Did banana pi m5 have wifi build-in?

Banana Pi Amlogic design
1

hii want to ask is banana pi m5 have wifi build-in or i need to get it from anywhere ?

2

Hi, the M5 has no embedded wifi.

The official RTL8822 wifi module is available here https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002550783568.html?spm=5261.ProductManageOnline.0.0.34ed4edfgdV59j

3

I tried for 2 days with multiple bpi OS bpi images to get the RTL8822 addon for the M2 Pro and M5 working and finally threw it in the junk drawer. This is probably my last purchase with BPi after 2 unstable and crashing M4’s and an M5 that can only do WiFi via a small set of USB adapters and apparently hasn’t had GPIO interfacing solution since kernel 3.x a few years ago. I could have purchased a tinkerboard or even a genuine Pi 4B for the same price as I’ve burned on this junk. The lack of useful documentation is an embarrassment.

4

looks like the same issue on my M5. Additionally, Ubuntu Mate don’t work stable. Particularly firefox goes wrong, window manager stops accidentally and no way to open terminal, if yes, it stops and the computer crushes. I can’t detect any hardware issue, but it’s tiring to check endless random errors of the board, so it will go to dump. The former M3 got no new Software and no way to realise a running modern safe system. Waste of money - unfortunately!

5

I had weird issues with so many images…ubuntu was whacky and the 5.17 kernel build was horrible. I’m running armbian on it now with xfce desktop and it runs fabulously. I decided I’m ok with using a usb port for wifi and another one for 2.4ghz keyboard/mouse combo. Link to the img that’s good:

Folder on google drive that it’s in…seems like the stable stuff goes there: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1p2ms5SQ9M9Dj2BVQqW7hIr2hXW2Yf6A1?usp=sharing

I might end up using it as a wifi bridge to ethernet to hardwire my devices. I think it’ll be faster and more reliable in between them physically connected to a local LAN switch to the other devices NATed through the wifi usb adapter on the M5. Who knows. Would be nice if someone could just tell me how to make the addon junk wifi card work. Maybe I’m just dumb or is it that the only kernel driver that works is like 800 years old (hehe)?

6

oooh and don’t even get me started on GPIO!! But, I will say with the image above got it acting like it works now. I just need to figure out the know-how to use them. Here’s the stuff that will address that problem and do some other setup stuff. I think this is the main stuff to make it ready to roll.

I have the luxury of a GUI so I just use that to expand filesystem and do some other setup tasks. This is how I do it based on easy and quick without having to script it. Maybe one day I will script it and maintain it…but as for now I’m sticking with this image:

The m5 will join ethernet network and has sshd enabled so you really don’t even need any accessories except a live ethernet connection.

bpi-m5 debian 11 image setup: DO NOT copy/paste this stuff blindly!

It’s not a script but a series of one-liners. Some possibly need to be edited (hostname and timezone, for example)

After first boot connect to wifi/lan via GUI or your favorite method

I’m lazy and just run all commands as root versus sudo

run commands as root. Or be slow and use sudo!

passwd pi # change pi password - prompts for new password
echo 'bpi-m5' > /etc/hostname # modify with desired hostname
echo 'America/Chicago' > /etc/timezone # modify with desired timezone
apt update #updating apt databases and then installing the following packages:
apt install -y gparted autoconf-archive automake libtool libtool-doc libltdl-dev mlocate python3-dev python3-setuptools doxygen helpman help2man gawk
updatedb # create/update database for the "locate" command to search folders and files containing a given string
apt autoremove -y # did this for dependency oddities, might not need it
reboot
armbian-config # select software menu and install kernel headers. Timezone, wifi, etc can also be set here
reboot
#run gparted from GUI system submenu and expand the /dev/mmcblk1p2 partition # clunky solution until scripted

turn off apt search indexes compression gzip (on by default and searches = ~4min = terrible)

# create 99no-compression file to override compression on apt searches and mod existing compression settings file
echo 'Acquire::GzipIndexes "false";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99no-compression #I think gui looks at 02-armbian-compress-indexes first so modify it next
sed -i 's/true/false/' /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99no-compression # edit the existing compression file enabled to false
rm -R /var/lib/apt/lists # clear cached apt update cache
apt update # rebuild update cache

get/config/install libgpio from maintainer’s git repo

cd ~ ; rm -rf libgpiod ; git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libgpiod/libgpiod.git; cd libgpiod
./autogen.sh --enable-tools=yes --prefix=/usr --enable-bindings-python 
make
make install