Linksys MR8300, OpenWrt 22.03.0-rc4, USB port-powered storage devices not working

I tried the latest snapshot (r22244-635d177ac9) and no change for me: it was working before and it's also working now with my Samsung t7 drive.

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Any news to resolution this issue?

From the Wiki page it says that this is a hardware problem but iIsn't that gpio problem?

I'm the strange usb behaviour, now I connected the 4g modem but after some hours the 2.4g WiFi speed drop down... Has anyone noticed this behavior?

Hi.

That was a preliminary statement. If you follow the thread here, you can read that it is clearly a GPIO management issue.

USB3 and wifi 2.4GHz use the same frequency spectrum. Hence USB3 activity interferes with wifi 2.4 GHz. This is a known problem.

May be he is saying about problem in 4G (less power from usb port???) so wifi speen slow down ????

It has been fixed in snapshot. I am working now to backport it to 22.03 and 21.02, but that'll take some time.

I admit that the original message is not that clear.

Well done.
I will try this the next time I can reach a MR8300. Unless backporting on both 21.02 and 22.03 is easy, maybe you should only focus on 22.03. Users are encouraged to use 22.03 rather than 21.02 for security reason.

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That is true, better to focus in last version.

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A bit off-topic, I know, but to clarify something about that interference.
From the 2013 PC Mag article on that link:

Belkin/Linksys emphasizes placement of the USB 3.0 port on its consumer routers. A spokesperson from the company said, "We develop and design our products to limit interference by the placement of the USB 3.0 port on our routers in relation to: the wireless antennas(...)"

And In fact the USB port on the MR8300 is placed on the opposite side of the 2 2.4GHz antennas. Now, if that distance is enough I don't know, but the 2.4GHz wavelength is about 12 cm, which is about the same distance as the distance from the port to the closest 2.4 antenna.

(I have this router with OpenWRT and following this topic)

Hi.
I don't use USB devices with routers. Neverthless, a few weeks ago, I tested several USB sticks/HDDs with an early version of the patch proposed here. I noticed dropdowns in the 2.4GHz signal while performing file transfers.

I got curious on the subject and found this Intel white paper : https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/327216.pdf
There is no mention of what is a 'safe' distance, and no relation to the wavelength in a linear distance, only that the farthest away the better.
They do compare the interference of placing a wireless dongle next to the usb3 port and flash drive to placing that wireless dongle on the opposite side of a notebook, p. 18 (would be more than 12 cm, but they don't specify the distance) and the difference is immense. My conclusion is that 12 cm might not be enough and that the higher the transmit power of the antenna the less susceptible to interference it is (p. 19). And shielding seems to help (judging from pictures of an opened EA8300, the back of the port is fully shielded, also shielding the USB3 device will help).

ChatGPT says: "In general, it is recommended to keep at least 1 meter of distance between a USB3 device and a WiFi antenna to minimize the risk of interference." :slight_smile:

Hi.
Interesting, I'll have a look, just for a technical preview. In fact I don't use USB devices, and poorly use the 2.4 GHz wifi, so I don't mind about the subject. I just know about the matter, and notice interferences while testing (for once so !) USB sticks.

If ChatGPT says so ... it must be true :rofl:

EDIT : the way they shield the devices is rather rough!

Somebody here tried the latest snapshot? Since 03-18, I can't boot to the new snapshots on my MR8300.

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For others reading this thread - reference to the issue with booting March 2023 snapshots on MR8300.
OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r22302 on MR8300 - #23 by ivpatrick

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My PR for 22.03 has been merged two days ago, so this bugfix of @danitool is now part of 22.03.

I have created another PR for 21.02 today which waits on merging, but again, that takes time.
If you are interested in the progress, please subscribe to the issue on GitHub. I consider this issue as resolved.

Thanks again to all participants who made this bugfix possible! :slight_smile:

// edit

The PR for 21.02 has just been merged. All supported versions are therefore fixed.

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Hello,
thank you all for making this fix :wink:

But could anyone make the 22.03 build and share it for download?

I tried to compile it (no experience with programming) and 6 hours later I got the image, but it's not booting (or at least LAN DHCP is not working, no IP assigned after connection).

Thank you,
Richard

22.03.4 is likely to be released soon. You will have an official release that includes the patch.

Hi.
22.03.4 was supposed to include the patch for the USB power issue, but unfortunately the device doesn't even boot due to another bug. 22.03.5 (about to be released) now boots: does anyone have tested the USB yet ?

I have built 21.02.06 snapshot, running on 3 devices with USB and it works like a charm.
Since it's the same commit, it'll likely work exactly the same :slight_smile:

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Ok, so we can assume newest releases in both branches manage USB correctly. Thank you.