I got a new BB Green Wireless. I prefer the smaller console Debian image, but it appears to not ship WL8 support. What packages do I need to add to get the WL8 WiFi to work? WL8 Bluetooth? I tried adding the following:
- wireless-tools
- firmware-ti-connectivity
- ti-wlconf
While booting, the firmware for WL8 cannot be found:
[ 12.330260] wl18xx_driver wl18xx.2.auto: Direct firmware load for ti-connectivity/wl18xx-conf.bin failed with error -2
[ 20.786201] wl18xx_driver wl18xx.2.auto: Direct firmware load for ti-connectivity/wl18xx-fw-4.bin failed with error -2
There are various wl128x-fw-5*.bin files in /lib/firmware/ti-connectivity. I thought the defaults should work without the wl18xx-conf.bin file.
debian@beaglebone:/lib/firmware/ti-connectivity$ uname -a
Linux beaglebone 4.4.12-ti-r31 #1 SMP Thu Jun 16 18:48:27 UTC 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux
debian@beaglebone:/lib/firmware/ti-connectivity$ cat /etc/dogtag
BeagleBoard.org Debian Image 2016-06-19
Thanks,
Mark
Thanks, Robert. That got me the conf.bin file so that error is gone, but it is still looking for wl18xx-fw-4.bin which does not exist. It seems like I do need firmware-ti-connectivity otherwise there are no .bin files in /lib/firmware/ti-connecivity. Is there a different firmware package?
Mark
Yeah, that comes from the mainline tree, i need to update the
firmware-ti-connectivty package..
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/ti-connectivity
Regards,
Ok, I cloned that and copied into /lib/firmware and now the WiFi works (have not tried BT). So, after you fix the firmware package, I think the list of packages needed is:
- wireless-tools
- iw
- wpasupplicant
- bb-wl18xx-firmware
- firmware-ti-connectivity
I am not using connman, etc.
I also changed uEnv.txt to use dtb=am335x-bonegreen-wireless.dtb - is this required?
Mark
Ok, I cloned that and copied into /lib/firmware and now the WiFi works (have
not tried BT). So, after you fix the firmware package, I think the list of
packages needed is:
* wireless-tools
* iw
* wpasupplicant
* bb-wl18xx-firmware
* firmware-ti-connectivity
I am not using connman, etc.
and "ti-wlconf", i need to add a hard dependicy to bb-wl18xx-firmware for that.
As it's used to program, /lib/firmware/ti-connectivity/wl1271-nvs.bin
with your wlan0 mac address
https://github.com/rcn-ee/repos/blob/master/bb-wl18xx-firmware/suite/jessie/debian/bb-wl18xx-wlan0
I also changed uEnv.txt to use dtb=am335x-bonegreen-wireless.dtb - is this
required?
That shouldn't be required, u-boot is patched to pick the correct dtb..
Regards,
On to Bluetooth - I see there is a bb-wl18xx-bluetooth.service in the bb-wl18xx-firmware package:
https://github.com/rcn-ee/repos/blob/master/bb-wl18xx-firmware/suite/jessie/debian/bb-wl18xx-bluetooth.service
and systemctl shows it enabled, but it does not seem to have run. I have to manually run bb-wl18xx-bluetooth before using bluetooth (hcitool, gatttool, etc.) after each boot. I admit to being a noob on systemd still so maybe I am missing something.
Thanks,
Mark
We need to find the sweet spot for bb-wl18xx-bluetooth, it's run early
with a delay, but still too early..
Regards,
Oh, this is related to the infamous ST transport driver issue? No problem - I’ll just throw it in rc.local or such for now.
Mark
Hi guys,
we bought BBGW and trying to detect Ibeacons and we succedeed but the problem is that it’s reading to slow. Beacons are sending every 1 sec, and onboard bluetooth is receiving randomly every 2-7 seconds. When we put ble usb dongle it’s reading very fast every second like it should. Please can you advice us what to do? We need to use external antenna.
Hi guys,
We bought few BBGW and using them for discovering Ibeacons, but we have some problems. We wrote program in NODE.js and using NOBLE. Problem is that bluetooth is working strange, it scaning few seconds and stops for 5-6, and then randomly starts and stop scaning. We tried our program with USB donggle BLE and it’s working fine, every 1 sec we are getting Beacons(they have 1 sec broadcast frequency). Please can you advice what to do?
Sorry - I am not using Bluetooth or BLE with the BBGW. One guess based on WiFi would be to check if there is a “power save” option for BLE. I’ve noticed with WiFi that with power save “on” connections are slower and more random.
Mark
I suspect this is due to concurrent Wi-Fi activity. On the BBGW the antenna is shared by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. So if it is doing Wi-Fi it can't be scanning Bluetooth.
If you can, can you disable Wi-Fi and see if it improves behaviour.
Iain
I remember following these instructions a few months ago, but now when I try to apt-get install firmware-ti-connectivity, I get the no installation candidate error.
I can’t apt-get install bb-wl18xx-firmware since it depends on firmware-ti-connectivity.
Running Ubuntu 16.04.1 (4.4.45-bone-rt-r16).
Thanks.
Yeah i suppose ubuntu doesn't split those out..
give me a moment to get this built and pushed out:
https://github.com/rcn-ee/repos/commit/e26517ceabc7aca524ac98ecdeb4f685a5f843a2
Regards,