Wi-Fi won't stay on BeagleBone

Question

I am running Ubuntu 11.10 on a BeagleBone with a Edimax EW-7711UAn Wi-Fi adapter connected to a USB port. I configured / etc / network / interfaces and wifi works, BUT:

• The wlan0 interface does not always appear when the device boots. He successfully approaches three attempts.

• The interface is sometimes omitted again, especially when not in use for a while.

The file / etc / network / interfaces includes:

auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-driver wext wpa-ssid "Bodoni" wpa-psk "<mypassword>" 

To try to refer to point 1), I placed the following in /etc/rc.local:

 nohup sh -c "ifdown wlan0 && ifup wlan0" 

But he did not seem to help much. I assume that the second problem may be related to power management, so I can try to disable this in /etc/rc.local.

But does anyone have any thoughts on how I can get Wi-Fi to boot securely? I am running a BeagleBone headless without Ethernet (it's on the robot), so it is important that I fix this!

FYI, I use the default drivers - lsmod gives:

 Module Size Used by aes_generic 27837 2 arc4 1111 2 rt2800usb 12386 0 rt2800lib 45146 1 rt2800usb crc_ccitt 1457 1 rt2800lib rt2x00usb 10595 1 rt2800usb rt2x00lib 39077 3 rt2800usb,rt2800lib,rt2x00usb mac80211 228509 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib cfg80211 167722 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211 rfkill 16703 1 cfg80211 binfmt_misc 6224 1 spidev 4620 0 

I hope not to compile a new driver, because I have not had much success with this!

Answer 1

I had a similar problem with my BeagleBones using another wifi adapter using the rt2800usb driver. In particular, I use DLINK DWA-125 (HW Rev A2), which is based on the rt3070 chip.

The exact exact symptoms you are reporting if I plug the DWA-125 directly into the BeagleBone's USB port.

BUT, if I connect the adapter to a USB extension cable, and then connect the extension cable to the BeagleBone USB port, everything will be fine. I made Cloud9 work 100 hours using this setting and no Wi-Fi issues.

I run the Angstrom distribution - and I find the same problem in all three recent releases of BB (4/22. 5 /? And 6/18).

The length of the USB extension cable does not seem to matter (at least between 1ft and 12ft - I haven’t tried anything below 1 foot).

I have 6 BeagleBones (4 ver A5 and 2 ver A6) - the behavior on all of these Beaglebones is the same.

There are also 4 USB adapters DWA-125 Rev A2. The behavior is the same for everyone.

I have not experimented with other Wi-Fi USB adapters using the same or different chips / drivers. And I did not take the time to track down the main reason for this behavior - I have code for writing!

But try, if your experience matches mine - this is a quick and easy fix.

---- Addition:

I just tried an experiment with a Belkin N150 Micro USB Wi-Fi adapter based on the rtl8192cu chip and standard drivers that come with the BeagleBone Angstrom 6/18 distribution.

It turned out a very similar behavior: Wi-Fi does not work at all when connected directly to a USB port. But when connected via a 1-foot USB extension cable, everything works fine.

Answer 2

I had the same problem. The best explanation I've found so far is this one from Adafruit

The main idea is that the Wifi key is destroyed by the HDMI adapter, which is located under the USB slot. In this case, you have two workarounds:

• Place the Wifi dongle as far from the USB slot as possible with a cable
• Disable HDMI if you really don't need it!

Only the second option helped me.

Here are the steps:

 > mkdir /mnt/boot > mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/boot > nano /mnt/boot/uEnv.txt Remove the # in front of the cape_disable command ##Disable HDMI cape_disable=capemgr.disable_partno=BB-BONELT-HDMI,BB-BONELT-HDMIN 

I hope this helps you guys!

Answer 3

I fixed this problem by removing the IC IC protection from ESD (U10, TPD4S012). It should be connected between the USB connector and the CPU, but it was inserted after the USB connector on my board (version A4). I do not know if this has been fixed in future versions.

Update: in some cases this will not help. Check this thread.

Answer 4

It took me a long time to get reliable WiFi on BeagleBone. In the end, the answer was to use the Atheros key, as I had no luck with the RealTek and RALink chipsets. The NetGear WNA1100 is very reliable for me, both in Angstrom and in Ubuntu. See my post here .

Answer 5

I had a similar problem for most of the year until I searched googled long enough to find

Wicd

After I installed things with wicd, my 5 beaglebones were solid on my home network with wifi keys from the back bedroom to the garage. / etc / network / interfaces does not fit. I must have tried hundreds of configurations, and some seemed to last a day or two. I really remember that the document gave a nice default interface, very barebones. And wicd rules your petitioner if ever needed.