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R36H: RTL8188ETV Wifi

 ·  🎃 kr0m

In this tutorial, we are going to install a WiFi chip on our beloved R36H. It’s worth noting that unfortunately, this is not possible on the R36S. In that case, we must rely on an external dongle connected via OTG .

The chip in question is the RTL8188ETV, a chip that leaves much to be desired, as the transfer rates shown in tests are very poor, and the connection stability is dismal. The chip in question is this one . It’s also worth mentioning that if we solder the WiFi chip, ArkOS will no longer detect WiFi cards through the USB-OTG port.

Installation:

Here we can see some details of the chip:

Schematic Pinout

In these images, we can see the final result:

If we need to know the MAC address of the WiFi card, we can find it by reading a system text file:

Options -> 351Files:
/sys/class/net/INTERFACE_NAME(wlan0)/address

Y -> Quit

Let’s check if it works:

NOTE: As we can see in the video, the WiFi interference over the speaker still persists.

We can also verify it works correctly from the CLI by connecting via SSH .

Let’s check which driver is being used:

apt install ethtool
ethtool -i wlan0 | grep driver

driver: r8188eu

Let’s check the interface status:

sudo su -l
apt install wireless-tools
iwconfig wlan0

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"Synapse"  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.432 GHz  Access Point: A1:FA:31:91:01:07
          Bit Rate:72.2 Mb/s   Sensitivity:0/0
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:****-****-****-****-****-****-****-****   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=14/100  Noise level=0/100
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Let’s scan for available APs:

nmcli dev wifi rescan
nmcli dev wifi list

IN-USE  BSSID              SSID                    MODE   CHAN  RATE       SIGNAL  BARS  SECURITY
*       A1:FA:31:91:01:07  Synapse                 Infra  5     16 Mbit/s  19      ▂___  WPA2
        EC:F4:51:7D:05:67  MiFibra-0565            Infra  1     16 Mbit/s  0       ____  WPA2
        50:6F:0C:CD:DD:7E  FEMINISMO ES CANCER     Infra  1     16 Mbit/s  0       ____  WPA1 WPA2
        D4:7B:B0:B3:22:E4  MOVISTAR_22E3           Infra  1     16 Mbit/s  0       ____  WPA2
        5A:D4:CD:0C:C0:50  PURO CANCER             Infra  1     2 Mbit/s   0       ____  WPA1 WPA2
        08:33:ED:89:EC:5F  MOVISTAR-WIFI6-EC50     Infra  6     16 Mbit/s  0       ____  WPA2
        6C:E8:74:D5:C0:50  Cableworld_120857 2.4G  Infra  11    16 Mbit/s  0       ____  WPA1 WPA2
        CC:ED:DC:80:29:52  MOVISTAR_2950           Infra  11    16 Mbit/s  0       ____  WPA2

Performance Tests:

Here’s the English translation:

With the output of iwconfig wlan0, we can already sense that something isn’t right:

Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=14/100  Noise level=0/100

To clear up any doubts, we can install speedtest and run a quick test:

apt install speedtest-cli
speedtest

Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Digi Spain (79.112.34.143)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Orange (Valencia) [2403.93 km]: 21.816 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 3.94 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 1.36 Mbit/s

The transfer rates are extremely low. On the same console using a USB dongle, we got:

Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Digi Spain (79.116.95.143)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Orange (Madrid) [1.68 km]: 17.127 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 8.08 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 3.56 Mbit/s

We can see via dmesg that the interface keeps disconnecting:

[  540.816913] R8188EU: linked_status_chk(wlan0) disconnect or roaming
[  542.779365] R8188EU: assoc success

We followed the instructions described in this issue on the driver’s GitHub to try to fix the problem, but it was in vain.

In conclusion, given the poor performance of the RTL8188ETV chip, I do not recommend its installation. Alternatively, I recommend the MediaTek RTL8188ETV.

See Also