Jetson Nano Edimax EW-7611ULB
I obtained a Nvidia Jetson Nano to start learning about machine learning and to build a robot. One of the frustrations I encountered is the lack of a good inexpensive WiFi and Bluetooth solution that works out-of-the-box. A cheap USB dongle, the Edimax EW-7611ULB, combines both WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities into one dongle, but it will not work out-of-the-box with the Nvidia Jetson Nano. This dongle is much cheaper than using a M.2 WiFi card plus two antennas, plus, you don't need to worry about mounting the antennas.
This page contains instructions on how to correctly install the drivers for the EW-7611ULB.
Before you start, you need to already have your Ubuntu environment setup, and you must be connected to the internet via the ethernet cable.
Contents |
Step 1
Update your package manager and install the tools you will need.
Run in the terminal:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nano dkms git libelf-dev
Step 2
The EW-7611ULB uses the RealTek chipset but your Linux distribution has old/malfunctioning drivers already installed. We need to disable them by blacklisting them.
Run in the terminal:
echo "blacklist rtl8192cu" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo "blacklist rtl8xxxu" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
Step 3
Obtain this driver from lwfinger's github.
Run in the terminal:
git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723bu.git
cd rtl8723bu
Step 4
Correct the makefile before you build the driver.
Open the makefile using any text editor (such as gedit)
Look for the line
EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DCONFIG_CONCURRENT_MODE
Comment it out so it looks like
#EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DCONFIG_CONCURRENT_MODE
Then, we need to change the build architecture to be ARM64, or else you'll encounter an error about AARCH64 (which kind of means it doesn't realize the platform you are using is a 64 bit ARM CPU)
Look for the line
SUBARCH := $(shell uname -m | sed -e s/i.86/i386/ | sed -e s/ppc/powerpc/ | sed -e s/armv.l/arm/)
And change it so that it looks like
SUBARCH := arm64
Step 5
Prepares the kernel with dkms and also copy some required files
Run the following commands in the terminal:
source dkms.conf
sudo mkdir /usr/src/$PACKAGE_NAME-$PACKAGE_VERSION
sudo cp -r core hal include os_dep platform dkms.conf Makefile rtl8723b_fw.bin /usr/src/$PACKAGE_NAME-$PACKAGE_VERSION
sudo dkms add $PACKAGE_NAME/$PACKAGE_VERSION
sudo dkms autoinstall $PACKAGE_NAME/$PACKAGE_VERSION
Step 6
Build and install the compiled module
Run the following commands in the terminal:
make
sudo make install
Finished
REBOOT the Jetson Nano
Sources
Thanks to everybody on these forum pages where I found the information needed to perform this installation
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1049303/jetson-nano/jetson-nano-wifi-/post/5329699/#5329699
https://forums.libretro.com/t/jetson-nano-meh-so-far-vs-rpi/21685
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2398387
