-
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 155
Waveshare PCIe to M.2 E-Key HAT+ (for wireless) #709
New issue
Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.
By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.
Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account
Comments
With an Intel AX210 chip installed:
Seems to indicate the chip uses PCIe Gen 2x1, which doesn't require any change to Surprisingly, on a stock Pi OS install it has Looks like it just needs updated firmware:
|
I ran
Also got a new firmware update lol, just posted a few minutes ago!
|
Didn't think that'd solve the missing firmware issue, but I'm on:
See related for BE200: #670 (comment) Looking in the git linux-firmware tree I could grab the right files:
More info about the iwlwifi firmware: https://wireless.docs.kernel.org/en/latest/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi.html After doing that, reboot... in my case, it seemed to have a long delay before console access, then even longer before I got a connection over Ethernet...
|
Switching tracks to the BE200, maybe I have a bad AX210 or I need to recompile the kernel for the latest igw drivers, not sure...
Trying with 92 version of firmware (I couldn't find 93 in linux-firmware):
Then after a reboot...
Similar messages repeated a bunch, so it seems like at least the way iwlwifi works if you update to the 6.12 kernel is a bit funky. Going to re-flash 6.6.y (latest Pi OS image) and see if that works any better with the firmware. |
Indeed, switching back to the 6.6.y kernel... I noticed:
Trying again:
|
And after a reboot it works!
See related: #647 (comment) |
Just a quick speed test:
I'm happy to see the Waveshare HAT includes 'LED1', which lights up green when there is an active wlan connection. |
Interesting side-note, maybe something in iwlwifi is funky, because I can't monitor the interface with Digging deeper:
But
|
Testing Bluetooth functionality:
After a reboot:
Checking on the Bluetooth functionality:
So checking on what's blocking it:
And now it seems like it may work:
And I can scan for bluetooth devices:
It didn't find anything, so I checked:
I tested a few BT devices I had laying around. One question is: does bluetooth require an antenna be connected to the 'AUX' jack on the WiFi chip? Because right now I just have one connected to MAIN. |
I do see a few error messages in the Bluetooth logs:
Testing with
So it definitely is working :) |
And to be complete, it looks like WiFi 6E and 7 may be supported with NetworkManager 1.42 included on the Pi 5 / Pi OS 12. Maybe. Not 100% sure. But:
Nothing is showing as |
Testing WiFi 6/7 on 6 GHz band... I can only get it to connect on 5 GHz frequencies for now—for example:
All the connections Network Manager manages are listed under: Also thanks to this SE answer, I found I can edit the band directly with
Testing this soon... going to see if I can first force the 2.4 GHz band, then try for 6 GHz. Failing that, I'll force my SSID on the AP to 6 GHz only. |
I found that the Pi OS version of NetworkManager (1.42.4) doesn't seem to support 6 GHz at all... it's not listing it as a capability for the WiFi adapter:
It looks like it was added in 1.46, and Debian |
Maybe... NOTE: This will upgrade all the things. That is probably going to break something or another, so don't do this lightly lol. Probably better to figure out pinning to stable for most things, and testing for just network-manager and friends...
Did that, rebooted after the upgrade was complete, and:
Next up: seeing if I can force |
So forcing a
But you can't do
|
I've opened an issue in the NetworkManager GitLab: Allow configuration of 6 Ghz (ax/be) WiFi bands. Pending that feature addition, I will create a separate 6 GHz-only SSID on my AP. |
I've been testing WiFi 6 / 6 GHz channels, but having some trouble... I noticed I would get disconnects and some errors with the Broadcom wifi driver?
Searching around I found raspberrypi/linux#6049 — maybe the Broadcom WiFi driver is causing a problem here? To disable, I've added the following to
After a reboot, the built-in This allows me to see my mixed 2.4/5/6 and 6-only networks:
And I can associate with the 6 GHz network:
|
With auto-selected 160 MHz channel width and no Multi-Link aggregation (where it bonds connections on 5/6GHz for even more bandwidth), I'm getting over 1 Gbps over WiFi with a cheap-o antenna:
It looks like even if I force 320 MHz on the AP, the BE200 won't accept anything more than 160 MHz. Going to attempt multi-link next. |
With multi-link enabled and the 2.4 GHz radio off on the AP, I can connect to a mixed network, it centers on a 6 GHz channel... but then I get about the same data rates:
It seems like maybe the |
With two external WiFi antennas connected (much nicer than the little stubby antenna I was testing for convenience), I am getting 1.21 Gbps (with bursts up to 1.3 Gbps):
|
Attempting to set up a WiFi Access Point (AP) with
I also tried forcing 2.4 GHz channel 0, and that still resulted in failure:
Therefore I deleted the connection:
|
Interestingly... I reset everything, installed everything from scratch, and re-connected to my 6 GHz-only network. I was able to get 320 MHz channel width, on a 6 GHz band, despite NetworkManager still being at 1.42.3:
So it looks like WiFi can still hit 6 GHz just fine without updating NetworkManager to a later version. Good to know! |
Note: the HAT is listed on the site here: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/hats/waveshare-pcie-m2-e-key.html I'm satisfied I've tested all this HAT's capabilities! For a follow-up issue on the PoE+ version of this HAT, see #713 |
Waveshare has a PCIe to M.2 E-Key HAT+ HAT intended for WiFi and Bluetooth cards, like the Intel AX210, or the BE200.
The HAT comes with antenna cables, two external SMA antenna jacks, mounting hardware, and a USB A to C adapter board so Bluetooth functionality can be used through the E-key slot for E and A+E key cards.
More info and Driver setup instructions for popular WiFi cards is located on Waveshare's Wiki: https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/PCIE_TO_M.2_E_KEY_HAT+
I've tested this HAT with an Intel BE200 (WiFi 7) and AX210 (WiFi 6E):
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: