Can't connect to wifi on a Rock64

[SuperSaiyanCaleb]

I'm trying to set up a Rock64 to connect to wifi using a Panda PAU09 USB wifi adapter.  The adapter is mounted in a fixed location, and when connected to my laptop running Ubuntu Bionic, I am able to easily connect to my own wifi network, as well as my school's secure network and their guest network using NetworkManager.  However, when I connect the adapter to the Rock64, I am unable to connect to any wifi networks, in spite of seeing them listed when I do a network scan.  I have tried this using Armbian Stretch and Bionic images, and also using ayufan's Bionic image.  When using nmcli to bring up the connection, I usually receive the error message "The Wi-Fi network could not be found".  However, scanning for networks usually shows the network I am attempting to connect to with good signal strength.  Other times, the connection will actually "succeed" but I won't be able to communicate over it and then the connection just goes down within seconds.

Any ideas on how I could make this work?

[evilbunny]

I'm trying to set up a Rock64 to connect to wifi using a Panda PAU09 USB wifi adapter.  The adapter is mounted in a fixed location, and when connected to my laptop running Ubuntu Bionic, I am able to easily connect to my own wifi network, as well as my school's secure network and their guest network using NetworkManager.  However, when I connect the adapter to the Rock64, I am unable to connect to any wifi networks, in spite of seeing them listed when I do a network scan.  I have tried this using Armbian Stretch and Bionic images, and also using ayufan's Bionic image.  When using nmcli to bring up the connection, I usually receive the error message "The Wi-Fi network could not be found".  However, scanning for networks usually shows the network I am attempting to connect to with good signal strength.  Other times, the connection will actually "succeed" but I won't be able to communicate over it and then the connection just goes down within seconds.

Any ideas on how I could make this work?

Quick google of your adaptor and it seems to be an 802.11ac device which aren't included in the linux kernel. This means most if not all distros don't include drivers for it.

At a quick glance I wasn't able to find linux drivers from the manufacturer's website, nor the chipset it uses

[SuperSaiyanCaleb]

802.11n, actually.  According to this, it makes use of the Ralink RT5572.  The fact that NetworkManager detects it and is able to scan for networks with it suggested to me that drivers are indeed included in the default configurations of the images I tried, but I'm all ears if there's something else I should install.