Dual Band, 2.4GHz, 5GHz WiFi dongle for Raspberry Pi

Anybody wants to share any good performing 5GHz wifi dongle for Raspberry Pi (or companion pc in general)?

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I’ve no experience with it, but Emlid use the alfa awus036ach with their Edge autopilot (which is built around a Pi CM3).

Depends very much what for. If you want to send video then look at the Alfa dongles as they have massive radio amps so you get very good tx power.

The question is how do you want to make the dongle work :
As a client or as an Access point.
On the former, most of the chipsets are working with connman ( wpa_supplicant) but if you want to use the RPI as an Access Point then you have to go with HOSTAPD and in that case not all chipsets can act as an Acces Point, take a look at the column AP =Yes: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers

This is the short list of the AP chipset:
Driver Manufacturer PHY modes

  • ath9k_htc Atheros B/G/N
  • carl9170 ZyDAS/Atheros A(1)/B/G/N
  • libertas_tfMarvell B/G
  • p54usb Intersil/Conexant A(1)/B/G
  • rt73usb Ralink A(1)/B/G
  • rt2500usb Ralink A(1)/B/G
  • rt2800usb Ralink A(1)/B/G/N
  • rtl8192cu Realtek B/G/N
  • zd1211rw ZyDAS/Atheros A(2)/B/G

Problem is that HostAPD is getting old and the new chipsets drivers are not easily available , unless you want to get deep into the kernel.

Thanks, my first point is just to connect with the vehicle, not for the Video. As for the video, you are right, alpha is great. I recently tested ezwifi broadcast with a standard Alfa AWUS036NHA and It worked pretty well. The main goal of the dongle is giving me the ability to connect with the companion when is close to the pilot, as the 2.4 GHz from the Taranis transmitter severely affects the connection quality.

Just get yourself a new Rpi3 B+ - it has 5ghz wifi

You know, your solution will probably cost less. That’s a nice idea. Even though I have all the systems running with the 3b

I’ve had real troubles with the WiFi on the 3B+, especially in 5GHz mode. It’s not ideal for aerial vehicles as the connection drops off quite rapidly. On another note, wouldn’t using a 433/900MHz Telemetry module serve the purpose better than WiFi if you just wanted to connect to the vehicle?

A datalink is not an option, as the companion works as a node in the system and a serial connection does not give me the through put I need. Thanks for sharing your experience with the B+. The B is alright and works good with Ubiquiti stations. The B can get as far as 400m with its embedded wifi. But, as I said, it does not like the Taranis nearby…

That sounds quite incredible. Can you tell me how you get 400m of range with the embedded WiFi chip? What kind of receiver do you use?

With the Ubiquiti picostation M2 I get 200 to 250m. Actually with the TP Link N450 I passed the 500m. Raspberry Pi Zero W with on board wifi during the testing with a plane

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To answer my question, I have found the Panda N600 PAU09. Dual band, works great, plug and play with the latest raspbian