New Post: Shipping new SparkLAN Wifi cards with Librem 5

dos · February 21, 2023, 12:18am

See this post: New Post: Shipping new SparkLAN Wifi cards with Librem 5

irvinewade · February 21, 2023, 12:20am

Or see above post: New Post: Shipping new SparkLAN Wifi cards with Librem 5

Captain_Morgan · February 21, 2023, 12:23am

By the way i will ship my old redpine card to anybody who needs it for free. Just message me.

Sharon · February 21, 2023, 1:55am

It says
"GENERAL.DRIVER
Lines 1 1/1 (END)

Since I have a “GENERAL:DRIVER” Does that mean I qualify to buy the newest ‘card’? and should work?

~s

irvinewade · February 21, 2023, 2:51am

That output is inconclusive.

I would expect
GENERAL.DRIVER: xyz

where xyz is either brcmfmac or RSI-SDIO WLAN

… and the former indicates “new card” while the latter indicates “old card”.

Sharon · February 21, 2023, 6:23am

I just ran it again, this time with a screen cap. This was done after I shut down the device and restarted.

What I discovered is that the " "GENERAL.DRIVER Lines 1 1/1 (END)"line pushes down, moving the first part of the result hidden above.

It should and now does read, after another test,

GENERAL.DRIVER: RSI-SDIO WLAN

Searching now for RSI-SDIO

~s

irvinewade · February 21, 2023, 6:30am

So that is the old card.

I would recommend against upgrading until you have resolved some of the other issues - unless you are specifically experiencing problems with the existing WiFi/BT card.

st.boom · February 21, 2023, 1:49pm

has anyone tried switching to pipewire for hfp and such?

Captain_Morgan · February 21, 2023, 5:20pm

[Updates March 3rd]: A couple observations having used the sparklan card for a few days and to be clear I consider the experience very positive when compared to redpine with some caveats:

now connects to 5GHz wifi networks without problems experienced by redpine card,
seems to more ~~reliably~~ quickly connect to wifi networks in general 2.4Ghz, or 5Ghz,
~~seems to come up after standby reliably and connects through vpn~~, i noticed wifi connection with open VPN is having issues at times, even though it shows up connected no Web Browsing can be performed, switching to 4G and the same Open VPN connection more reliably connects, sometines toggling openvpn multiple times works, sometines soft toggling the wifi connection works, but then for some reason stoos working again after a while,
connects to bluetooth headphone (Bose Quietcomfort 45) and streams without interruption but only when wifi is off (streaming over 4G on), where redpine had great difficulty maintaining connection, or reestablishing connection,
With wifi on there is interference and stuttering, for example using Freetube and playing a video the bluetooth audio stream appears to desync from the video stream, and tries to catch up occasionally resulting in intermittent and at times difficult to understand audio (video also doesnt seem to stream smoothly as if its accelerated playback but intermittent when looking at the lips of someone talking). Since the last update to device settings the stuttering when using WiFi 2.4Ghz and Bluetooth is minimal to only occasionaly. While stuttering is gone the video does no sync on 2.4GHz and streaming to Bose headohones, see observation No.8, so it appears to have resolved some bandwidth issues but not all, interestingly on 5GHz lips now sync in video with audio, playing the same video as before,
There is also a phosh bug when you manually disable wifi and bluetooth from top settings menue and use the hks to turn the wifi card off, the wifi and bluetooth crossed out symbols stay on the settings bar instead of disappearing. I dont think that happened with the redpine card but someone would need to confirm.
tested on a different bluetooth receiver Kinovo BRT200 a HD audio receiver with digital or analog out and same intermittent stuttering, using Freetube Video with Audio stream or less obvious using Lollipop Audio with local file.
It appears that when bluetooth and wifi is on and streaming freetube video and audio there are latency issues and maybe bandwidth, with latency using a speed test at the same time of about 120ms, 3-8MBs, while with Wifi off and 4G no stuttering and latency about 70ms, 7-15MBs. Wifi i would expect to have lower latency, and higher bandwidth.
Probably more a feedbackd or phosh side issue but sometimes when receiving Chatty message (even when sound feedback is off - Chats selected quiet, and quick settings notifications on quiet) and when streaming over bluetooth the phone will disconnect from bluetooth (it should probably ignore any feedback in any audio stream when notifications are selected Silent, or Quiet, and play a gentle ding over the same audio stream when Notifications are On). not sure if this was because of a recent chatty update but upon txt notification stream is not disrupted only briefly for message
Occasionally when streaming bluetooth to the Kinovo BRT200 receiver the bluetooth stream will get disconnected without known cause (power suspend is turned off), using Lollipop playing .mp3 file from internal SD Card, this also happens whether on 4G, Wifi off, or 4G off, and on Wifi. To re-connect i have to push the receiver button briefly to re-establish connection - and it quickly and flawlessly re-connects the stream. after latest update to pulseaudio i believe no more random disconnects
After streaming goodvibes online radio stream to bluetooth, established a second bluetooth connection to a desktop, the audio streaming continued, upon sending a file the audio stream gets disconnected, once file sending starts, the audio stream can be re-established, so it is streaming audio and receiving a file, it would be good if audio is not disrupted when files are sent over bluetooth on an additional connetion.
Sending files to the Librem 5 is a bit slow with or without audio streaming at the same time with about 15KBs, or 3MB file takes 3-6min to send.
Ok i went crazy and while streaming music on bluetooth and while my desktop sent a file to Librem 5, i initiated a file transfer from Librem 5 - to Desktop and both transfers concurrently worked though the speed of the second file transfer was now 5KBs. This is amazing that it works, but is there a configuration item that limits the speed here??
Used streaming to yet another bluetooth receiver in my car and it would not disconnect randomly, it would also more reliably re-connect when re-starting the car, so the disconnect bug maybe also a little related to the receiver used.

This could be a driver issue or interference with signal based on my librem 5 hardware iteration. Let me know if you also experience audio and video streaming difficulties when wifi and bluetooth is on.

Gavaudan · February 21, 2023, 5:25pm

Is there also an issue if you play a local audio file while doing something on the web? I’m curious if it’s interference or if the card is having a hard time because Bluetooth is transmitting the audio that WiFi is streaming, like it’s too much to handle.

Captain_Morgan · February 21, 2023, 5:28pm

Yes playing Lollipop mp3 audio only from SDCard, also shows the audio artifacts when wifi is on. Havent done too much testing but that means it is likely not the fault of the Freetube online electron app.

In the sound settings there is the HD quality output option and the standard, which sounds fuzzy and has poor quality so i can test it with the standard output and see if it stutters then.

Sharon · February 21, 2023, 9:10pm

@irvinewade
In rough figures, just how old might this device be? I don’t want to waste any more money or time on it, but I’ll update software and upgrade any hardware when they are ready. What doesn’t work - c’est la vie.

The only issues remaining will not be resolved. I’ve walked the plank on that.one. The only problem I need/can fix are the many screens that run offside without a scroll bar. I have a copy of the fix for that.

Too, I will be ordering a device allowing me to connect the L5 device to the workstation. Waiting for the camera updates being released later this month which should/maybe take care of the camera light issue. I don’t see how that upgrade might interfere with WiFi.
So, even with old hardware, can the new card be placed into this device?
~f

tomoqv · February 21, 2023, 9:41pm

Interesting, this reminds me of a bug I found using a BQ tablet running Ubuntu Touch years ago. What I discovered was that bluetooth somehow interfered with WiFi and download speed came to a slow crawl as soon as bluetooth on the device was activated and that it came back to normal after disabling BT again. We were talking from maybe 25 Mbps with BT off down to maybe 0.5-1 Mbps with BT on.

Have you checked the network speed over WiFi with and without bluetooth enabled?

Captain_Morgan · February 21, 2023, 9:44pm

interesting the interruptions certainly could be a result of reduced wifi throughput - i will test that scenario.

BTW side note i did not notice a difference in stuttering bluetooth stream whether i used 2.4Ghz or 5Hhz.

irvinewade · February 21, 2023, 10:52pm

Did you mean the Redpine WiFi card? I don’t know but I’ll say 10 years. (It was chosen not for its cutting edge technology or stellar performance but for the fact that it is blob-free i.e. privacy and security benefits, although closer scrutiny suggests that both cards most definitely are blackboxes i.e. use a blob, and both cards allow their blackbox firmware to be loaded from the file system.)

I can only offer my opinion but if you are not experiencing any issues or limitations with the existing WiFi card, I would leave well enough alone. (As you can see from the above discussion, the new card may not be perfect yet either.)

Nor I - but the more things that are changing at once, the harder it is to troubleshoot and to manage, and clearly the Librem 5 software is under active development on many fronts.

prog-amateur · February 21, 2023, 11:58pm

Hello, what about overheating compared to the current Wifi card ? Is there any power consumption improvement ? thank you

irvinewade · February 22, 2023, 1:14am

See table in post linked in OP. There may be an improvement when in some kind of power save mode. (That says nothing about improvement when actually operating.)

Captain_Morgan · February 22, 2023, 1:39am

i forgot to ask was there a workaround in your case or firmware update that resolved the issue?

For librem 5 the obvious solution could be to switch from a HD audio to a SD audio stream that takes up less bandwidth. I tried to switch quality setting but for the kinovo it did not let me.

matt2 · February 22, 2023, 2:57am

Speaking of operating power, if it is connecting at 5 GHz, then it is going to use more power. The prior WiFi card was 2.4 GHz only, I think. Connecting to a 2.4 GHz only SSID is enough, but if it also has a 5 GHz band, then it might be good to disable 5 GHz from the phone, assuming that you want longer battery life than speed. Also, I am not sure if Target Wait Time is one of those features that only works when everything on the network is WiFi 6.

irvinewade · February 22, 2023, 3:08am

Maybe, maybe not.

Pretty sure that that is not correct. I think I had my Librem 5 connected to 5 GHz at one time but it was struggling with range within the house so I changed to 2.4 GHz where the range was fine. The specs of the phone also originally said that it supported both bands.

If you are not using 5 GHz at all then yes, it would be good to disable it but perhaps it will be dormant most of the time anyway, just waking up occasionally to listen for beacon frames.