Cannot connect to WiFi with Openwrt on Raspberry Pi 5

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi 5 and installed Openwrt 24.10.5 on a micro SD card. Openwrt boots fine and I am able to connect through Luci using the Ethernet port. I cannot connect to any WiFi network to use as a wwan. The country code shows as properly set to US. This was observed via Luci. I can see all available 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks, but Openwrt does not connect to any of them.

When looking at the country code through “iw reg get” on SSH, noticed that the global country code is set to US, but the phy#0 country code is 99, or not set. The instructions on the Pi Openwrt page said to use Raspberry Pi OS to set the country code and then reboot with Openwrt. I loaded Raspberry Pi OS onto a stick and booted. Set the country code using “iw reg set US”. Then, with nmtui on SSH, successfully connected to the identidl 5GHz network attempted with Openwrt.

Rebooted the Pi with the Openwrt SD card. Still no joy connecting to a WiFi network, to include the 5GHz network that connected with Raspberry Pi Os.

Thoughts?

2

Are you trying to use the wifi as both AP and client? This may not work on the Pi. I seem to recall it only handling one or the other at a given time.

3

I also had to set the WiFi channel manually besides country with my Pi4. You can find the allowed channels list for your Country in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels , Also you have to install raspberry pi OS and set country for WiFi with raspi-config if you didn’t do that previously. And after that install Openwrt.

4

I was not attempting both AP and client. Just trying to connect to my LAN WiFi. See reply to modemman for solution (below).

5

Resolved the issue, and changing the channel number was not required. What solved the issue was to change the encryption from WPA3 to WPA2. Instantly connected. Not sure why that is needed. The home router is a Flint 2 running Openwrt which has been solid as a rock.