StereoPi Forum

Which brand/model of wifi dongle do you recommend for stereo pi? Hopefully one with a simple installation procedure.

Thanks

D. Ludwig

DaveL wrote: ↑

Wed May 15, 2019 2:15 pm

Which brand/model of wifi dongle do you recommend for stereo pi? Hopefully one with a simple installation procedure.

Thanks

D. Ludwig

Hi D. Ludwig,
You see, if your WiFi dongle is supported by Raspbian, the only installation you need is to insert it to USB connector. No any drivers needed, as most drivers already included in Raspbian distribution, and they "just works".

Any WiFi dongle declared to work with Raspberry Pi will work with StereoPi, as we have Raspberry inside If you google "best wifi module for raspberry", you can find a lot of reviews like this. Choose the module you like, and find it in your favorite store.

Can we add a support for every dongle somehow?

Adding support for a specific device is, in the general case, a hard task.
The guys who work on the wifi devices in the kernel already do an amazing job by supporting so much models.
When they succeed to support new devices, the drivers are gradually (and quickly) integrated in the Linux kernel.
Here is a list: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/List_of_Wi-Fi ... s_in_Linux
Note that a lot of models actually use the same chip inside, that's why this list is based on the (more reliable) device ID instead of brand or model name.

A generic distribution like raspbian already have all the drivers, of the specific version of kernel they use, enabled (I did not checked, but it is very very likely)

If your device is not working and is not listed, and you are not a specialist, there is nearly anything to do but wait that they try and succeed.
However, if your device is listed for a more recent kernel than the one used by the distribution, you have to document yourself (a lot) but you can probably either compile it manually for your kernel (might be an impasse) or upgrade the kernel of your distribution (might be hard).

Edit: correct some typos

Thanks! I've connected my cheapest wi-fi dongle today and it works! But few days ago it didn't worked.
But Beware !!! If your dongle too cheap - you can phisically demage your usb port's pins, pushing it too hard inside. And so I did...

Hi Alik,
I have nothing to add to Stereomaton's answer Just want to say, that during last couple of years all WiFi modules we tried was supported by Raspbian.

Does RaspberryPi support 5 ghz wifi dongles, if yes, have you tried any?

Vadym, we’ve used a lot of two-bands dongles. Most of them works out of the box. A can not put a list here, as there were dozens of them.

Not all dongles work perfectly on Raspbian.
The most cheapest on aliexpress https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/32819666 ... 33edqPggDL doesnt.
To start it working tons of steps should be done because of driver missing. Waste of money and time.

Moreover the speed of wifi should be kept in mind -150Mb/s may be not enough for streaming.

zoldaten wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 29, 2019 11:42 am

Not all dongles work perfectly on Raspbian.
The most cheapest on aliexpress https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/32819666 ... 33edqPggDL doesnt.
To start it working tons of steps should be done because of driver missing. Waste of money and time.

Moreover the speed of wifi should be kept in mind -150Mb/s may be not enough for streaming.

Yep, WiFi is a challenge. That's why we're testing all modules we can and choose stable ones.
Also, for livestream we're use 3-5MBit bitrate. So 150 MBit is overkill But it depends on your tasks. AFAIK raspivid has internal bitrate limit (like 50 or 60 MBit/sec).