Orange Pi i96 WiFi sucks a lot

Yesterday I managed to successfully boot my Orange Pi i96 to which I connected initially over SSH. I then realized that the WiFi constantly drops and has a really bad performance. It only has a rate of 10MBit/s. Though the bit rate is more than enough for an SSH connection, the connection still constantly drops, so there has to be something wrong with the WiFi.

The problem has nothing to do with my network settings or my router or whatever else, it has definitely something to do with the Orange Pi.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:""  Nickname:""
          NWID:off/any  Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.472 GHz
          Access Point:   Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=1 dBm
          Sensitivity=1/0
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-26 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-26 dBm says it all. Every other device works well, but this device just constantly drops the connection. Is there a way to improve the quality, maybe by replacing the WiFi-antenna or is the chip just that much garbage?

Can’t comment beyond what I’ve read, they appear to be a keenly priced budget Pi board.

Review:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3124558/internet-of-things/make-a-wi-fi-gadget-with-a-9-99-orange-pi-development-board.html

Docs:

This example has a wifi antenna:

Hope this helps :wink:

1 Like

Page Not Found - Aliexpress.com

That’s exactly the one I have.

1 Like