Actually just repeating this now with the onboard I’m getting closer to 75% which is about 120Mbps throughput. Throughput measurements are just from visiting fast.com
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Sorry for the basic question, but what’s the app you’re running there that is doing the link quality / throughput stuff?
It’s wavemon which I only knew about because someone else here mentioned it the other day!
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Hello!
I have tried placing thermal pad on WiFi chip but did not improve much. However when I placed additional thermal pad over power management module, the WiFi connection has been stable.
Would this make sense?
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interesting. what exactly did improve? only stability or signal strength also?
If the is an improvement in signal strength, how big is it?
with my current setup with a thermal pad on wi-fi chipset, root on (encrypted) nvme and different antenna, placed at the same location as the default, my system runs quite stable with okay signal strength. not nearly as strong as the other devices but workable even when not directly in sight of the AP.
Hello!
I was not paying much attention with signal strength or quality, but connection stability has been improved significantly. It stays connected for days as opposed to less than one hour before.
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Would be super cool if someone could try to plot signal strength and temperature over a fixed interval before and after putting a thermal pad on the power management module. I’d like to give it a go myself (and also just try slapping an enormous thermal pad over the entire module) when I get back from holiday but I’m also going to be moving in to a new place and unpacking all my junk so I can’t really promise to get round to it.
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Hello!
Could someone suggest a reasonable network load for the measurement? Also, suggest me commands to output signal strength, etc. So that I can have a shell script to run for recording result.
“sensors” command and RegEx yields temperature, but I do not know what to use for signal strength and link quality, etc. for logging.
Thanks.
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Hello!
It seems that the most recent update caused WiFi module from getting recognized. wavemon returns the following error:
$ wavemon
wavemon: no supported wireless interfaces found! Check manpage for help.
Just for reference, my system is at…
$ sudo reform-check
[sudo] password for shigeru:
I: Your platform name is: MNT Pocket Reform with i.MX8MP Module
I: You are running kernel version: 6.10.3-mnt-reform-arm64
I: Your installed kernel version: 6.10.3-1+reform20240807T214815Z
I: Your installed reform-tools version: 1.49
I: not installed: firmware-misc-nonfree pocket-reform-handbook
E: unexpected last line in /etc/skel/.profile, should be:
if [ "$(whoami)" = "root" ]; then reform-help --root; elif [ -z "$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" ]; then reform-help; fi
I: the following files differ from how they are shipped by reform-tools:
??5?????? /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
??5?????? c /etc/skel/.config/wayfire.ini
??5?????? c /etc/skel/.config/sway/config.d/input
W: /etc/modprobe.d/reform.conf is identical to /usr/lib/modprobe.d/reform.conf
W: and the latter succeeds the former. Consider deleting the former in favour of the latter.
I: kernel boot parameters your system does use but which are not the default:
+ console=ttymxc1
Thanks.
Hi, 10.6.3 kernel has an issue that we found unfortunately only after release, which causes imx8mp to freeze during boot randomly. Testing worked fine the first time and I didn’t try to boot multiple times, or I would have encountered the issue before release. When we noticed, I pulled (deleted) the update from our repos. But you probably got it early. The recommendation is to apt remove linux-image-6.10.3-mnt-reform-arm64, and the system will revert to the previous kernel.
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This might be a bit tricky:
-
if you remove
linux-image-6.10.3-mnt-reform-arm64then this will also remove thelinux-image-mnt-reform-arm64meta-package which is not what you want in the long-term. So if you go that route, make sure to re-installlinux-image-mnt-reform-arm64at some point in the future after the situation got resolved. -
removing that package might remove all kernels from your system, rendering your system unbootable. But removing the last kernel will also show a big fat error message, so there are some safety nets. Maybe check the output of
dpkg -l | grep 'ii linux-image'to make sure you have some backup kernels still in place -
maybe a bit safer (but also a bit more complicated) than just removing the
linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64meta-package is to downgrade that meta-package. Downgrades are usually not supported in Debian (mainly because of maintainer scripts) but in this case you only download a meta-package without any content, so doing so should be safe-enough. You can downgrade to the meta-package by adding the following apt repository to your/etc/apt/sources.listand then explicitly installing the packagelinux-image-mnt-reform-arm64=6.9.12-1+reform20240803T055726Z:deb [trusted=yes arch=arm64] https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-debian-packages/-/jobs/5257/artifacts/raw/repo reform main
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Hello!
Since I can use the wired LAN for now, maybe the best strategy is to wait for the release of the fixed kernel package?
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An update on the kernel situation: I’ve patched the 6.10.3 kernel so that it works fine now for me and at least one user on i.MX8MP Pocket Reform. So I merged that update and released it to our Debian repository again, so you should be able to upgrade the linux-image to version 6.10.3 now.
7 Likes
Hello!
The latest update restored the functionalities of WiFi module for mine, too.
Thanks.
2 Likes
Hello!
For unrelated reason, I have replaced M.2 NVMe SSD from Crucial T500 to WD_Black SN850X, and now WiFi connection goes down in ten minutes of booting up.
Does the i.MX8MP WiFi have high sensitivity to peripheral power demands? Just wondering.
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I wasn’t able to find side by side comparisons of the two drives wrt. thermal and power but I did see in one article that the WD can get to 70C when under stress, so I am still inclined to guess that this could be heat-related. Edit, perhaps not - seems like the WD may run cooler than the Crucial according to some forums I saw so I don’t know what I’m talking about.
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Not sure if this a useful data point, but last night I was using my Pocket Reform in bed and when the top of the device (with the copper logo) was touching the blanket and not exposed to a lot of air, the wifi disconnects seemed to happen faster than when I made sure there was some air behind the lid.
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I noticed that video performance is significantly worse once the device is hot as well; I wonder if the disconnects might be related to CPU throttling instead of or in addition to the radio IC itself getting hot
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I am suspecting that it is something to do with power draw primarily and heat is a secondary contributor in the equation. I have no probe to check the quality of power currents to each module onboard, so this is only my speculation.
When I compile some source code and occupy the CPU cores 100% for a good while, then temp. goes as high as 84ºC, but with lower power draw Crucial NVMe, WiFi was managed to stay connected. But with WD_Black, with even with no significant CPU load, WiFi gets lost in few minutes of boot.
Have you tried placing thermal pad on power module as well as on WiFi? I have total of three thermal pads, one on CPU that came with, one on WiFi module and one for power module. The one on power module significantly improved my WiFi stability, so far.
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Are you not worried about heat soak? The back plate is the heat sink for the main CPU, if you are heating it with 2 other sources, you are cutting into the cooling effectiveness of that heat sink. Or is the more effective cooling for the 2 other things so greatly aided that it is worth it?
3 Likes