Secondary wifi connection for rPi4

Hi

Im fighting with my HA on Raspberry 4 because i need to have secondary wifi connection to my PV Inverter (Huawei).
Now i have four different USB wifi cards and non of them wants to be correctly detected with my HAOS
Home Assistant 2022.7.5
Supervisor 2022.07.0
Operating System 8.2

Today i bought card nr four because I fond this release note Home Assistant OS Release 6 - Home Assistant about support for Realtek 87**/88** and this is with RTL8812

In logs i found this:

22-07-16 13:55:41 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.hardware.monitor] Detecting HardwareAction.ADD hardware /dev/bus/usb/001/006 - None

[ 4969.902497] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
[ 4970.003547] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=2357, idProduct=011f, bcdDevice= 2.00
[ 4970.003585] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 4970.003603] usb 1-1.4: Product: 802.11ac WLAN Adapter
[ 4970.003617] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Realtek
[ 4970.003630] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001

With three older ones there was error:

[ 7495.505093] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 16 using xhci_hcd
[ 7495.619768] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=13d3, idProduct=3310, bcdDevice= 2.00
[ 7495.619790] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 7495.619796] usb 1-1.4: Product: RTL8191S WLAN Adapter
[ 7495.619802] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Manufacturer Realtek
[ 7495.619808] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001
[ 7495.626168] r8712u: register rtl8712_netdev_ops to netdev_ops
[ 7495.626197] usb 1-1.4: r8712u: USB_SPEED_HIGH with 4 endpoints
[ 7495.627005] usb 1-1.4: r8712u: Boot from EFUSE: Autoload OK
[ 7496.145991] usb 1-1.4: r8712u: CustomerID = 0x0000
[ 7496.146010] usb 1-1.4: r8712u: MAC Address from efuse = 1c:4b:d6:7f:ad:01
[ 7496.146017] usb 1-1.4: r8712u: Loading firmware from “rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin”
[ 7496.148980] usb 1-1.4: Direct firmware load for rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin failed with error -2
[ 7496.149008] usb 1-1.4: r8712u: Firmware request failed
[ 7496.237571] usb 1-1.4: reset high-speed USB device number 16 using xhci_hcd
[ 7503.589186] usb 1-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 17 using xhci_hcd
[ 7503.689840] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0b05, idProduct=18f1, bcdDevice= 2.00
[ 7503.689864] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 7503.689872] usb 1-1.3: Product: 802.11n WLAN Adapter
[ 7503.689878] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Realtek
[ 7503.689884] usb 1-1.3: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001
[ 7505.897201] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 18 using xhci_hcd
[ 7506.013995] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=9271, bcdDevice= 1.08
[ 7506.014016] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=16, Product=32, SerialNumber=48
[ 7506.014023] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB2.0 WLAN
[ 7506.014030] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: ATHEROS
[ 7506.014035] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 12345
[ 7506.019904] usb 1-1.2: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
[ 7506.020577] usb 1-1.2: Direct firmware load for ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw failed with error -2
[ 7506.020605] usb 1-1.2: ath9k_htc: Firmware htc_9271.fw requested
[ 7506.020633] usb 1-1.2: Direct firmware load for htc_9271.fw failed with error -2
[ 7506.020642] usb 1-1.2: no suitable firmware found!
[ 7506.020661] usb 1-1.2: ath9k_htc: Failed to get firmware htc_9271.fw
[ 7506.024703] usb 1-1.2: ath9k_htc: USB layer deinitialized
Blockquote

How to install additional drivers with HAOS?

easy solution existed

1 Like

Yes but this requires additional device (Access Point in mode client). If it will be possible I want to avoid this.

A USB wifi device with a long antenna is not an extra device?
An OpenWrt can do many other things beside just being access point to the Huwaei inverter.

Can that USB wifi device reboot the wifi, in case it is disconnected from Huwaei Inverter?

For me additional USB wifi card in RaspberryPi doesn’t require secondary power socket and separate place to locate additional device.

Will see how often wifi connection will require additional actions (for example manual re-connection)

Please, lets get back to original question.
Is it possible to use additional wifi card with rPi4 and HASS.io? If yes, how.

for a simple answer see

for the alternative explanation check out this thread

check out this list too

Thanks

Sorry for late reply.
I have ASUS USB-N13 C1 recommended in this topic How to install USB wifi dongle in hassio? and it is not working with HASSIO for rPi4 system image
I have also Tp-link TL-WN722N, Tp-link Archer T2U V3 and AW-NU120 non of them want to work with hassio image for rPi4 64bit
AR9271 is here https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/becbea2d5213438e25dc3d35f161e1a0d8a1b12f/home/USB_WiFi_Adapters_that_are_supported_with_Linux_in-kernel_drivers.md but also not working.

Just for check i installed Ubuntu and started HA VM image where i was able to make working two of my wifi usb cards without any additional drivers (TL-WN722N with Atheros AR9271 and AW-NU120 with RTL8191S).

For now i was able to connect to my Huawei PV inverter with my old router in AP Client mode but i want to use it only as a temporary solution because I don’t have to much space and power sockets :wink:

You can use multi plug, if you lack sockets.

Go for the serial route

Did you find any USB Wifi Adapter that worked?

I am at the same problem in 2024 now :slight_smile:

At a time when I was using rPi4 I didn’t found any supported but later i replaced rPi4 to Dell Wyse 5070 also with HAOS.

Today I tested few USB wifi cards with and those are working with latest HAOS:
Tp-link T2U V3
Tp-link TL-WN722N (with atheros so it must be V1 according to Wiki)
Chipset MT7601U BEZPRZEWODOWA KARTA SIECIOWA INTERNETOWA WIFI USB NANO 802.11N 150MBPS - Sklep, Opinie, Cena w Allegro.pl
Realtek RTL8188FTV Karta sieciowa WiFi pod 123 - Sklep, Opinie, Cena w Allegro.pl

edit
corrected because only one of last two have MTK :wink:

1 Like

thanks a lot this helps me