WiFi 6 for the Pinebook Pro

[Luke]

Sure many people would be very interested in it.

Indeed. I will most likely be after one when v2 eventuates! Although the Wifi issues I was having with my PBP appear to be OS related, not hardware, as when I switched from the stock debian to Manjaro it has become rock solid.

Sability is one thing tho, but the other is that some people simply wan't 500+Mbit/s WiFi speeds

[evilbunny]

Sability is one thing tho, but the other is that some people simply wan't 500+Mbit/s WiFi speeds

wifi 5 (802.11ac) already does 800+ Mbit

[pfeerick]

@Luke Want and need are two very different beasts Lots of people will *want* 500+ Mbit speeds... but very few will actually need anything more than what WiFi 4 aka 802.11n offers... and in that case, they probably need Wifi 5 for a different reason to what they think... i.e. because the issue is congestion, not speed.

Then again, if we have a NVMe drive on the PBP... maybe it can make use of that high speed Wifi 5/6 ... i.e. I just bought a USB 3.1 128GB flash drive... that's a 300MB (not Mb) capable drive... 4GB file transfer in mere seconds... be phenomenal if the PBP could do something close to that with the right network conditions...

[gplanansky]

AWESOME

Are any other uses tested/planned/brainstormed?

Yes, we are currently planning a second revision of the board that allows using both a M.2 WiFi card and a NVMe SSD. That version will likely have an additional power header where you can plug in the jumper cable from the battery. That should also solve the NVMe power issues observed when powering certain SSDs from the onboard 3.3 V regulator.

Would this enable both a modem/gps card and the SSD card?   SSD to persist map data, remote sensing images.

[Arwen]

@tsys, any update when the new M.2 adapter card could be available?

If it's a mater of money, I can send you more "coffee" money :-). Or I can pay for the board's manufacturing, (if I can pay for 2 for my own use).

[diodelass]

Sability is one thing tho, but the other is that some people simply wan't 500+Mbit/s WiFi speeds

wifi 5 (802.11ac) already does 800+ Mbit

802.11ac gives 867 Mbit/s per stream only if it supports 160-MHz channel bandwidths. Most extant gear doesn't; the Pinebook Pro's chip only gives 80-MHz channels at most (and offers no MIMO magic, so you only get one stream), meaning the maximum link speed is 433 Mbit/s under ideal conditions (and well-working firmware, which appears to be a pain point at present, but I digress.)

802.11ax gives a few key improvements, namely client-end MIMO and mandatory 160-MHz channel support. With the affordable Intel AX200 card, you get 2x2 MIMO and 160-MHz channels, so between that and the new high-order modulation scheme (1024-QAM), the ideal-case usable link speed could reach 2402 Mbit/s - 1201 Mbit/s per stream. I have no idea how difficult it is to make this happen in practice, but the PCIe bus on the Pinebook Pro side should be able to handle it easily (it should fit inside the link capacity of even a single lane).

[User 11436]

Hi everyone,

@manawyrm and I have built a small adapter PCB that replaces the NVMe adapter with an Intel Wifi 6 card. WiFi feels a lot snappier using an Intel AX200 card compared to the onboard Broadcom SDIO WiFi. Maximum WiFi download speed is of course increased, too. With this adapter it is easily possible to reach upwards of 600 Mbit/s transfer rate.

This is how the adapter looks when installed in the Pinebook Pro:

Nice!

Makes me realise how much the internet suck in my part of the UK. My download speed maxed out at 42Mbps. and I'm fairly certain that's not the PBP's fault.

[manawyrm]

My download speed maxed out at 42Mbps

Yeah, that depends on your router/access point as well. With proper hardware the stock PBP can do ~140 MBit/s.