PINE A64-LTS v2 - Can't get WiFi to work

[Voidwatcher]

My WiFi/Bluetooth daughter board just arrived today for my PINE A64-LTS V2 that I've been integrating into a project.  I've been using the SBC with a wired Ethernet connection for weeks (although that had its own challenges, I eventually had to limit it to 10/100) and finally now I'm trying to get wireless going.  Unfortunately, I cannot get it to work after several hours of troubleshooting and I'm hoping someone out there has some ideas.

First, the basics... Issuing uname -a produces this:

Code:

Linux pine64so 5.15.80-sunxi64 #22.11.1 SMP Wed Nov 30 11:23:00 UTC 2022 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

This is the only distro image that I was able to find that works on this specific hardware.  I guess the V2 board is based off of the SOPINE modules. The one I downloaded is "Armbian_22.11.1_Pine64so_jammy_current_5.15.80.img.xz" image up on https://armbian.hosthatch.com/archive/pine64so/archive/

ifconfig just shows eth0 and lo.  
iwconfig shows this:

Code:

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any 
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=12 dBm  
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off

Snippit from /etc/network/interfaces:

Code:

# Interface wlan0
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

Contents of wpa_supplicant.conf, although I originally started out with a more complex version, but I whittled it down to just this, as this bare minimum should still work I think.  (Please correct me on this.)

Code:

network={
    ssid="My home network SSID"
    psk="XXXXXXXXXXX"
}

If I issue the ifup wlan0 command it shows me that the daemon doesn't start:

Code:

wpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
ifup: failed to bring up wlan0

I'm also using a GUI desktop environment and WiFi doesn't show up in Network Manager because of my manual definition in the interfaces file.

If I remove the wlan0 definition from interfaces, then WiFi does show up in the Network Manager, however even though it lets me turn off and on the WiFi connection itself, it doesn't enumerate any wireless networks.  The list is just blank.

I've tried both my 5G network and my 2.44Ghz network; neither work when specifying them manually in the wpa_supplicant.conf file.

So it seems to me that the wpa_supplicant daemon failing to start must be the direction I need to be troubleshooting, but at this point I'm out of ideas on how to go further.

Can anyone help?