

 

For now, I suggest you keep the wireless-regdb-2025.02.20.tar.xz file around on the NanoPi in case you need it again.