Atheros ar9170usb wireless setup issues

[red_shift]

Hello everyone,

I spent some time last night trying to setup my SMC USB wifi adaptor, which is supported in Debian, and was unsuccessful.

After installing the package 'firmware-atheros' through apt when I plug in the adapter and run lsusb it reports the correct hardware model but running dmesg returns 'firmware not found' and of course running 'iwlist wlan0 scan' tells me that the interface doesn't support scanning, since it's not running.

Has anyone had any luck getting Atheros wifi chipsets working on their Pi?  My hardware ID is 0CF3:1002 and shows as supported on the page http://wiki.debian.org/ar9170usb

USB: 0CF3:1002 Atheros Communications, Inc. TP-Link TL-WN821N v2 802.11n [Atheros AR9170]

[bredman]

Did you try to force a rewrite of the firmware to the device?

modprobe -r ar9170usb

modprobe ar9170usb

[red_shift]

bredman said:


Did you try to force a rewrite of the firmware to the device?

modprobe -r ar9170usb

modprobe ar9170usb



Yes I did and dmesg reported that it was attempting to load the carl9170 firmware, which also failed.

[pepedog]

Search google for carl9170 firmware
I have tried, even got firmware of same api, but it still fails.
Your mileage may be different

[fulburncams]

Hi

I have also had some problems although can get to the 'iwlist wlan0 scan' step and can see SSID's so some part is working.  I have used the TP-Link TL-WN722N ( as recommended on the WiFi wiki and followed all the steps).  My tale of woe is here on trouble shooting Forum called WiFi nearly working , now have wpa_supplicant fail problem.  If i make any more progress I will let you know.

Cheers

Steve

[Boreatton Scouts]

I had similar problems and was convinced the software wasn't working, but then noticed that the little blue light wasn't coming on... when I checked the V on TP1-TP2 it was 4.7 or so (I think). Changing to a blackberry charger from an Iphone charger and suddenly the dongle lit up and all was well

I also had to make sure the hub wasn't stealing power from the Pi (cheap self powered hubs powered them selves over usb even when plugged in to mains)

[mindhog]

I've had mixed results with this dongle on two separate raspberry pis.

For one of them (possibly a newer model?) simply installing the firmware-linux-free package (on raspbian) was all I needed. For the other, the device was visible but I couldn't bring a network interface up on it. wpa_supplicant produced errors while trying to use the device. All other factors (power, devices plugged in, memory card) were the same, so I'm fairly convinced the problem was in the pi itself.

[MrEngman]

I've had mixed results with this dongle on two separate raspberry pis.

For one of them (possibly a newer model?) simply installing the firmware-linux-free package (on raspbian) was all I needed. For the other, the device was visible but I couldn't bring a network interface up on it. wpa_supplicant produced errors while trying to use the device. All other factors (power, devices plugged in, memory card) were the same, so I'm fairly convinced the problem was in the pi itself.

You do realise you are responding to posts from more than three and a half years ago?


MrEngman

[mindhog]

I've had mixed results with this dongle on two separate raspberry pis.

For one of them (possibly a newer model?) simply installing the firmware-linux-free package (on raspbian) was all I needed. For the other, the device was visible but I couldn't bring a network interface up on it. wpa_supplicant produced errors while trying to use the device. All other factors (power, devices plugged in, memory card) were the same, so I'm fairly convinced the problem was in the pi itself.

You do realise you are responding to posts from more than three and a half years ago?
MrEngman

Yes. But I thought it worthwhile to post information I would have found useful while trying to resolve this problem.