Raspberry Pi 4 running Android TV 13 OS wifi 5g compatibility question.

[sim_tcr]

Hello,

I recently installed Android TV 13 OS on a raspberry pi 4 8GB ram.
Every works except pi wifi is only finding 2.4G network and not 5g network.
As far as I know, pi 4 does support 5G wifi. Other devices at my home dont have any issues finding or connecting to 5g wifi.

I read some where that, it probably because region is not set correctly on android. But in Android TV 13 OS, I dont see any option to set region.
Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Simon Mandy

 

[mbhangui]

Hello,

I recently installed Android TV 13 OS on a raspberry pi 4 8GB ram.
Every works except pi wifi is only finding 2.4G network and not 5g network.
As far as I know, pi 4 does support 5G wifi. Other devices at my home dont have any issues finding or connecting to 5g wifi.

It is not that Raspberry PI supports 5G wifi. The support for 5g is from the broadcom driver. AFAIK only ubuntu and Rasbian has the official broadcom driver. All other linux distributions use reverse engineered broadcom-wl driver. Just 3 points

1. Android is not linux. Just the kernel is linux. Rest of the ecosystem is not linux. Rest of the android ecosystem is resource consuming java ecosystem and a walled garden created by G00gle.
2. The distribution that you have installed is not an official android version for RPI4. AFAIK, there isn't any official android distribution for RPI4. They are all hacks created by volunteers. So It will just be some hack and will be missing a proper driver as broadcom doesn't have an official open source driver.
3. Compared to the official Raspbian OS, android will suck the life out of even a powerful SBC like the RPI4. Any reason for using android instead of the Raspbian OS from the Raspbian foundation which has thousands of developers who know exactly what they are doing with the hardware they themselves designed?

Installing android on RPI4 is like buying a Benz and fitting a Maruti 800 engine in it and expecting everything to work like the original Benz.

I read some where that, it probably because region is not set correctly on android. But in Android TV 13 OS, I dont see any option to set region.
Any thoughts?

Eexpecting to change the engine stamp "Made in India" with "Made in Germany" to change the country code to make things work is farsighted at the moment. For that to happen, G00gle has to learn how to design hardware like Apple has done.

 

[sim_tcr]

It is not that Raspberry PI supports 5G wifi. The support for 5g is from the broadcom driver. AFAIK only ubuntu and Rasbian has the official broadcom driver. All other linux distributions use reverse engineered broadcom-wl driver. Just 3 points

1. Android is not linux. Just the kernel is linux. Rest of the ecosystem is not linux. Rest of the android ecosystem is resource consuming java ecosystem and a walled garden created by G00gle.
2. The distribution that you have installed is not an official android version for RPI4. AFAIK, there isn't any official android distribution for RPI4. They are all hacks created by volunteers. So It will just be some hack and will be missing a proper driver as broadcom doesn't have an official open source driver.
3. Compared to the official Raspbian OS, android will suck the life out of even a powerful SBC like the RPI4. Any reason for using android instead of the Raspbian OS from the Raspbian foundation which has thousands of developers who know exactly what they are doing with the hardware they themselves designed?

Installing android on RPI4 is like buying a Benz and fitting a Maruti 800 engine in it and expecting everything to work like the original Benz.

Eexpecting to change the engine stamp "Made in India" with "Made in Germany" to make things work is farsighted at the moment.

Thank you for the comments.
I have other RPi 4 which run Raspbian.
This one was lying around without use, And was looking for a second TV in bedroom.
Since I already have spare monitor, I decided to try RPi 4 as an Android Box. And it works great too.

 

[mbhangui]

Thank you for the comments.
I have other RPi 4 which run Raspbian.
This one was lying around without use, And was looking for a second TV in bedroom.
Since I already have spare monitor, I decided to try RPi 4 as an Android Box. And it works great too.

It is good to try new things and that's how one learns and that shouldn't stop. Try installing Kodi on raspbian and see if it suits your purpose. If there is a particular application, we could think of some alternatives that works natively on Raspbian.

 

[MNX]

Thank you for the comments.
I have other RPi 4 which run Raspbian.
This one was lying around without use, And was looking for a second TV in bedroom.
Since I already have spare monitor, I decided to try RPi 4 as an Android Box. And it works great too.

You could try asking in the xda forum.

 

[sandeepmdas]

It is good to try new things and that's how one learns and that shouldn't stop. Try installing Kodi on raspbian and see if it suits your purpose. If there is a particular application, we could think of some alternatives that works natively on Raspbian.

As an alternate choice, Plex can be considered, on Raspbian (not Android). Select and download distro from plex.tv:
Linux / Ubuntu / ARMv8 for 64 bit or ARMv7 for 32 bit.
Plex may not transcode well in RPi4, but should be fine for all other (read streaming) applications. WiFi will work out of the box.

 

[mbhangui]

As an alternate choice, Plex can be considered, on Raspbian (not Android). Select and download distro from plex.tv:
Linux / Ubuntu / ARMv8 for 64 bit or ARMv7 for 32 bit.
Plex may not transcode well in RPi4, but should be fine for all other (read streaming) applications. WiFi will work out of the box.

That indeed is a better option because one will use Raspbian which is the only distribution (apart from Ubuntu) that works properly on RPI hardware and is officially tested by the Raspberry PI foundation. Android, etc are just hack jobs which may get you a usable screen and apps that you are accustomed to on the phone. But there will be many glitches as those are not officially supported.