Hi!
I'm a bit new to this business, so be gentle with me
Last year I bought a IoT wifi relay module, The module supports only 2.4GHz networks.
I've connected the module successfully to two routers, and also to my linksys wrt3200acm which is my current router (with the original firmware)
Two days ago, I've decided to install OpenWrt on my Linksys and since then, I'm failing to connect the module to the 2.4GHz network. If fails to recognize the device.
I've tried many channels and still, does not recognize the network.
While it's not explicitly stated in your link, I expect your IoT device to use the esp8266 chipset from Espressif - mwlwifi and the Marvell 88W8964 wireless (the one in your wrt3200acm) have known (serious) interoperability problems dealing with these chipsets (which are very common in IoT devices). These issues (as well as the numerous other ones with the out-of-tree mwlwifi and its proprietary firmware) are very unlikely get any attention (let alone be fixed), after Marvell has sold their wireless division to NXP, even less since NXP has EOLed their non 802.11ax chipset.
At this point, the only real fix would be replacing the router with a different one coming with decent/ supported wireless hardware and drivers, respectively to use a dedicated AP instead, don't expect the wireless situation for the wrt3200acm to improve.
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The SDIO based third radio, 88W8887/ mwifiex, on your WRT3200ACM might actually be a little more cooperative than the 88W8964 based main wireless. However, this comes at a cost - mwifiex is:
a) known to mess up regdom settings for your device, severely limiting the intersection of valid (5 GHz-) channels left by mixing different (hardware-) regdomains.
b) is SDIO based, so comparatively slow
c) has no antenna attached, so range and throughput are even worse than SDIO already suggests
d) was originally meant (but in practice never actually used at all) by the OEM to do continuous background DFS scans in the 5 GHz band, not to be actually used as active radio - so while it apparently can technically use the 2.4 GHz band, it's not tuned for that.
I really want to keep using openWrt but unfortunately I'm working a lot with IoT chips and I can't buy another router.
So you're basically say that with the 3rd radio antenna I can use to connect the chip?
Thanks
Looks like a not solution didn't happen already in this case.
But, FWIW for others, I thought I'd mention that I have a few esp8266 based plugs around the house, and my C7 w its Atheros ath9k/ath10k radios seems to have no problems with them.
Virtually none of my IoT devices will work with it's 2.4Ghz. I have to reset it's 2.4Ghz radio occasionally to dislodge any it collects as it doesn't talk to them.
Oddly, it's the Nighthawk R8000 running a poorly supported OpenWRT v21 which isn't meant to work right.... that picks up all those 2.4Ghz ESP devices from across the whole house. Leaving about 2 on the Linksys.
It also seems to have issues with multiple SSIDs on the same radio, stability issues with the AP just remaining disabled.
I might give the workaround a go, but I'm still hearing positive things about the Archer C7. Note, I am binning an Archer V900 VDSL router because it becomes unstable at around 20 devices.
