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I need a second WiFi adapter for the Raspberry Pi 4.

For RPi <=2 (without integrated WiFi) and with RPi >= 3 the chipset BCM43143 was recommended.

Does this still apply for the RPi 4? Can I only expect a reliable performance from WiFi dongles with a BCM43143 chipset, or has the support broadened?

I'm eyeballing a TP-Link Archer T3U AC1300, but I don't want to invest a lot of time of getting it running reliably.

GarlicCheese
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    Why not drop a note to some of the official outlets? For example The Pi Hut has both small and external antenna versions - I'm sure they would be happy for an order at the moment. –  Apr 16 '20 at 01:58
  • See if the answers above don't work for you. – olibaer Sep 28 '20 at 17:59

3 Answers3

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You are free to purchase any additional USB/WiFi dongle that is compatible to Raspberry Pi. You may have a look at RPi USB Wi-Fi Adapters. If you have a compatible adapter then it's no problem to use it for a second WiFi connection or as an access point with a WiFi uplink. How to do it you can look at Access point as WiFi router/repeater with additional WiFi-dongle.

Ingo
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Many of the rtl88x2bu adapters are compatible with a Rasbperry Pi using this driver. This is what many cards use that advertise Linux compatibility (e.g. Amazon search for "linux wifi", especially the 1200Mbps ones). If you're using a Pi with a 64-bit kernel, you'll need to run

sed -i 's/ARM_NV_NANO = n/ARM_NV_NANO = y/' Makefile

instead of

sed -i 's/ARM_RPI = n/ARM_RPI = y/' Makefile

Here's the complete install commands, assuming Raspbian:

# Update all packages per normal
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

# Install prereqs
# Remove raspberrypi-kernel-headers if you're running Ubuntu or you get package-not-found errors
sudo apt install git build-essential dkms raspberrypi-kernel-headers

# Reboot just in case there were any kernel updates, you can skip if there weren't
sudo reboot

# Pull down the driver source
git clone https://github.com/cilynx/rtl88x2bu
cd rtl88x2bu/

# Configure for RasPi
sed -i 's/I386_PC = y/I386_PC = n/' Makefile
# Remember, change this if you're using a 64-bit kernel
sed -i 's/ARM_RPI = n/ARM_RPI = y/' Makefile

VER=$(sed -n 's/\PACKAGE_VERSION="\(.*\)"/\1/p' dkms.conf)
sudo rsync -rvhP ./ /usr/src/rtl88x2bu-${VER}
sudo dkms add -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER}
sudo dkms build -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER} # Takes ~3-minutes on a 3B+
sudo dkms install -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER}
sudo modprobe 88x2bu

I've confirmed that this one works on Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit on a Pi 4, and I'm getting pings of <40ms and download speeds of >200Mbps.

lights0123
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We are successfully using a TP-Link TL-WN722N (Realtek chipset, i.e. v2 or v3) adapter with a Raspberry Pi Zero W running balenaOS 2.54. It was completely plug-and-play; no drivers necessary.

jrc
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