NanoPi NEO Air and Ethernet

[maks.dav]

Hi.
Can I use the board NanoPi NEO Air with Ethernet?

[v8dave]

There is no Ethernet hardware on the NEO PI Air. The reference in the Wiki is likely from a copy and paste.

Wifi only.

[guidol]

Hi.
Can I use the board NanoPi NEO Air with Ethernet?

Directly not, but ypu can buy a WiFi Bridge (like Vonets) and connect the Air to the WiFi on the WiFi Bridge and on the other side of the bridge is a Ethernet-Connector....

WiFi_Bridge_Vonets.jpg (68.43 KiB) Viewed 14995 times

[pbuyle]

The NEO-Air has two USB ports available through headers (when soldered). They can be used to connect an USB-2 Ethernet adapter. See the pins layout at https://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index ... _Dimension

I've successfully connected an A1277 Apple USB Ethernet Adapter (05ac:1402). It has a ASIX AX88772 chip which is supported in the standard FriendlyWrt image for the board by the `asix` kernel module. The module is not loaded automatically.
To get it to work on reboot, I created a file in /etc/modules.d:

Code: Select all

echo asix > /etc/modules.d/90-asix

The only issue is that the combo NanoPi NEO-air + Ethernet adapter is rather power hungry when routing Wifi traffic to Ethernet. With a 2.5Amp 5v power adapter, the voltage drops to ~4.75v and the Ethernet adapter shut down sometimes. Unplug and re-plug brings it back. I need to test with a more powerful power supply.

[pbuyle]

Update: I switched to a Realtek RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (0bda:8153) which required no specific configuration to work. The stability issue of the asix driver seems to be unrelated to power consumption, likely an issue with the adapter itself or the `asix` kernel module (and that may be why the module is not loaded automatically).