I was wondering if there is going to be support for the Pi 500?
Love the project and bought the pifi kit. Found out it didn’t work with the Pi 500, but didn’t return it to support the project because I just love the idea, and the work you’re doing.
I noticed you said last week that a new build was going to come out soon that would support more versions. Does this include the pi 500? and do you have a new estimate on when the new version may be released?
Pi 500 Likely Support (I believe based on Pi 400 testing) on new images
Pi Kit Support
Ethernet (WAN) Support
Wireless Pairing to Router
PiFi without PiFi Kit USB Adapter (not broadcasting wireless)
2.4G Mode (this was crashing Pi 400)
So basically it can’t yet use the internal Raspberry Pi wireless, but works with USB adapter. Not 100% sure that’s the case for Pi 500 too but perhaps likely it will be.
Getting the internal wireless working will take some more work so won’t be on this release.
If you’d like to test the Pi 5 beta image you can find it here
Would be handy to confirm if Pi 500 is the same as Pi 400 in terms of support.
Some good news. After I reset/updated the eeprom for something probably unrelated I got the new beta firmware working. I think it is using the same chip as the PI 5 so Wireless Pairing, 2.4G Mode, and getting things setup without the kit seemed to work.
Not so good news I couldn’t get the Kit USB adapter to work. I tried the official directions plus the troubleshotting, but it either wouldn’t broadcast the network, or wouldn’t give my phone an IP address (tried android, and iOS.)
This was the log output after trying to connect:
98.467315 br-lan: port 1(phy2-ap0) entered blocking state
98.4734661] br-lan: port 1(phy2-ap0) entered disabled state
rtu_8822bu 2-1:1.0 phy2-apo: entered allmulticast mode
[98.4802021 rtw_8822bu 2-1:1.0 phy2-ape: entered promiscuous mode
[ 103.167365] br-lan: port 1(phy2-ap0) entered blocking state
( 103.1735381 br-lan: port 1(phy2-ap0 ) entered forwarding state
( 134.8095861 rtw_8822bu 2-1:1.0: error beacon valid
( 134.815573] rtu_8822bu 2-1:1.0: failed to download dru rsud page
[ 134.8221301 rtu_8822bu 2-1:1.0: failed to download beacon
[ 157.3373351 rtw_8822bu 2-1:1.0: error beacon valid
157.3431991 rtu_8822bu 2-1:1.0: failed to download dru rsud page
167.4751481 rtu_8822bu 2-1:1.0: error beacon valid
167.4811361 rtw_8822bu 2-1:1.0: failed to download dru rsud page
[167.4876321 rtu_8822bu 2-1:1.0: failed to download beacon
Tried a couple of different power supplies, and workflows to try to get it working, but with a couple of hours of debugging couldn’t get it to work.
Hopefully I’ll find some time later in the week to dig into it some more, and see if I can peak under the hood and see if playing with openwrt could help at all. If you have any ideas on anything I should try it would be appreciated.
Played around with it for a bit.
The realtek driver is definitely crashing in AP mode with a pi 500, pifi and the beta firmware. I’m not sure if it is because it is trying to use the kernel driver, or the driver that was added to pifi itself. I even tried to disable the included module, and use the kmod from openwrt itself but that didn’t help.
I eventually got something working by turning off all the pifi scripts and using the realtek in Client mode, and the built in wireless adapter in AP mode. While not ideal it will work for my setup and seems to be reasonably fast.
There were changes to driver in that built and the wireless was less stable for sure!
I think the next beta firmware image has improved AP Stability on Pi 5 models (so likely on Pi500 too)