The latest OpenWrt master branch is working fairly well for me on the Wavlink WN533A8, despite not having official support. I created a target for it which is almost identical to the WN531A6, though it does not need the mt7603 kernel module since both radios use the mt7615e driver.
I would like to create a wiki page for this device and am also working on creating a pull request to add official support. How do I go about getting access to add a Wiki page? Or alternatively, how can I contribute to this?
The first PCIe radio is identified as a WN7615D-C (the part number on the card itself) and is a dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio, with 2 antennas each (4 total). This card is working great and I'm currently utilizing it as my main Internet router connected via 5GHz to a Starlink router (until I get an Ethernet adapter for it). The second radio PCIe card is a WN7615A-C and is a dedicated 5GHz card (up to 160MHz width) with 4 antennas. However this card does not seem to work properly. A scan results in limited if any networks being detected and setting it up as a master shows "disabled" and "Wireless not associated", even when I tried AC and N 160, 80, 40, and 20 MHz. So something seems to be severely wrong with this. Any ideas on this would be great. My next step was to probe around with the iw utility to see if I can get any hints on why it is not connecting.
I had also added a hack to force enabling of TSSI (external power amplifier disabled), to use the TX power levels from the EEPROM data because it seemed like there was an issue with the TX power being too low (previously 7dbm or 10dbm depending on the radio) resulting in very poor performance in particular with the 5GHz band. I need to investigate this further though and do some comparisons with and without this kludge, since my previous testing was with the OpenWrt release 21.02.1 which may have led me down the wrong path. The latest OpenWrt git master seems to be in much better shape in regards to the mt7615e driver. I'd appreciate any tips on the TX power limiting scheme when a device has an external power amplifier (which I suppose these cards likely do?).
I'd like to be able to contribute in whatever way I can to adding this target platform. It seems like a bargain router (got it for like $50). The stock firmware is total @55, so I think that is contributing to its low cost. OpenWrt has the potential to turn this into a great option, especially with all 3 bands working!