Hi, I am new to Orange Pi ecosystem. I have a Orange Pi PC 2 running armbian and some times raspbian. I want to use a wifi adapter to this. Since there has been many discussions on which adapter to chose and how to chose I am really confused. Please help me select a wifi adapter which could be installed easily considering that I am a rookie.

4 hours ago, Shemin A Salam said:

Hi, I am new to Orange Pi ecosystem. I have a Orange Pi PC 2 running armbian and some times raspbian. I want to use a wifi adapter to this. Since there has been many discussions on which adapter to chose and how to chose I am really confused. Please help me select a wifi adapter which could be installed easily considering that I am a rookie.

https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-pc2/

Scroll down and pick one from the tested list. They work fine on Armbian, while on Raspbian forget about.

i have seen that list but i have seen that people have tried other wifi adapters too which have been reported working well.

moreover i am looking for something cheaper. any idea about chipsets supported by orangi pi pc

18 minutes ago, Shemin A Salam said:

i am looking for something cheaper

 

Do you think that list is a joke?

Just buy some random one but please don't come here ranting about troubles. Shitty wireless adaptors = poor performance. We used to recommend this cheap one: MT7601 based https://amzn.to/2VP9EYk which works better than wireless on Orangepi Zero, for example, but it is still very bad. Drivers on some kernels are lower than acceptable level.
 

This https://amzn.to/2MXpJpP is the cheapest I will recommend you to buy. You can find it for little less on Aliexpress or Ebay and it is magnitude better - you get AC dual band adaptor with pitch perfect drivers.

10 minutes ago, Igor said:

https://amzn.to/2VP9EYk

 

I bought one of these, looking exactly the same, from a different dealer on Amazon, however I did not come with MT7601U but an unsupported Realtek chip. You can take the risk buying this and maybe you even get what it is advertised. 

 

Edit: Related: 

 

20 minutes ago, Igor said:

 

Do you think that list is a joke?

 

I dont have any issues with the list. I hope you can understand that I have limitations in getting the exact dongles you advice due to various reasons. In that case its always improvisations that would work. In that direction just wanted to clear the  doubts

33 minutes ago, Shemin A Salam said:

I hope you can understand that I have limitations in getting the exact dongles

I know. You don't need to get exactly that one, but it needs to have the same chip (Realtek 8811AU). I am sure you can find it and its worth investing some time finding the right one. 

56 minutes ago, Igor said:

I know. You don't need to get exactly that one, but it needs to have the same chip (Realtek 8811AU). I am sure you can find it and its worth investing some time finding the right one. 

friend i have checked with stores which supply the above said Realtek 8811AU but it seems there are limitations from their end to ship the product me. Also some are not sure about the chipsets..so i am waiting for them to get back....on the mean time Is there any other chip-set options other than in the list of devices you have tested which could work with some additional work or some thing that would work on the basis of my luck.

5 minutes ago, Shemin A Salam said:

friend i have checked with stores which supply the above said Realtek 8811AU but it seems there are limitations from their end to ship the product me. Also some are not sure about the chipsets..so i am waiting for them to get back....on the mean time Is there any other chip-set options other than in the list of devices you have tested which could work with some additional work or some thing that would work on the basis of my luck.

Try 8812AU then. It will be a few bucks more because its a dual stream, which you might not need, but it works fine. When you buy cheap, you usually buy twice or three times. If they don't know or seller can't give you warranty which chips is in, don't buy. Simple as that.

 

One alternative is RT3572 which should work stable. But since it also costs around the same as 8812/8811 and is not AC capable, it's not worth buying it.

47 minutes ago, Igor said:

Try 8812AU then.

 

 

I have a stick based on that chipset. I'm not using it with armbian (so the chosen driver there may be better) but it's not without issues: since it's not been mainlined (yet?) on a desktop (kubuntu) distribution you have to chase a driver (there are several variations, some of them working better than others) and even when you find the "correct" one there are still issues: sometimes I have to unplug and re-plug the stick to get a connection, sometimes, when it doesn't connect, it gets really hot.

When it works it works fine though.

55 minutes ago, olivluca said:

on a desktop (kubuntu) distribution you have to chase a driver

 

On Armbian it works perfectly fine OOB with best driver possible. The one we use come from Kali Linux community and even contains advanced functionalities. Small glitches are ofc possible, but I never experienced troubles you are mentioning.

 

In (wireless) networking, Armbian is steps further from generic x86 desktop distribution.

i really appreciate the good work. I found some RTL8811AU adapters, hopping to buy them soon. I am now thinking of migrating my home assistant hassio installation from raspberry pi to orange pc 2. 

Edited January 13, 20197 yr by Shemin A Salam
typo

1 hour ago, Igor said:

On Armbian it works perfectly fine OOB with best driver possible. The one we use come from Kali Linux community and even contains advanced functionalities. Small glitches are ofc possible, but I never experienced troubles you are mentioning.

 

I'm using this one:

https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au/tree/v5.1.5

(other branches gave poorer performance).

I think I tried various repositories before settling on this one.

 

 

7 minutes ago, olivluca said:

I'm using this one:

Our's also came from here but not sure about the version/branch. Anyway, I plan doing some research and updating this driver when we move to 4.20+

Mt76 based dongles should work. A6210 works OK for me. I get around 160mbit/250mbit on 5ghz AC

110mbit on 2.4ghz

Around £15 on ebay. Argos sell them for £30 but reduce to £20 on occasion

 

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/mediatek

The drivers are under active development https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/commits/master

 

some of the RTL8812AU yellow dongles from china come with RTL8812CU now. RTL8812AU perform bad even under windows so likely have poor design

20 hours ago, Shemin A Salam said:

Hi, I am new to Orange Pi ecosystem. I have a Orange Pi PC 2 running armbian and some times raspbian. I want to use a wifi adapter to this. Since there has been many discussions on which adapter to chose and how to chose I am really confused. Please help me select a wifi adapter which could be installed easily considering that I am a rookie.

 

Armbian supports quite a few adapters, so it's really down to what you're looking to do...

 

I'm rather partial on the QC-Atheros AR9271 based devices - they're older, but rock solid, and they're fairly open to folks that want to dive deeper into WiFi and packet analysis...

 

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Atheros_AR9271