query on wifi adapter

shivam rana

I'm working on voxl starling 2

i don't have Alfa Network Alfa USB Adapter AWUS036EACS can i use tp-Link TL-WN823??

if yes then what is the procedure??

Alex Kushleyev

@shivam-rana , you can try to plug your USB adapter into VOXL2's USB expansion board and check dmesg to see if a wlan adapter is detected. If you don't see anything related to wlan or ethernet adapter being connected, then your adapter is not supported. Adding support for 3rd party wifi adapters to VOXL2's kernel would require expert knowledge and experience in building linux kernel modules.

Alex

shivam rana

Thank you for your response.

The "dmesg" command is not showing any relevant output.

I'm based in India. Could you recommend a globally compatible USB adapter that works reliably with the VOXL 2 Starling drone?

also tell me is it a WIFI dongle or a WIFI adaptor?

Alex Kushleyev

@shivam-rana , based on the following kernel recipe, which we have added for VOXL2, https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/system-image-build/meta-voxl2/-/tree/qrb5165-ubun1.0-14.1a/recipes-kernel?ref_type=heads, these wifi chipsets should be enabled.

rtl8188eus
rtl8812au
rtl8812au
rtl8821cu

Please note that these are the drivers that we are added on top of what was available in the default kernel. Also note that not all the available drivers in the kernel are actually built.

All the kernel modules are built into the kernel, so there is no easy way to tell which ones are available by just looking at the files on VOXL2.

I just looked at a voxl2 kernel build, looking at the following directory : lu.um.1.2.1/apps_proc/build-qti-distro-ubuntu-fullstack-perf/tmp-glibc/work/m0054-oe-linux/linux-msm/4.19-r0/build/drivers/net

I see the following:

more modules.builtin 
kernel/drivers/net/dummy.ko
kernel/drivers/net/mii.ko
kernel/drivers/net/tun.ko
kernel/drivers/net/veth.ko
kernel/drivers/net/bonding/bonding.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/cavium/common/cavium_ptp.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/sky2.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/qualcomm/rmnet/rmnet.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/smsc/smsc911x.ko
kernel/drivers/net/phy/libphy.ko
kernel/drivers/net/phy/fixed_phy.ko
kernel/drivers/net/phy/microchip.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/bsd_comp.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_deflate.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_mppe.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/pppox.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/pppox.ko
kernel/drivers/net/ppp/pptp.ko
kernel/drivers/net/slip/slhc.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/r8152.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/asix.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/ax88179_178a.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/cdc_ether.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/cdc_eem.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/smsc75xx.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/smsc95xx.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/net1080.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/rndis_host.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/cdc_subset.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/zaurus.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/usbnet.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/sierra_net.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/cdc_ncm.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/qmi_wwan.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/cdc_mbim.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/cnss_prealloc/cnss_prealloc.ko

I am double checking with the team whether this is the list of all the network drivers that are available in the current kernel that ships with voxl2. It does not look like there are any wireless drivers in that list.

I just did a quick test and plugged in an usb to ethernet adapter and checked dmesg:

[    2.816050] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci-hcd
[    2.958614] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0b95, idProduct=1790, bcdDevice= 1.00
[    2.958620] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[    2.958624] usb 1-1: Product: AX88179
[    2.958626] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: ASIX Elec. Corp.
[    2.958629] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 008CAE4CD66BCC
[    3.392879] ax88179_178a 1-1:1.0 eth0: register 'ax88179_178a' at usb-xhci-hcd.0.auto-1, ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet, 8c:ae:4c:d6:6b:cc

The ax88179_178a driver is in the list above, so that kind of makes sense and it looks like it was enabled in the kernel using the following config entry : CONFIG_USB_NET_AX88179_178A=y. (I am just providing this information in case you or anyone else wants to actually build the kernel and enable more drivers).

It may be possible to enable other drivers, but you would need to know how to build the kernel yourself, and there may be issues with building drivers that are not currently enabled.

Alex

Alex Kushleyev

@shivam-rana , if you have a few wifi adapters which are currently not detected by VOXL2, if you plug into a standard Linux machine and if they are detected, you should check with chipset is used on those adapters and we can see if that's available (but not currently compiled) option for the VOXL2 kernel. We can add some documentation to help you build your own test kernel with enabled module and see if that works.

The VOXL2 kernel build guide is here : https://docs.modalai.com/voxl2-kernel-build-guide/ but it does not explicitly state how to make modifications to enable additional components. For those folks who have built kernels before, this may be easy to do, but for the first time it could be very difficult to do the right thing, but the change could be very small (one line). So we can see if it's possible to enable the driver that you need, but there would be no guarantees about functionality, since it would be untested (by us).

Alex