Wireless instability with Panda Wireless PAU0B and MT76x0u driver

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi all!

I'm running 24.10.1 on a Raspberry Pi5. I have a Panda Wireless PAU0B USB dongle running in AP mode using the mt76x0u drivers but it's very unstable. Devices will typically associate fine but disassociate intermittently.

I found some older posts on the topic that recommended disabling scatter-gather to improve stability. I've attempted to do so by:

echo 1 > /sys/module/mt76_usb/parameters/disable_usb_sg

in addition to:

modprobe mt76x0u scatter_gather=0

Neither of which seem to have made a difference. I'm continuing to see the following in the logs:
kern.info kernel: [ 8.328814] mt76x0u 1-2:1.0: ASIC revision: 76100002 MAC revision: 76502000
kern.info kernel: [ 9.435788] mt76x0u 1-2:1.0: EEPROM ver:01 fae:08
kern.err kernel: [ 493.519562] mt76x0u 1-2:1.0: error: mt76x02u_mcu_wait_resp failed with -110
daemon.info hostapd: panda-pau0b: STA 0e:bc:03:9c:b2:96 IEEE 802.11: disassociated
daemon.info hostapd: panda-pau0b: STA 0e:bc:03:9c:b2:96 IEEE 802.11: deauthenticated due to inactivity (timer DEAUTH/REMOVE)

Any ideas on anything else I can try to improve stability?

2

Make sure you plug in USB 2.0 port, the power quota steps are different.

3

Thanks for the reply. The USB dongle is in a USB 2.0 port -- colored black on the Pi 5.

4

Try other ports

5

I'd probably try a different and/or higher-power power supply for the Pi. And are clients disconnecting on both bands? I'd try different bands, and different channels. On 5Ghz, try a non-DFS channel. Good luck.

6

Thanks again for the suggestions. I've tried all the USB ports and am using a 25W power supply. Feels like a driver issue unfortunately.

7

Disregard!

Looks like I found some stability running in 802.11n at 2.4 and 40MHz band. Thanks again.