Question about the Panda PAU0F and info on ASUS USB-AC51

[Falcon-118]

1. I'm looking for something that is more of a dongle than an antenna farm. I see you have the Panda PAU0F in your list and it should work for my use. Do you know if the whole Panda PAU0x family is using the same chipset that is accepted by in-kernal drivers? For my needs on this (raspberry pi) project, the PAU0C should be more than adequate. Have you (or anyone) tried/tested this unit with linux or Bookworm on RPi? Any issues?

2. Asus USB-AC51 with Raspberry Pi OS bookworm 64bit lite... For some reason I could not get this adapter up on the RPi USB-3 ports. Never showed on old or new build with adapter in place or removed/replaced. I found on another site you have to introduce it on one of the USB-2 ports first, then move it to a USB-3 port. It works. I was validating its presence with "ip link sh". Once configured in this routine, it's fine, survives reboots and shutdowns. Haven't tested any throughput yet.

[morrownr]

Hi @Falcon-118

I see you have the Panda PAU0F in your list and it should work for my use.

It uses the mt7921u that has been in kernel for approaching 3 years. It is a good driver and continues to get better. The PAU0F uses the mt7921au chip. It is a tri-band chip that supports 80 MHz channel width. I hear from PAU0F users at times and I just hear good things. The reviews appear to be very good. If adapters are on The Plug and Play List, they are the best of the best as I filter adapters using a lot of criteria. For your use case, I would say that the PAU0F would work.

Do you know if the whole Panda PAU0x family is using the same chipset that is accepted by in-kernal drivers?

The Panda family of usb adapters uses several different chipsets but they are ALL supported by good in-kernel drivers. I do not remember Panda ever making a USB WiFi adapter that was not Plug and Play on Linux.

For my needs on this (raspberry pi) project, the PAU0C should be more than adequate. Have you (or anyone) tried/tested this unit with linux or Bookworm on RPi? Any issues?

I do not have a PAU0C adapter. It is not on The Plug and Play List and I do not remember why. It could be an oversight on my part. Maybe I should do some research. It uses the mt7612u chipset and mt76x2u driver. This is a feature rich driver that is AC1200 capable and is very stable at this point. I am currently not aware of any issue but would need to do some research.

...then move it to a USB-3 port. It works.

I was unaware of this.

The most modern Panda adapter that I have is the PAU0B. It really nice and has good range. You might think it is an antenna farm.

[Falcon-118]

Thanks for the information. I'll probably just back up to the unit with the "rabbit ears".