New Post: Shipping new SparkLAN Wifi cards with Librem 5

HSP can be made to work with Sparklan cards, yes - however, some updates will be needed in PureOS that aren’t there yet.

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Ok thanks, I’m hoping in general the BT will perform better with this card. I just emailed support about the upgrade procedure, I’ll report here what they tell me, unless you want to enlighten us @dos?

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Usually it’s just a matter of making sure your OS is up-to-date and replacing the card. Only in case your phone is old enough that it has been shipped without firmware jail flashed on it you’ll have to do that yourself.

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Ok I should be good then because I just received my phone a month ago or so.

How do I check this? Is there a shipping date, when the jails were flashed? In the article I did not found any hints.

What about active support for the redpine module? As I read in the article, programming the driver for that one is not finished yet. Do you plan to cancel support for the redpine, so it is better for me to change to SparkLAN?

In summary, I love to tinker with my Librem5! Thank you Purism =)

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If there are firmware files in /usr/share/firmware-librem5-nonfree/firmware/brcm, you’re all set.

Apparently SiLabs is resuming support for its mainline Linux driver for Redpine cards, so if that actually materializes we’re going to pull all their improvements into our kernels.

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Are there any power consumption differences you are aware of between the 2 cards?

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a) Does that mean the new modem is in L5’s shipped since January first or starting February first?
(I would think it is the first option, but the article seems somewhat belated if this really is the case.)
b) Is there a command to check which modem is on board?

hmm damn I installed the Jail according to the instructions.
Something went wrong with the date so that apt now always gives an error when updating.

My real problem is that the battery now always shows 0% and also does not seem to charge.

It would probably be best to contact support with these issues. They can be easily resolved but I don’t want this thread to veer off topic.

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We started shipping the new wifi card some time in January once our existing inventory of Redpine cards ran out and we made the transition to the new cards. If you sudo dmesg | grep brcm you should see logs from the SparkLAN modem being initialized, if it is installed.

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Thanks, Kyle. I can’t make much of the information that command generates, but having received my L5 in the closing days of January I have good hope the new one is in there.

With WiFi on, nmcli -f GENERAL.DRIVER d show wlan0 will tell you which driver is being used.

brcmfmac means SparkLAN card; RSI-SDIO WLAN means Redpine.

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Ah! I see. That’s helpful. Now I understsnd what Kyle’s command was doing. I didn’t realize ‘brcm(fmac)’ stood for SparkLAN. I’m good then :),:+1:

I should have read the article a bit closer, maybe. :slight_smile:

Having re-read the article, I must say it is really great to see how adaptable the L5 (and the team building it) is.

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From the Matrix chat:

well, but that's only half of the question
the other half is in readme here: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/librem5-fw-jail
the package should be installed by default these days, so it's just the flashing part that's relevant
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@Kyle_Rankin, this is really cool! Reaffirms why I wanted to invest in Purism and the L5!

One question, the article has a link at the end about a sale or promotion for people that want to upgrade their existing wifi cards. The store shows it at $29.00 but no info about discount price. Is $29.00 the discounted price, and in the future, the price will go up? Or am I misreading the article? Basically, should I buy it now, since it is lower in price, even if my current wifi card is working fine?

Thanks again!

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My L5, received a week ago, has the SparkLAN wifi card and that seems like good news.

But I found that it can only connect if it is close to the wifi access point (i.e. a few meters away), is this something I already know? Is there an update to do?

Thanks

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I had to look this up: Bluetooth Headset Profile.

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