Raspberry Pi400 with OpenWrt 24.10.0-rc6 with TPLink AC1300

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I have a Raspberry Pi 400 with the OpenWrt 24.10.0-rc6 built with the firmware-selector with kmod-mt7921u kmod-mt76x0u added.

I am trying to get this TP-Link USB dongle to work with it, it is labeled as a D38330 / CCAH20LP2420T0 which I believe is a TPLINK AC1300 T3U PLUS.

When I plug it in and restart the Raspberry Pi, nothing appears under interfaces, is this one of the dongles that don't work? Are special tricks required? or is this one of the unusable ones?

I've discovered logread and I can see the following message when I connect the device:

kern.info kernel: [  631.962381] usb 1-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
kern.info kernel: [  632.093017] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=2357, idProduct=0138, bcdDevice= 2.10
kern.info kernel: [  632.101392] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
kern.info kernel: [  632.108739] usb 1-1.3: Product: 802.11ac NIC
kern.info kernel: [  632.113031] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Realtek
kern.info kernel: [  632.117305] usb 1-1.3: SerialNumber: 123456
2

Realtek <> Mediatek.

Appears to be rtl8822bu, which requires kernel 6.2 or newer.
You're on the right openwrt version, but using the wrong packages.

2 Likes
3

Thank-you. It was not clear to me which particular module was needed. Unfortunately rebuilding the SD card using kmod-rtl8xxxu doesn't help with detecting the USB TPLink AC1300.

root@OpenWrt:/# uname -a
Linux OpenWrt 6.6.73 #0 SMP Wed Jan 22 19:52:54 2025 aarch64 GNU/Linux

root@OpenWrt:/# opkg install opkg  kmod-rtl8xxxu
Package kmod-rtl8xxxu (6.6.73.6.12.6-r1) installed in root is up to date.

Perhaps there is another package I need to install. I'll keep searching.

I did find this three year old post suggesting that this might not be possible as at 3 years ago, but it appears perhaps now it might be. https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/s6mnmd/need_help_setting_up_tplink_ac1300_archer_t3u_plus/

4

kmod-rtw88*, which is what [3] in the github links tells you to use.

5

I was trying rtl8812bu kmod-rtl8812bu and all sorts of variant spellings, and searching the package list for rtl to see what else there might be and couldn't find anything. I just tried rtw88 like you suggested, and the firmware build succeeded. But it doesn't seem to help at all. Unless there are special secret magic tricks I don't know about I think the AC1300 is still not supported as at Jan 2025. I'd buy another wifi dongle for my Pi, but it's super hard to work out which dongles may or may not work.

root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# opkg install kmod-rtw88
Package kmod-rtw88 (6.6.73.6.12.6-r1) installed in root is up to date.

root@OpenWrt:/etc/config# logread
Wed Jan 22 19:56:00 2025 daemon.notice netifd: Wireless device 'radio0' set retry=0
Wed Jan 22 19:56:00 2025 daemon.crit netifd: Wireless device 'radio0' setup failed, retry=0
Wed Jan 22 19:56:00 2025 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (2345): WARNING: Variable 'data' does not exist or is not an array/object
Wed Jan 22 19:56:00 2025 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (2345): Bug: PHY is undefined for device 'radio0'
Wed Jan 22 19:56:00 2025 daemon.notice netifd: Wireless device 'radio0' is now down
6

there's a reason why I wrote kmod-rtw88*, you're not done yet.

read Better WiFi adapters for RPI and USB and the github link provided.

7

Thanks. I gave it one last try with some extra modules I found on a raspberry pi forum, It appears that perhaps some extra modules are needed for reasons that I dont know, but when I add all of these modules, I go from having no radio interfaces to now having the internal pi interface and the AC1300 interface.

kmod-rtw88 kmod-mac80211 kmod-crypto-arc4 hostapd-common kmod-mac80211-hwsim kmod-mt7921u kmod-mt76x0u

Testing now! Yay.

8

you should need more than kmod-rtw88, but I'm only guessing, based on the additional kmods available in openwrt, I don't own the hw.

well, this one is sh-t, at best, but I guess sh-t is better than nothing :slight_smile:

https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi

9

Agreed, I was just happy to see it go from zero to two wifi interfaces available. (They appear under the OpenWRT Wireless list, but I cant get them to be visible to my local devices yet, so its only a partial victory)