Connect with 5 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz in station mode

LucasW

Hi,

Is it possible to connect to a WiFi network with VOXL-Flight on the 5 GHz band? VOXL seems to default to 2.4 GHz, even when the router offers 5 GHz (e.g., my laptop is connected with 5 GHz). I tried modifying the configurations in /data/misc/wifi/, including hostapd.conf (soft access) and sta-hostapd.conf (station mode), by setting channel=36 instead of 6. However, the drone continues to connect with the 2.4 GHz frequency.

This is important as I have Spektrum RCs emitting at 2.4 GHz, which causes significant interference.

Any hints?

LucasW

@LucasW to answer my own question, VOXL supports 5 GHz. This can be verified by running iw list and looking at the supported channels.

The /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf file does not seem to take effect when trying to specify frequencies, for instance (for 5 GHz channels 36, 40, 44, and 48:

country=ch
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
    ssid="my-ssid"
    bssid=00:00:00:00:00:00
    freq_list=5180 5200 5220 5240
    scan_freq=5180 5200 5220 5240
    proto=RSN
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    pairwise=CCMP TKIP
    group=CCMP TKIP
    psk="my-pwd"
}

The only way I found to connect to 5 GHz is to disable the 2.4 GHz radio entirely on the router. Otherwise, the connection defaults to 2.4 GHz.
On the router, it is also better to set a fixed channel (e.g., 36) rather than letting it be automatic. In auto mode, the robots could not connect systematically to the network.

Note also that my question was wrong in the sense that the hostapd.conf files are used to generate the access point, not to connect in station mode.

These are maybe considerations that could be added to the technical doc @Chad-Sweet ?